A Marketing Audit is like the MOT(Moment of truth) for your business. Critically evaluating your company’s moves will help you in designing the right marketing campaigns for your business. Due to an increase in the number of competitors and cut-throat industrial opportunities, it is crucial to keep your business in line with the rapidly changing technology and trends.
A marketing audit will assist you in analyzing the right opportunities for your company. Insights from the marketing audits offer you solutions to improve your brand identity. Whether it’s about the ongoing campaigns, or the past campaigns, or your future endeavors for that matter, you’ll know where to invest. The right investments will bring you the best return on investments (ROI).
Why is Marketing Audit essential for your business?
The results gathered from the marketing audit will help you gather insights to build connections with your target audience. It will help you in delivering business by addressing the needs of the users. According to Bruce Clark in ‘The Marketing Audit and Organisational Performance, “A marketing audit as a periodic, comprehensive, independent and systematic examination of business marketing efforts.”
Let’s understand them in detail:
Periodic: Marketing audits, are like regular check ups. It is recommended that you audit at least twice a year and not just when your business faces a problem.
Comprehensive: You need to cover every bit of your marketing strategy. Don’t leave anything behind. Social media, content, emails, everything.
Independent: Although you can always conduct your marketing audit in house, it’d be beneficial for your organization if you hire external auditors to overview your marketing strategies.
Systematic: Make sure your marketing audits are strategically aligned. It is a one-step-at-moment process. Evaluate your firm’s ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ environment, guiding principles, objectives and analyze your business’ performance.
The more you know about how you approach your market, the less you are to waste your resources on unproductive campaigns. You should be able to focus on developing better strategies and informed advertising plans with the data collected from the audit.
What are its key components?
A SWOT analysis will help you to determine every factor your business might face in the long run. It involves evaluating the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats from every perspective.
The Macro-environment is responsible for taking care of the factors that are external. It covers the elements that might impact your business from outside the organization. They can be political, cultural, economical, environmental, etc. This will also help in examining your competitors and improving your moves to target the right audience.
The Micro-environment focuses on the internal factors of your business. This includes participation and engagement of the employees, marketing environment i.e. the platforms you currently use to connect with your customers, and marketing tools such as digital media systems and the social media.
Will it help your business? Reviewing your marketing strategies after conducting a marketing audit will provide a bird’s eye view of the situation. This helps you to set your goals and work on the areas of improvement.
Why do you need to conduct a Marketing Audit?
Marketing audit will align your business campaigns. In the case of crises, when you need to jump onto the better strategies for your business, the data collected from the marketing audit will guide you.
Key takeaways
Strategically analyzing your marketing strategy and auditing your business will save you veering off-track. Launch your marketing audits more frequently to ensure you don’t lose sight of your vision. Bring real value to your customers by regularly updating your business strategies to work their magic. Happy Auditing!
FAQ
Ques: What are some other important marketing audit factors?
Ans:
- Know your USPs.
- Know your current and target customers.
- Know the strengths and weaknesses of your competitor's service.
- Know the strengths and weaknesses of your service.