Financial audits are well understood, but a marketing audit? Not really necessary, right? Wrong. It’s crucial!
If I asked you whether you’d carried out a Marketing Audit for your business before you’d probably chuckle a little and then draw in a big yawn!
But why?
Audits are common place in the financial world but a Marketing Audit, seriously I hear you say?
They aren’t that important, are they?
Well the answer is yes, they are crucial.
Even if everything is going well and you’re hitting your targets an audit can help to uncover those opportunities you didn’t even know existed. And if they aren’t going well then an audit will pinpoint the issues and help to drive out the strategies required to kick start things back in the right direction.
Audits can be complex and boring I hear you say again, but they don’t have to be!
I have spoken with many individuals, across both large and small businesses over the years that haven’t carried out a marketing audit or just simply didn’t understand the value of one or even what one was.
The purpose of this article is to explain why I think they are so useful and important.
I’ll run through the different elements of an audit and give you an insight into what an audit involves. How they can help your business now but more importantly plan for the future.
Reviewing the health of your marketing activities at least once a year should be a given. We live in a fast paced world where technologies and consumer behaviour is continually evolving. Consumers change the way they shop, how they research and spend their money and those changes in consumer behaviour directly influence how they respond to your marketing efforts.
Not keeping up, doing what you’ve always done and not looking at things differently can be business suicide.
So let’s begin!
Firstly what is a Marketing Audit?
A marketing audit is a structured survey of a business’s Marketing efforts. It examines your marketing objectives, strategies, activities and results and highlights what has worked and what has failed.
It is a vehicle that provides you with all the elements you need to create a successful Marketing Strategy.
What type of Marketing Audit do I need to conduct?
There are several types of marketing audits that business can conduct these days. You can carry out a full or partial audit but the decision really depends on what is being assessed.
You might just want to focus specifically on a part of your marketing campaign activity by carrying out a social media audit, an SEO audit or a website review. Or you might be looking to gain a thorough insight into your marketing efforts with a more comprehensive marketing audit.
The scope of your marketing audit will be your choice but the 3 most popular areas are:
• A Macroenvironment Audit:
In this audit you will focus on the factors outside of your business that impact the performance of your marketing activity. This could be the political landscape, the demographic you are marketing too and even the culture you operate within.
• A Microenvironment Audit:
Here you will focus on the internal influence of your marketing that you can control – these being your employees and their role in employee advocacy campaigns as well as the tools and channels you use to share your message with your target audience..
• A Marketing Strategy Audit:
This is a comprehensive audit which reviews and analyses your current vision, objectives and what you are trying to achieve.
It will look at every activity you do, your spend and the return on investment (ROI) for each. This audit will pull out the ‘what’s working’ and ‘what’s not working’ and make it more clear cut for future decision making.
This audit can be carried out when you are producing your first strategy or reviewing your current strategy and will inform you of invaluable customer and market insight to help set realistic business objectives.
Marketing audits can be carried out internally but outsourcing it to an agency or marketing consultant that specialises in audits is also popular. Outsourcing has its advantages as it is impartial and brings a fresh pair of eyes to the table.
More on that later….
So what are the main elements of a Marketing Audit?
There are a number of key characteristics that affect Marketing Audits and their results.
Firstly, they must be thorough and detailed.
The aim of a marketing audit is to fully understand all the activities being carried out by your marketing team. Are you achieving your objectives, what strategies do you already have in place and how are they performing?
This part of the audit is crucial and provides you with real insight into your current situation.
To get to this position though a marketing audit must be methodical in its approach. Trying to carry one out without a structure would be chaotic and could ultimately skew the results. You’d unlikely get the true picture you were looking for.
So, planning is imperative!
Using a framework will enable you work through, step-by-step, every area of your marketing activities at your own pace.
It’s important here that I reiterate that your audit should be honest and impartial – so if you need outside help, ask for it.
Should you look to an external expert to carry out your audit?
No it’s not imperative but what I would say is ensure that the auditor is unbiased and focused on the task in hand.
Audits need care, attention and time!
Sometimes the results aren’t what we want to hear – but they aren’t designed to massage your ego or draw a veil over what you find! They are supposed to challenge you and change things for the better.
Lastly, as I mentioned earlier a marketing audit should be done regularly, no less than once a year.
Consumers’ expectations are always changing and we must as marketers keep one step ahead.
Top 5 Reasons why you need to do a Marketing Audit
As I’ve alluded to already, many businesses don’t carry out marketing audits.
Perhaps it’s lack of understanding the value of it or fear of never doing one and what it could uncover that puts people off. But let me reassure you, assessments are healthy and carrying out a marketing audit will make things better for your business in the long run.
So here are 5 reasons why you should carry out a Marketing Audit:
1. A Marketing Audit helps you realign your marketing activities with your goals.
Often we are so busy with our day to day responsibilities that we lose focus on the ‘big picture’ and our long term goals.
When this happens we can sometimes question why a specific marketing strategy was implemented in the first place and how to work out whether it’s been successful or not.
The Marketing audit is designed to make you take a step back, look at your marketing strategy and marketing plan and ensure that the effort you are placing on your daily activities are profitably supporting your goals.
2. You can see what isn’t working
A Marketing Audit helps you to review all of your current marketing activities and assess whether they are performing successfully.
You can look at your marketing efforts with an objective eye, gather insightful data and pinpoint where you are under-performing.
This is the time to establish which areas need improving in order for you to achieve greater success, or what new tactics to employ.
3. You gain insight into new opportunities and different strategies
A marketing audit requires dedication and a deep dive into your business as well as external factors. Being able to look at things differently and adapt what you are doing through insight, will undoubtedly gain you advantage over your competition. Be Different.
4. You get an in-depth understanding of your competition
Being successful in marketing requires an in-depth understanding of lots of things, including the market that you operate in, your target audience, your marketing channel an d your competition. Carrying out a marketing audit is a great way to understand your competition thoroughly, including their strengths and weaknesses. Once armed with this you can improve the way you approach your strategies and stay one step ahead.
5. A Marketing Audit saves you money in the long run
Every CEO wants value out of Marketing so ensuring you are spending every marketing pound correctly goes without saying.
Without a regular check-in of your marketing efforts you could be wasting valuable time, resources and money on marketing activities that are producing few results without even being conscious of it.
Conducting a marketing audit periodically help you to maximise your marketing spend by ensuring that you focus on the activities that work best for your business.
It enables you to be confident in the delivery of your strategy by acting on evidence rather than here say.
Conducting a Marketing Audit
There are several ways to conduct a marketing audit but my preferred route is so break it up into three phases
– The Pre-Audit, Marketing Audit and Post Audit.
Phase One: Pre-Audit
1. Agree the key people who will carry out the marketing audit.
As I mentioned earlier on you have two options here:
a) Internal audit
This is usually led by the Head of Marketing and comprises of the marketing team who are assigned various tasks throughout the process. If there is a concern over objectivity, the marketing audit team could be joined by member of staff appointed by management from a different business unit.
In some cases a business can create its own task-force audit team, which is composed of executives or senior management overseeing the process. This usually happens in larger organisations where there is a greater need for control.
b) Outsourced audit
This is where your business hires the services of an outside auditor to perform the audit on your behalf. It could be an Agency you currently work with or an independent marketing consultant.
Of the two options the outsourced option is generally seen as the more reliable route. It ensures objectivity and an impartial view which provides a more effective audit.
It is crucial to choose the audit team properly. Individuals should not be picked at random and should have a sound knowledge and understanding of the marketing principles. They must also be able to show objectivity so that bias and pre-judgment is avoided and reliable results are provided.
2. Agree the timescales of the Marketing Audit
Marketing Audits take time to do so you need to plan properly.
Look at your resources and assign yourself a realistic timescale. Understand your start date and how you will incorporate the work ahead into the day to day running of the marketing department’s workload. Agree any audit meeting times in advance and stick to them!
3. What are the objectives of the audit
Everyone on the marketing audit team needs to understand the scope and the objectives of the audit. There should be no doubting in who is doing what and when actions are to be completed by.
Phase Two: The Marketing Audit
1. Research and gathering data
This stage is probably the most time consuming and humdrum part of the audit and probably why people associate audits with being ‘boring’!
But, it’s essential to the success of your audit.
Here you will look at four main areas of analysis:
The Market
– Your target market
– Demography of your customer
– Your customers buyer behaviour and loyalty
– Is what you are offering appealing to the right audience
– Are your messages working for you?
– What are the trends in your industry that are affecting you now and into the future
– What’s different about you – how will you market in the future
– Is Brexit affecting your revenue? If so, how?
Your Marketing activity
– What channels are you using
– Do you understand where your marketing spend is going
– What is your ROI for each of your activities
– How are you communicating your key messages
– Is you Brand serving you well?
– How are you measuring your activities and reporting on
– What’s working well and what’s not
The Competitor landscape
– How do you fair against your competitors – are they more successful that you?
– How are your perceived in the market place by your competitors
– What are your competitors doing better at than you are and why
– Are there any opportunities in the market that diversify into
Your Goals
– What are your short and long term marketing objectives
– Have you priced and positioned yourself correctly
– Are your objectives achievable given the current market place
This is not an exhaustive list and some businesses will have their own areas of concentration but it’s a starting point.
2. Data analysis
Once you have researched all areas of your marketing you will need to analyse and understand your findings.
This is the core part of the audit process.
Here you will build a picture of your market, the marketing activities you carry out and the strategies you use.
There are a number of tools that can be used in data analysis but the most common ones are:
A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) Analysis
This is an extremely useful tool and can be complex and detailed. The strengths and weaknesses are focused towards the internal environment and the marketing strategy, with the opportunities and threats concentrating on the external environment.
Carrying out a SWOT properly can provide great insight, pin point quick wins and help with future planning.
Porter’s Five Forces Analysis
This tool is used for the analysis of the external environment, especially that of the competitive landscape. The five forces being:
Competition in the industry
• Who are they? Do they offer better value?
Potential of new entrants into the industry
• Who are they, or who are they likely to be. Are you vulnerable?
Power of customers
• What are the chances your customer chooses your competitor over you?
Power of suppliers
• What are your relationships like. Are there any issues. If so , what are they?
Threat of substitute products
• Is there a chance a customer may choose another product over yours
A PEST (Political, Environmental, Socio-cultural and Technological) Analysis
This tool focuses on the external factors that influence your marketing behaviour. Examples of issues that the audit will include in its analysis are:
• The Political environment
• Government policy
• The influence of government policies in your industry
• Consumer confidence and perception of purchasing products and services
• Cultural effects on consumers
• Technology impacts on consumer behaviour
3. Recommendations
Finally once all of the above has been completed a ‘Marketing Audit Report’ is compiled.
The recommendations of the report will be based on the results of the analysis of information gathered throughout the process.
A tip here is to try and present your recommendations in a prioritised way. This will help the end user, usually the executive or Senior Management team to comprehend the findings easily.
Phase Three: Post-Audit
This is the exciting and sometimes nerve wracking time when the Marketing Audit report is presented to Management. This is usually done by the Head of the Marketing department, who will use it as evidence for developing the Marketing Strategy for the business and determining the budget.
The report can also be shared and scrutinised by other departments, especially where they are indirectly involved in the marketing activities and their function areas will have an impact on the marketing efforts.
The IT department could be a case in point.
So, are you ready to conduct your Marketing Audit?
If done properly, Marketing Audits are powerful in their delivery.
They can quickly address issues and open up opportunities that you didn’t know existed.
Yes they are hard work, time consuming and can cost money to do but can you afford not to do one?
There are definitely advantages in carrying out a Marketing Strategy but no disadvantages, so what are you waiting for!
If you need any further information or help in carrying out your Marketing Audit or simply need some friendly advice please do drop me a line!
Helen Tong