Sometimes, it’s necessary to press pause and look at the whole situation from afar. A marketing audit can help explain why some goals are not being reached and it can also help a new team understand the full strategy.
An audit is a comprehensive investigation done by a third party. In this article, we won’t be precisely talking about corporate-like audits, but mostly on how and why research on the actions, tactics, and results, it’s necessary when we land a new client –or when an old client needs different results.
One thing is for sure: we do need external eyes.
In this article, we will go over these points:
What is a marketing audit
Why consider conducting an audit
What items to expect from the audit
What is a Marketing Audit
As said before, it’s a comprehensive investigation that goes through the marketing department, strategies and actions, and generates a systematic analysis of the business environment.
The goal of an audit is to explain what is going on: it presents a picture of the moment. This helps correct what’s off and understand what’s winning. This is an important point, as the audit won’t set a positive or negative grade on the marketing actions.
In the article Marketing Audit, Business Jargons explains the characteristics of one and how it should be:
Comprehensive, it should cover all areas.
Systematic, to cover all parts of the business environment.
Independent, to be impartial to the business. There are several ways to carry on an audit: self-audit, an audit from across, an audit from above, company auditing office, company task-force audit, and outsider audit.
Why should you consider going through a Marketing Audit
Especially with small businesses, most of the time the owner or C’levels are so taken by day-to-day tasks that there’s no time left to look at the overall picture.
Not studying the actions the department is taking, might end up a massive waste of money. With a periodical understanding of the strategy, tactics, and results, a business can have a clear picture of what’s working and what needs correcting. Overall, it will help maintain the marketing strategy aligned with the business goals.
What to expect from the audit
Most of the time, the marketing department it’s expensive: it lives out of the work other teammates do. And so, it’s important that we, as marketers, respond to that investment. Long story short, we need to show results.
Here’s a summary of the points an audit should cover:
Department strategy
Objectives, target market, SWOT analysis
Review of all documents
Review of all action metrics
List of recommendations
Move forward
To move forward, as business owners or decision-makers, we need to make sure the bases of the company are strong: otherwise, that structure has more chances of collapsing than succeeding.
This is why performing regular audits is usually recommended. If you want to know more about this or how we do it at Sud Creative, write to us and we will be happy to explain further.