Do your marketing campaigns seem unclear? Are you spending a lot of money on marketing strategies that just don’t seem to produce the results you need? Are you uncertain about your marketing campaign’s direction or focus? If you say yes to any of these questions, it might be time to pause and restart. And it might be time for a marketing audit.
What is a Marketing Audit and Why Do It?
A marketing audit is a review of your marketing campaigns to find out which ones are doing well and driving more revenue, and which ones are costing you more money but not producing the results you need.
Ideally, an audit should be done at least once a year. But if your market or industry is experiencing dramatic changes, a quarterly audit may be necessary.
An audit of your marketing efforts can help you save time and effort. You can discontinue any part of your marketing strategy that is functioning poorly as soon as audit results reveal the challenges. You won’t have to spend time or funds working on marketing tactics that are not efficient or revenue enhancing.
More importantly, Digital Authority Partners adds, an audit can help you channel your marketing team’s time, effort, and budget on strategies that work and increase traffic and revenue. Under stressful and dramatically changing market conditions, it may be best to conduct an audit at least every quarter instead of annually.
Marketing Audit for an In-Depth Look of Your Marketing Efforts
Often, marketing campaigns go on and on with your team focusing on the process and less on the results. Eventually, you may end up spending too much money on marketing efforts that won’t cut it.
With a marketing audit, you can focus on your strategy and efforts and consider marketing steps to arrive at your goal or result. An audit will review your current and past marketing strategies and highlight tactics that have produced positive results. Results are based on many factors including marketing metrics and, generally, strategies that have brought an increase in Return On Investment (ROI) have a higher value.
An audit also assesses the value of your marketing strategies based on the cost of running each of your marketing efforts. Is the value earned from a particular strategy in proportion to the budget allotted for it? Also, an audit may consider alternative strategies that can produce the same results but at a lower cost.
Marketing Audit Uses Analytics
Just like a financial audit, a marketing audit uses the latest tools and focuses on on-site analytics to provide you with the most accurate evaluation of your marketing efforts. Data analytics are crucial to assessing your business’ marketing strategies and tactics. They reveal the success, nuance, or points of challenge and improvement of any marketing campaign.
Marketing strategies developed from data analytics will help your business succeed in its marketing campaigns. If you’re not using data analytics now, a thorough marketing audit can show you the best ways to develop them and make them work to improve your revenue streams.
Marketing Audit Helps Prepare New Marketing Strategies
A marketing audit will zero in on the strategies your company is using or has used before to create a better, more formidable marketing plan. For this reason, an audit is recommended before starting a new marketing strategy.
Audits highlight successes and also pinpoint failures in one or more marketing efforts. An audit of a current marketing strategy can find nuanced ways to improve your marketing or to catch issues before they happen so that they don’t later lead to costly damage to your brand or revenue loss
An audit takes a fresh approach to your plans, efforts, and execution to evaluate your marketing tactics and give you the best insights about your previous and current strategies in order to develop better ones.
How is a Marketing Audit Done?
Now that you have a clear idea of what a marketing audit is and why it’s vital for your business, it’s time to find out how an audit is done. What happens when you hire a marketing auditor?
Review internal and external marketing factors
A marketing audit starts with a thorough evaluation of your external and internal business environments, usually beginning with the external factors. What are your products and who are your current customers? What target markets do you want to be in? Where is the most profit to be made? Additional external factors like economic, demographic, environmental, political, and cultural factors that may impact your ability to sell your products are also considered.
For example, as is true for many businesses, the coronavirus pandemic is an external factor that affects business marketing, and a marketing audit would take it into consideration in assessing your marketing efforts. A national election can also affect your market, while natural disasters can dramatically change the marketing outcomes of any business.
When it comes to internal factors, an audit will examine the skills, competency, and vision of your marketing team and managers. Factors like staff training and the use of updated tools can affect marketing results.
Review your current strategies
Meanwhile, your current marketing tactics will also be reviewed based on productivity and versatility. An audit will identify if you’re meeting your goals, if there are strategies that need to be changed or let go, and if there are tactics that complement success. An audit will also focus on the cost-effectiveness of your marketing strategies.
Considering industry trends
An audit will also assess current marketing trends and review your marketing in light of what’s clearly successful. A thorough audit will address your current marketing plan and advise you on the right strategies to adopt in your marketing efforts. As mentioned earlier, current audits can help you avoid costly problems by remedying mistakes, lack of focus, or unhelpful initiatives in real time and by helping your firm avoid mistakes in the future.
Creating a comparison study
In the day-to-day of business, it’s easy to get siloed in your niche and not look up to see what else is going on in your industry. A marketing audit can help you see the bigger picture and know where your company fits into the larger industry picture. It can identify for you the challenges facing businesses like yours. By comparing your marketing tactics with leading brands in your market, the audit will help identify your company’s marketing strengths and weaknesses and learn from your competitors.
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Developing a marketing action plan
After you have an idea of the various marketing factors that affect your company as well as your marketing strengths and weaknesses from past and current marketing plans that were executed, it’s time to formulate a marketing action plan. Your marketing audit can guide your marketing team in creating a winning plan, providing a level of granular detail as well as a higher-level overview that can lead to better conversions, stronger revenue streams, and enhanced branding.
Final Words
Most marketing challenges can be overcome with a thorough marketing audit. A marketing audit by an experienced specialist will highlight the strengths in your brand and its marketing and help address weak spots in your company’s marketing efforts. A thorough and insightful marketing audit can also help you as you and your teams formulate future marketing plans.
Furthermore, an audit can save you time, effort, and money, using resources more effectively and efficiently for future marketing efforts. The first step is to find a reputable and efficient marketing auditing team. After an audit, you’ll be steps closer to completing your marketing goals.
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