Every company conducts regular financial audits. Conducting regular marketing audits is equally important. Why? It’s crucial for all businesses to consider marketing audits to evaluate the current marketing activities of a company or business.
A marketing audit is the overall analysis of the marketing environment of an organisation or business. It involves evaluating everything from targets and strategies to certain marketing campaigns or activities. The whole process aims to facilitate an entire overview of the competencies of an organization in order to trace weaknesses and opportunities.
It is a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the business marketing environment of a company. An ideal marketing audit should cover an organization’s goals, principles, strategies, and objectives in order to identify any problem or opportunity related to its business environment.
Who Conducts a Marketing Audit?
There are typically three options for any business to conduct a marketing audit.
- One or more internal teams
- The current marketing agency of your organisation
- A third party agency
An intern team can access the company’s information easily. They are aware of the businesses and available resources. The marketing agency is already involved in the business activities. They could have all the relevant information to interpret results accurately. A third party agency can be relied upon for the most objective audit.
How Does a Marketing Audit Help a Business?
A good marketing audit facilitates a benchmark for observing future marketing activities. It can also provide insights into the performance and efficiency of the company’s business activities. The key elements covered in a marketing audit help a business grow.
- SWOT Analysis: SWOT analysis is a framework used to evaluate an organisation’s competitive position and to develop a strategy. The framework SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The method used in the marketing audit provides better results.
- Market Research: Thorough market research, customer behaviour analysis, and prospects can provide insights into the business’s success. This would help to improve products and services further and also help with brand positioning.
- External Marketing Environment: Considering the external marketing environment is equally important while conducting a comprehensive marketing audit. One of the fundamental approaches to analyse the external environment is the PESTLE analysis. It’s about taking the political, economical, social, technological, legal, and environmental factors into consideration and identifying how they are impacting the overall marketing landscape of the organisation.
- Competitor Analysis: Another key aspect of the marketing audit is competitor analysis. It is related to comparing your organisation with competitors in areas related to the business environment. It also involves the analysis of their website, Google ranking, and other online activities.
Benefits of Marketing Audit
Conducting an efficient marketing audit gives you an in-depth understanding of the current business environment and how to manage marketing activities.
- It gives an understanding of what works great and what needs improvement.
- An ideal audit can detect problems and fix them before they cause serious problems.
- Conducting an audit helps to plan the future marketing strategies.
- An audit can identify it if something has gone wrong in the previous marketing session. After the audit, there will be recommendations for improvement, and this can help build a foundation for major changes in the future.
In short, a marketing audit is a “back to basics” approach that helps businesses grow further. A marketing audit is essential, particularly for small and medium sized businesses. It helps a business understand where it’s heading and gives a marketing perspective.