Even though it’s not a popular tool, a marketing audit conducted properly before planning a marketing campaign can save you important amounts of money.
As a general fact, an audit is a systematic examination of data, statements, records and operations performed by an enterprise and it aims a specific purpose. An audit is conducted by an external source. The most common type of audit is the financial audit due to the amount of errors that can occur regarding taxation, misselling, or potential money laundering within a company.
But errors can also occur when conducting marketing campaigns, spending resources on useless advertising and using communication channels in a completely wrong way.
To cut is short, a marketing audit checks out where you stand, what you have done and if you are heading on the right path.
A marketing audit is a great tool to use at the beginning of a marketing planning process, but also at different stages of the execution.
It starts with an examination of the external marketing environment. Among the factors that must be included in the conducted study, there must be:
- The macroeconomic environment. What happens on the macroeconomic level, affects the microeconomic level in which the company revolves. Is it an economic crisis, a recession or a downturn, or maybe the fortunate case of economic growth? It may not look like an important aspect, but it can definitely influence consumers’ behavior.
- Target audience. This is the point when as much information as possible is needed. Who are they, what are their needs, their lifestyle. A reliable marketing audit should contain detailed information about every aspect that is significant for the company.
- Competition. Who are the competitors and what are they doing? Their strengths and weaknesses, their future plans (it’s very hard to obtain or predict this kind of information, but for example, if they are building a new store, or moving to a new office, that should be an important aspect to analyse).
The external marketing environment refers to the resources that a company has, uses or could use for achieving its goals:
- Company’s basic resources: staff, finances, equipment, working hours, and materials. These are the resources that the company owns and it could rely on.
- Marketing resources: is there a marketing department or the service is externalised, how efficient is it? If the marketing department is externalised – it shouldn’t be.
The purpose of a marketing audit is to respond to the questions above and report the errors or problems regarding the marketing direction of the company. A marketing audit can only suggest ways of improving marketing efforts and the best ways of using the current resources. Of course, the advices are not mandatory; they only come as guidance.