Conducting Your Own Marketing Audit
Audit can be a scary word, but you do not have to do a bunch of analytical assessments and analysis to know what is working and what needs to be improved. Conducting your own Marketing Audit can help shape up a lagging marketing campaign.
A marketing audit is a way to find a company’s problem areas in terms of market penetration. It is done by the company and is a way for the company to reassess the marketing environment, strategies, and objectives of its marketing campaign. If something is working, it’s a keeper. If something isn’t, then it’s the old cliche of back to the drawing board. The main benefit of conducting a marketing audit is keeping yourself accountable of your business goals.
Here are some easy ways to conduct a marketing audit for your business:
1. Word on the Street
Is your business even being talked about? Ask your employees what they are hearing about the business. Is it good, bad, nonexistent? Explain to your employees that you are conducting an audit of how the business is perceived so they will give you honest feedback. When customers come to your business, ask how they heard about it. All this takes is time. Then jot down what you’re told.
2. Be Ruthless with Yourself
We all like to think how we’re marketing our business is rainbows and everything we churn out is pure genius. Or is it just me? You’ve got to face the possible cold truth about your business and its image. Read reviews online, read comment cards, watch how your employees are interacting with customers, Google your competition, read your competition’s online reviews, etc. This type of research is powerful stuff and help to create or revise marketing and customer service goals.
3. Insights and Analytics
There are so many online tools out there to see strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and environmental factors of your business and help to develop a plan or revise your current plan. These results will show where your money is going, where it needs to go, or ways to make it stretch further.
4. Beginning, Middle, and End
It’s important to know where the campaign is going, how it is maintaining, and where it will…well…end. Having a list of marketing objectives will help analyze the campaign and make future audits easier. Listed are a few important questions to ask at the beginning, middle, and end of each marketing campaign.
- What are your marketing goals? – “How many new people can I introduce to my business?”
- What are your marketing activities? – “We ran that Facebook Ad. What worked? Can we do the same on our site?”
- Do the marketing activities and goals support each other? – “Let’s run the same contest across the store front, website and direct mail.”
- How do you obtain new customers?
- What programs have been successful in the past?
- What programs have been unsuccessful in the past?
- How are you communicating your goals and marketing strategies to management and employees? Is everyone on board? – “Everyone! This is this month’s marketing plan. Follow the plan. If you have any questions, keep following the plan until you can come to me and get an answer. When in doubt, follow the plan.”
The goal of a marketing audit is to find out what is working and what needs to be changed in the campaign. There is no need to make this a tedious, drawn out process. By doing a bit of research, you’ll have a better idea of what needs to be kept, scrapped, or revamped.
Distillery Web Design and Marketing is a feature website builder, online marketer, and advertising specialty consulting group working with businesses in the Lebanon, Camdenton, Osage Beach, Springfield, and St. Robert areas of Missouri. Facebook, websites, online promotions, print media, radio promotions, online newsletters, graphic design and direct mail campaigns are our specialty. We know how to get the Internet, social networking and new media to work for you!