The Marketing Audit

The marketing audit in simple terms

Marketing audits are the foundation to marketing planning and strategy. They provide key information and create the platform from which effective marketing plans evolve. A marketing audit is an in-depth piece of work which reviews all aspects of your business relative to the market place, and is guaranteed to identify a number of areas for improvement which will result in growth in future sales and profits. This can sometimes be an eye opening exercise resulting in a change to the future direction of your company. At other times this can be a confirmation that you are heading in the right direction and identify a number of strategies to support you with this path, resulting in even greater business success. Marketing audits are performed by specialist marketing consultants who analyse your business and the market place in an objective and insightful way and this is what the Marketing BOD does best!

What is the marketing audit process?

Step 1 – An internal review

The first step is a fact-finding exercise. We work closely with you to understand your company’s objectives and how you are working to achieve them. This starts with a review of your internal processes and procedures, a look at how you sell and distribute your products, pricing and packaging, fulfillment and after sales service. Your marketing activity, any advertising and promotions, branding and PR are evaluated. And all of this of course is relative to sales, profits and customers. In short we review all elements of your proposition!

Step 2 - A look outside

The next step is a look at the market place to identify which products are competing against you, and in what way. How the market is changing and how it may look in the future. What threats and opportunities there are. Customer behaviours and competitor activity.

Step 3 – Creation of marketing strategies

Once all of the useful data has been gathered, a review of the data takes place which leads to the creation of optional marketing objectives and marketing strategies to support. This is when the experienced marketing strategist really comes into their own. A clever marketing strategist will identify a clear positioning for your company and many opportunities to support your success. Good judgement and experience shines through!

Conclusions are then shared together with the logic supporting those conclusions and the opportunities identified are discussed with you. This is a key conversation and together we will determine what is the most appropriate direction for your company. It is important that time is taken to get this right because this is the foundation upon which the marketing action plan and marketing communications are based.

Step 4 – Marketing audit report

A lot of information is gathered during the review and we aim to capture this in a report as concisely as possible so that you don’t have realms of paper to read through. This will include a summary of findings along with a list of recommendations for your business.

Step 5 – Marketing action plan

You will be presented with a marketing action plan which forms part of the marketing audit report and contains prioritised activities for the year ahead. This will be your marketing bible. As we know marketing is everything about how you do business. It is likely some ’quick wins’ will be identified for immediate implementation, along with further actions that can be phased over time.

Step 6 – Implementation

We have a support team of marketing and media experts to help you implement your marketing action plan. We can project manage the whole plan for you by working an agreed number of hours per month, perhaps on a retainer if you so wish. Alternatively we can support you on a more ad hoc basis when required from time to time as you implement the marketing action plan with your own internal resources and existing suppliers. We tailor our service to each company’s individual needs and the choice really is yours!

Collaboration is key

We work in a collaborative way during this exercise. The resulting marketing action plan is only as good as the information input into the process and so your input is a valuable element to the outcome. We will share with you our thoughts and logic as we progress so that we can ensure we are aligned throughout the process. We are confident that you will find the exercise to be an educational experience and learn by the end of the exercise to become a marketing led organisation!

Become a marketing led organisation

We recommend that you carry out a marketing audit on a regular basis. The traditionalists suggest that this should be an annual exercise but we believe typically every 2 to 3 years will suffice, depending on your market and industry.

The marketing audit will ensure that any time and money you invest in any subsequent marketing activity will be effective and will save you money in the long term.

For a free one hour consultation on marketing audits and how they can help your business to become more effective, please call now on 07787 524881.

The Marketing Audit