Prevention is always better than cure.
And marketing is no exception.
When we’re feeling a little under the weather, we check our symptoms and go to the doctor to prevent an underlying disease from getting worse, or even better, to stop a problem from developing altogether.
The same goes for companies a life force in and of themselves whose evaluations are done to review not only the accomplishments and milestones of the business but also look at areas of improvement and to prevent further mistakes.
A Marketing Audit works in the same way.
A Marketing Audit is your business’ scheduled checkup. It aims to help businesses like yours understand where things are going right, and more importantly, where things are going wrong.
In other words, when your business asks “How am I looking doc?” a thorough Marketing audit will have the answer.
So – let’s dive deeper, how does a Marketing Audit really keep your business on track?
What is a Marketing Audit?
A Marketing Audit is a powerful Marketing evaluation service that aims to review your business’ overall Marketing plans, strategies, methods and activities.
Generally speaking, an external Marketing consultant or Marketing professional is appointed to come in and review all of your marketing efforts. As part of the marketing audit, they will assess the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, and then create a report that your Marketing team can then learn from and improve.
A Marketing Audit is a powerful Marketing evaluation service that aims to review your business’ overall Marketing plans, strategies, methods and activities.
What’s the goal of a Marketing Audit?
A Marketing Audit intends to analyse all of the internal and external threats or opportunities of your business to assess their impact on fulfilling your Marketing goals. A Marketing Audit also equips you with valuable information to guide you toward reconsidering and redefining your business decisions and plans.
Your management can utilise this Marketing Audit to review all Marketing operations and look for areas that are not producing optimal results. Through it, you can also determine what campaigns and collaterals are working well.
Are there different types of Marketing Audit services?
Certainly.
- Sometimes, businesses want their entire Marketing efforts audited from top to bottom, to get a full picture of what’s working well and what needs improvement.
- Other times businesses may just focus on auditing one specific area of their Marketing toolkit, such as Social Media Marketing or Content Marketing.
- Different still is when an organisation only requests a Marketing Audit service to help onboard an external creative professional, such as a Copywriter, helping them get them up to speed with the business’ marketing plans so they can operate effectively moving forward.
Each of these three alternatives can be a very beneficial check-up for a business.
What does a Marketing Audit focus on?
Having a thorough review of your Marketing Strategy will allow you to see how successful your brand is in communicating with your potential and current customers and converting them into loyal customers. This Marketing Audit will provide you with valuable insights into how you should position your brand in the market.
However, there’s much more to an effective Marketing audit than refining your communication.
An effective Marketing Audit also involves reviewing all of your Marketing operations, with emphasis on looming Macro-environment and Micro-environment factors – in addition to your Marketing Strategy, of course.
Why?
A Macro-environment Marketing Audit examines your business’ outside threats and opportunities to see how they can influence your Marketing performance. Meanwhile, the Micro-environment Marketing Audit will analyse the strengths and weaknesses of your business to understand what internal factors can enhance your Marketing activities.
An example of macro considerations could be “How might the fast-moving AI industry impact our operations?” and in the micro, “Is our current Marketing team structure the most optimal moving forward?”
Aside from these things, you must also remember that conducting a Marketing Audit, just like a doctor’s check-up, is not a one-time activity. A Marketing Audit should be done regularly as a great preventive and strengthening measure.
Furthermore, it is advisable that your Marketing Audit is conducted by an external expert or organisation to ensure that you receive an objective, fresh and organised report that will help you make significant improvements.
A review of your Marketing Strategy will allow you to see how successful your brand is in communicating with your potential and current customers and converting them into loyal customers.
Why should your business conduct a regular Marketing Audit?
We live in a digital age where all marketing results are constantly trackable.
So, you would assume that you’re always performing a Marketing Audit on your activities.
But a Marketing Audit isn’t just a recap of last quarter’s performance, it takes data and conversations with the business and interprets them on a more comprehensive scale. More than that, an effective Marketing Audit looks to the external world as well, what is working? What isn’t? How can we adapt?
So, how do you know if your business needs to perform a Marketing Audit? Why must a Marketing Audit be a regular thing?
Here are the reasons why:
- A Marketing Audit will assist Management. It’s inevitable for businesses to have a change in leadership. Conducting a Marketing Audit will allow new leaders to have a strong overview of the business’ marketing resources, methods and performance.
- A Marketing Audit will help you with rebranding. Dead ends are a real thing in marketing, not everything that worked a few years ago will fly in today’s environment. Sometimes, your business may encounter the need to rebrand. When that time comes, a Marketing Audit will be valuable in determining new perspectives and fresh ideas necessary for your business.
- A Marketing Audit will help you stay ahead of your competitors. Performing a Marketing Audit involves implementing a SWOT (Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats) analysis to understand your business when compared to your competitors. By keeping up with your industry’s latest trends through a Marketing Audit, you’ll be able to easily adapt to changes and take advantage of new opportunities. In this case, the more regular the audit, the more likely you are to get ahead.
- A Marketing Audit will help you in overcoming poor performance. To solve a problem, you should first understand what caused it. A Marketing Audit provides your business with complete information about what areas must be improved and what is hindering your Marketing strategy from performing optimally.
- A Marketing Audit celebrates success! Not everything is bad! Sometimes, a Marketing Audit will help identify the areas of your Marketing Strategy which are doing well. It’s a nice pat on the back for those who deserve it and offers positive feedback to instil confidence in what you and your team are doing.
- A Marketing Audit will support your business’ growth. A Marketing Audit shouldn’t only be done when things are going wrong. For you to keep track of your progress and maintain your direction, it is also useful during times when your business is experiencing growth.
What are the benefits of a Marketing Audit?
A Marketing Audit allows you to perform an in-depth review of all your Marketing activities to ensure that they are executed to deliver quality results.
As you’ve seen above, there’s no shortage of benefits when it comes to doing Marketing Audit. It gives your business a new-found direction (if required), perhaps the most important variable in achieving a successful destination. The more regularly it is performed, the less likely you are to find yourself off-track when it comes to managing your marketing resources effectively.
There’s no shortage of benefits when it comes to doing Marketing Audit.
Most importantly, a Marketing Audit provides you with knowledge of what Marketing practices are generating positive returns and what methods should be replaced.
This way, you’ll save more time, money and resources by investing only in effective Marketing campaigns and strategies.
Who conducts a Marketing Audit?
When you’re looking to get a personalised health checkup, you seek the services of an independent doctor. The same goes for Marketing.
So while a Marketing Audit can be performed by someone from within your company, it’s advisable to find an independent Marketing expert to fulfil the job. This is because an external Marketing Auditor will provide you with unbiased insights and fresh perspectives when evaluating your business.
An external Marketing Auditor will provide you with unbiased insights and fresh perspectives when evaluating your business.
In addition, hiring someone to undertake your Marketing Audit saves you time and allows you to focus more on urgent matters of your business.
Just remember to choose the right individual to conduct your Marketing Audit for you.
How can Melotti Media Copywriting and Message Marketing Bureau help you?
At Melotti Media, we understand that you want to get cut through in a competitive market and achieve business success – and a powerful way to do this is by investing in brand messaging and innovative Marketing ideas that will drive results.
However, you may find that you’re time-poor and spread thin or you still have a lot of unanswered questions.
You don’t need to worry.
At Melotti Media, we can assist with all your creative advertising concept ideas while you focus on what matters most to you – growing your business.
Let’s start earning the results your business deserves!
To speak to your trusted message marketers and copywriters, email us at enquire@melottimedia.com.au or phone 1800 663 342.
We can sharpen your words to achieve your goals today!
The Melotti Media Team
Melotti Media | Copywriting & Message Marketing Bureau
www.melottimedia.com.au
