A marketing audit is a complete assessment of all the marketing efforts in a business. It allows you to take an objective look at what’s going on in and around your business. It allows you to analyze your current performance as well as past performance.
This makes it easier for you to revise and review your marketing efforts and to identify the next steps for effective future plans.
Lay all your marketing materials on a table (yes everything from internal flyers to your latest ad campaign) The review of the materials on the table will show you if you have been consistent in communicating your brand.
To understand the current marketing situation within a company, we need to analyze two audiences. The internal marketing audience and external marketing audience. Internal marketing looks at your company from the inside. It looks at the past and present of the company’s objectives, profitability, and efficiency. The internal marketing audit should focus on your company’s strengths and weaknesses.
External marketing looks at the economy, competition and your target audience. When examining the external marketing review the current trends in PEST, which stands for political, economic, social and technological. You need to find out what is currently happening in any of these areas that could impact your business.
The next step in the external marketing audit is to research your competition. It’s important to know who they are, what they do, and where they come from. Answering these questions this will give your company an advantage. The next step is to look at the market you are competing in, including looking at market size, growth and trends.
The last step in external marketing is to use the SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This is used to analyze your current business characteristics in the external environment.
A marketing audit should not be done only when the marketing efforts are in question, but should be done yearly to ensure problems are solved before they arise.
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Katherine Miracle is the president of Miracle Resources, an award-winning full-service marketing, public relations and training firm that helps clients increase revenue and awareness.
She is a strategic personal branding expert and the author of “Your Strategic Personal Brand” Please connect with via email – [email protected] or Twitter.
