Why a Marketing Audit is Warranted

Today, marketing has become an integral part of how B2B companies grow, and the rise of digital marketing places new demands on businesses and how their marketing departments operate.

It has become the new frontier for many business owners, and often are not sufficiently informed to understand what is right or wrong within their marketing department.

An independent Marketing Audit is critical in ensuring your marketing is cost-effectively delivering the planned requirements for your business. It can also be a tool to realign your marketing with sales.

Sales Focus Advisory has conducted audits across many industries providing business owners with clarity and understanding of the standard of performance of their marketing department and marketing service providers. The results directly and positively impacting the achievement of their business goals.

What is a Marketing Audit

The audit is a comprehensive, systematic analysis and evaluation of the businesses marketing strategy, objectives and goals, communications plan, and marketing campaigns and tactics to ascertain the areas of problem and opportunities.

The marketing audit reviews some 25 contributors to marketing performance to deliver strategy and implementation. The focus is on all areas of digital marketing performance, and sales lead generation.

The Marketing Audit process is:

Comprehensive: it covers all digital marketing and sales lead generation areas to identify where problems exist and does not focus on only a single marketing problem.
Systematic: through an orderly analysis and evaluation of companies marketing principles, objectives, strategies and other operations that directly or indirectly influence the business marketing performance.
Independent: the audit provides objectivity to how the marketing department and marketing service suppliers are operating to deliver the required outcomes.
Cost-effective: the audit identifies areas of improvement where cost savings can potentially be made and increases in campaign performance.

Good business practice would have the audit completed periodically. For example, generally, companies request a marketing audit when some problem arises or a perceived lack of performance in marketing. It is recommended to have regular audits so any problems can be rectified at their source and time is not lost in poor performance.

Components of Marketing Audit

There are a number of aspects when conducting an audit.

Those include:

1. Marketing Strategy Audit:

Review the feasibility of the Business Strategy and how the marketing strategy is aligned with its objectives and goals. The marketing strategies and communications plan that will translate those goals into actionable processes directly impact the company’s marketing performance. We consider your target audience and how well aligned your strategies and marketing efforts are to that target.
2. Marketing Team Audit:

A combination of both full time and contractors (internal and external) that contribute to the delivery of marketing. We evaluate their performance, strengths and weaknesses, and their understanding of their contribution and how they operate in the marketing environment.
3. Marketing Systems Audit:

Reviewing the marketing systems and tools used by the team and contractors to deliver campaigns, strategies and tactics. These can include marketing planning systems, control systems, new product to market disciplines, and tools to support website optimisation and other digital demands.
4. Marketing Productivity Audit:

A thorough review and evaluation of the performance of the marketing campaigns and tactics in terms of profitability and cost-effectiveness.
5. Marketing Function Audit:

Aligning of the companies core competencies such as Product, Price, Distribution, Marketing Communication and Sales Force Lead Generation. Thus, the marketing audit assists in determining how well a companies marketing department is carrying out the marketing activities. Importantly, how much it is contributing to the overall performance of the company. Successful marketing should contribute to the companies long term success.
OUR GUARANTEE

We understand business and how to deliver profitable growth. If you do not consider our Marketing Audit to be relevant to your company, or if you can demonstrate that it will not assist in the profitable growth of your company, we will provide a full refund.