How To Do a Marketing Audit and Why
A marketing audit might sound complicated, but it’s not. Essentially, it’s a review of your promotional strategies and activities as they relate to your business goals: Was your marketing successful? A thorough audit should tell you what’s working, what isn’t and what you can do to improve your results.
What does a marketing audit evaluate?
While there is no one-size-fits-all method, a good marketing audit will be:
- Comprehensive. It will evaluate every element of your marketing strategy, including email, social media, website, SEO and more traditional offline methods, to determine whether these strategies are goal-oriented and effective.
- Systematic. It should help you methodically work through each aspect of your marketing plan, business objectives and operations to ensure an accurate analysis.
- Impartial. The audit will provide an honest assessment of current strategies with an intent to change things for the better.
When should you do a marketing audit?
When and how often you perform a marketing audit is up to you, but it pays to be proactive. In an ever-changing market, new risks and opportunities are waiting around every corner. Routine audits allow you to stay on top of consumer behavior, new technology and market trends so you can adjust your strategy accordingly.
What are the benefits of a marketing audit?
Routine marketing audits allow you to:
- Stay up-to-date on the current market.
- Better understand how your audience is using your products or services.
- Improve the accuracy of buyer personas.
- Identify new technologies that can improve efficiency and ROI.
- Evaluate competitors and maintain a competitive edge.
In other words, routine marketing audits provide actionable takeaways that can be used to realign your strategies with short- and long-term business goals and take your marketing efforts to the next level.
