How a marketing audit can save your marketing strategy
You've drawn up a carefully thought-out marketing plan, but the results aren't always there. How can you pinpoint what's going wrong and improve the impact of your actions? By enlisting the outside (and life-saving!) eye of a marketing audit expert. Their job? To take stock of your strengths, so that you can make the most of them, and your weaknesses, so that you can identify areas for improvement.
But what exactly does this entail? And how do you go about carrying out an effective marketing audit?
We explain it all to you.
But what is a marketing audit?
The definition
A marketing audit is a process that involves taking stock of your marketing and/or digital marketing strategy, with the aim of revealing your strengths and weaknesses.
This is followed by the implementation of a recommendation plan determining the levers to activate to achieve your objectives.
💡 Please note: the scope of a marketing audit can be very broad, or on the contrary restricted to a limited field of action:
- service organisation,
- brand positioning,
- social media strategy
- marketing budget management, etc.
The different types of marketing audit
There are traditionally 3 types of marketing audit:
- Internal audit: this focuses on the strategy and actions already implemented within your organisation.
- Environmental audit: this analyses the external factors, such as economic factors, which influence the strength of your operations.
- Organisational audit: this looks at the way you operate internally (processes, tools used, etc.).
☝️ However, bear in mind that a complete marketing audit encompasses all these components, because they all have an impact on your performance.
When should you carry out a marketing audit?
There is no right or wrong frequency. It all depends on your needs and objectives.
Some organisations undertake this on a regular basis, every quarter for example.
However, we realise that the exercise can seem cumbersome, so we recommend that you carry out an in-depth marketing audit at least at key moments: the launch of a new product, a change in your brand image, a shift in your positioning, etc.
Why carry out a marketing audit?
- To improve your performance. The in-depth analysis involved in a marketing audit will provide you with a solid action plan for improving your performance and competitiveness.
- Optimise your budget. Areas for improvement are identified taking into account the ROI of your activities.
- Neutrality. We strongly recommend that you have your marketing audit carried out by an external service provider. This way, you benefit from a fresh, neutral perspective.
- Team well-being. There's nothing more frustrating than spending energy for nothing! But after a marketing audit, your teams will devote their efforts to creating real value.
- Positioning. Benchmarking, monitoring... these beneficial marketing practices are not carried out regularly enough by companies. A marketing audit is an excellent opportunity to position yourself in relation to your competitors and the market.
The 4 stages of a marketing audit
Carry out an environmental audit
As we have said, a complete marketing audit encompasses all the factors that influence the effectiveness of your operations. This includes the environment.
The environmental audit consists of studying the elements external to your company (socio-demographic, political, cultural, etc.), to see :
- how you can benefit from them
- or, on the contrary, how they can be a hindrance.
It also includes an analysis of your business sector:
- your competitors and their strategy
- your potential customers and their needs
- changes in your market.
Analysing your current strategy
The analysis of your current strategy is based on an examination of the relevance of the actions you are taking, in terms of your positioning and your objectives (spreading your brand image more widely, penetrating a new market, etc.).
This involves studying your various metrics to determine the precise results obtained by activating your marketing levers (content marketing, social networks, etc.).
This is how you determine your famous strengths and weaknesses.
☝️ The results are also compared with those of the environmental diagnosis. A good way of identifying new opportunities to seize!
Examine your internal organisation
Finally, focus on the organisation of your department. The better it is, the more efficient and productive you'll be!
The analysis then focuses on elements such as :
- the hierarchical structure
- the processes in place
- communication within the department
- the relationship with the other divisions, particularly sales,
- the involvement of teams and service providers, etc.
Drawing up a recommendation plan
Finally, once all these analyses have been carried out, it's time to draw up a recommendation plan, in line with the areas for improvement identified.
All that remains is to implement the change within the entire marketing team and roll out the new strategy.
Pricing and service providers
In absolute terms, you can carry out your marketing audit yourself.
But it's better to have an outside view of your strategy: you're always up to your eyeballs in it, so it's hard to stand back and be completely neutral.
So which service providers should you use? There are specialist companies, particularly marketing agencies. However, the bill can quickly become steep. The service generally costs several hundred euros, and the bill can be as high as €3,000 excluding VAT.
💡 Did you know that there are free services? For example, Solocal offers the free Solocal Digital Audit, which focuses on a company's web presence: visibility on search engines, directories and social networks, website performance, etc. To get your audit, simply complete an online questionnaire. And if you want to go further, Solocal can help you draw up and implement an action plan to boost your online presence.
The marketing audit in a nutshell
The marketing audit is a real asset for capitalising on your strengths and removing your bottlenecks.
Carried out on a regular basis (or during key periods), and ideally by an external service provider, its aim is to study :
- your current strategy and its scope
- the environment in which your company operates,
- your organisation.
The result will be an action plan and best practices to apply in order to boost the performance and ROI of your campaigns. So why go without?
Article translated from French