What is a marketing audit? (Plus how to conduct one)

Conducting a marketing audit for your business sounds daunting and stressful. And with so many different elements involved, concerns about getting it right can really pile on the pressure.

But it doesn’t have to be that way – an audit is a great way to remain proactive. Whether that’s by identifying new opportunities, pinpointing inefficiencies or providing clarity on where to focus your investments.

And what’s more, these aren’t reserved for any specific business type. Whether you’re a startup or a long-established enterprise, your business is sure to benefit either way.

In this guide, we’ll cover:

• What a marketing audit actually is
• What to include in a marketing audit
• How to know if you need a marketing audit
• The benefits of conducting a marketing audit

Essentially, we’ll break it down step-by-step so it’s less of big task and more of a big win!

What is a marketing audit?

You’ve probably seen plenty of articles claiming to reveal the secret formula for a successful marketing strategy. They sound convincing, but they often make things more confusing than they need to be. No wonder people are put off by the thought of analysing their marketing activities!

Put simply, a marketing audit is a comprehensive analysis of your business’s strategies and activities. Its main purpose is to identify what works, what doesn’t and where you can improve efforts to maximise your ROI.

It’s like a health check-up: you want to remain proactive rather than waiting for something to go wrong and then have to react in a more urgent and less thought-out manner.

A marketing audit is used to:

• Assess the effectiveness of your current marketing
• Identify strengths and weaknesses
• Uncover new opportunities
• Optimise your resource allocation
• Provide actionable next steps

What’s in a marketing audit?

Now that we’ve established what a marketing audit is and what it’s for, it’s time to establish what goes into one.

Depending on how granular you want to go, and how comprehensive your current activities are, it can include hundreds of elements. However, to get started you only need to focus on the main areas.

Internal analysis

This is your opportunity to look inwards and see if your activity is aligned with your overall business goals. This includes:

• Business objectives and goals
• Brand positioning and messaging
• Ideal customer profiles (ICPs)
• Marketing team and skills
• Budget allocation

External analysis

This is where you look to the wider marketing landscape and how it will affect your own activities. This includes:

• Competitor analysis
• Industry trends and changes
• Customer perception of your brand
• Market positioning

Performance metrics

Next, you analyse your quantifiable data to build a clearer picture of how your current marketing is performing. This includes:

• Website analytics
• Social media analytics
• Paid advertising metrics and ROI
• Lead generation efficiency

Strategy

And last, but by no means least, you look at how you execute your efforts and whether they are effective. This includes:

• Strategy documentation
• Campaign workflows
• Customer journey mapping
• Brand consistency

How do you know when to conduct a marketing audit?

We always recommend conducting a marketing audit for your business at least once a year at a minimum, but bi-annually is even better.

However, there are some indicators that will tell you if you should be conducting one sooner than you thought.

• Your results are declining
• Your business is undergoing expansion (or you’re planning to expand)
• Market conditions have changed
• There are conflicting internal opinions surrounding your current strategy

A marketing audit will evaluate if your activity is effective and ensure all your decisions are backed by data.

If there is any sort of notable shift that could affect your strategy, it’s always worth doing an audit to make sure any new decisions will bring positive change or growth.

A mini audit may be enough

Depending on the reason for your audit, it may be that a mini audit is the best way to go. Instead of auditing your entire marketing ecosystem, you can just evaluate a specific area that may need changing or improving.

What are the benefits of conducting a marketing audit?

A marketing audit isn’t just a process for gathering data. If done correctly it will provide a whole host of benefits.

Clarity

One of the main benefits of conducting an audit is that it provides you with objective clarity.

It will show you what is working and what isn’t, and thus where you should focus your efforts next to maximise returns.

It can be easy to get caught up in your own marketing, and if you don’t take a step back to evaluate your own activity it’s easy to focus on the wrong things.

Internal alignment

An audit can be a great way to communicate your performance and activity to the wider business.

Whether that’s showing your board how your work is contributing to the overall company goals or ensuring that everyone in the marketing department is on the same page.

This open communication means everyone can understand your decisions and their reasoning, so you should face less resistance when pitching new approaches.

Improved ROI

By understanding which channels are effective, and which aren’t, you can identify exactly where to focus your budgets.

Getting improved results doesn’t always require additional spending. Sometimes it can be a case of concentrating what you already have on areas where you know it will pay off.

Improved customer understanding

Often, audits will uncover plenty of information about your customers. Whether this is their preferences, behaviours or pain points.

This new information will help steer your approach and create more targeted and effective strategies.

Risk mitigation

By conducting regular audits, you can identify and fix any potential issues before they become full-blown problems.

Whether that’s technical issues harming your search engine visibility, or branding that confuses your audience. By identifying this early you can nip it in the bud.

Future proofing

Conducting regular marketing audits will also provide you with a roadmap for continued growth and success.

It allows you to measure the tangible impact your work has on the business and prioritise next steps.

Conclusion

Just as the results of your audit will be completely unique to you, the way you conduct it will be too.

It all comes down to your current activity and your business priorities.

By regularly evaluating your marketing, you’ll have objective data to pull from which will inform your strategies in the clearest way possible.

So, whether you’re a start-up looking to pave the way in your market, or an enterprise looking to boost growth, this isa great place to start.

Ready to improve your marketing strategy? Why not get in touch with our specialist team to see how we can help.