22 Apr How to Run a Quick Marketing Audit?
It is better to do a few things that work, than lots of different things and spread your energy.
A quick marketing audit gives you a sense of consistency, and what is effective. It helps you see the strengths and weaknesses in your marketing activities, and plan for changes.
Marketing Audit Questions to Consider
Do you already have a professional logo, style guide, tagline?
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Do your current marketing materials have a consistent look and feel?
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Is the tagline and business name the same? Is the value proposition clear?
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Do your corporate communications (e.g. website, brochures) explain what’s in it for your customer? Or is it all about your company?
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What activities do you do to promote your business? (e.g. advertising, a website, blog, SEM, SEO)
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In your estimation, are you doing too many different promotional things or not enough?
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Rate each of the activities on a scale of 1 to 10 based on effectiveness?
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How do you get new business?
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How satisfied are clients with the business? Do you have systems in place to collect fresh testimonials and reviews? (Or are testimonials and reviews not good enough to ask for)?
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Do you conduct regular customer research?
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Do you perform regular market research (of emerging services, solutions, competitors and the industry at large)?
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Resources and Capabilities
This short way of looking at things can be great fr self-employed or startup businesses. It helps those of us on a shoestring budget to see what we can and can’t do.
Here we consider what resources you have available in terms of four things: TIME, SKILLS, OTHER PEOPLE and MONEY.
TIME: How much time do you really have available to work ON your business (rather than in it)?
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SKILLS: What are your professional skills? What additional skills do you have that could help?
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PEOPLE: Do you have any people (such as family or partner, parent or friend) whose opinion you trust or could add value in other ways? Who and what could they do?
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MONEY: What is the budget you have available?
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Summing up
The answers to these questions give you a good sense of what is working and what can be kicked aside.
Sure, we need to try different things to see what will work best.
Remember, it’s better to do a few things really well, than lots of different things that are ordinary.
I hope this exercise is useful for your business.