If you’ve ever shown up to your business’s marketing team meeting and left feeling confused about what exactly you’re hoping to accomplish in the upcoming quarter, it may be time for a marketing audit. This type of audit is an investigative analysis of a business’s entire marketing system, spanning from formulation and resource management all the way to final implementation and effectiveness. 

There are many reasons why a growing business should conduct a marketing audit sooner rather than later. Read on to explore how these analyses can boost your business.

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Refocus on the Goal

Conducting a marketing audit allows you to remind yourself of your end game. You and your team can spend time examining what you wanted to accomplish when you began the year and assess how far you still have to go. You can also discuss the tactics you chose along the way in order to achieve your goals. 

When investigating your long-term strategies, you may find that you have unconsciously diverted from your original plan. The daily operations of running a business can be consuming, and the seemingly endless to-do lists can lead you to forget about your overarching plans in the first place. This discovery alone can help reset and reframe your marketing strategies going forward.

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Recognize What’s Not Working

Once you have established what you’re working towards, you can look at what you already have with more objectivity. A successful audit involves thorough research into your own business, including data collection on previous and ongoing campaigns. Numbers don’t lie!

Audits are the perfect opportunity to evaluate where your current marketing campaigns are most successful and, perhaps most importantly, where they are underperforming. An open chance to say “no” to an approach that’s proving ineffective can save invaluable resources down the line. In addition, getting rid of strategies that no longer work frees up space to improve the tactics that are working well and employ new ones.

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Spark Inspiration

A comprehensive marketing audit will update you on the status of your own business and compare it to how your industry is changing in the current day and age. When you take the time to look around, you may be surprised at just how much variety you find. As you review the work happening in your field, you may come across new trends or ideas that you will want to integrate into future campaigns. 

Inspiration should be cultivated internally as well. In 2017, 35% of employees reported being given space to think and act creatively only a few times per year. A marketing audit is a ripe opportunity to open the floor to your team and receive valuable input about what ideas they have. Allowing space to brainstorm and explore experimentation may lead to some of your best ideas. Even now, your next successful campaign may be right under your nose. 

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Evaluate the Competition

While not the main focus, a marketing audit also reviews the campaigns and tactics of other brands in your industry, and for good reason. It is not only important to understand where your business is thriving, but it is equally helpful to know what your competition is doing well. If you see another brand executing a campaign flawlessly or cultivating a unique objective, you may benefit from transforming some of those ideas to best fit your brand. 

Surveying your competitors’ approach to your audience and comparing it to your own may also shed light on areas of improvement. If another business is reaching a particular group that you struggle to connect with, you may benefit from studying their appeal tactics.

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Maximize Efficiency

Understanding what your current marketing campaigns are accomplishing and how exactly they are doing so may reveal your business’s “leaks in the boat.” Going through the motions of implementing unfocused or underachieving tactics may be wasting precious time and money without your conscious knowledge. 

In an economy where 74% of small business owners report rising supply costs, maximizing productivity in your marketing campaigns can make all the difference between profiting and breaking even this quarter. A marketing audit can help focus time, energy, and resources on projects that bring in revenue.

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Bottom Line

A marketing audit may be just the thing your business needs to breathe new life into the campaigns already underway. It may even kindle new ideas to be utilized in the future. Audits, however, are not one-time deals. They should be conducted regularly to ensure that your productivity remains at an optimal level.

Ready to take your marketing to the next level? Check out our services to discover how Madak can help you conduct a sales and marketing audit to expand your brand’s potential.