Marketing is all about helping your business to thrive: shouting from the rooftops (perhaps a little more subtly) about the wonderful things you do, and why people should take notice. But messages can sometimes get clouded, visions can become blurred, and your voice can get lost in the crowd.
Which is why a marketing audit is worth its weight in gold.
You need someone objective – totally objective – to come in and shake things up a bit. Suggest where you may want to focus your efforts. Pinpoint any areas that could be letting you down. Ultimately, help you to reach your business goals.
What exactly is a marketing audit?
A marketing audit is an analysis of your company’s marketing environment, looking specifically at your objectives, goals, strategies and principles.
It’s not just about spotting problems but homing in on any opportunities you might be missing. And it’s best to be carried out by someone outside of the organisation, to eliminate any bias. So, what does an audit look at?
Marketing Strategy
Depending on the focus of the audit, it may include analysis of your products or services, brand voice, marketing message, or USPs (Unique Selling Points). For example:
- Your business USPs
- Your brand image, and whether that reflects your value
- Your current customer and target customer
- How your brand voice resonates with your target customer
- How your product/service compares to that of your competitors
Channels & Tactics
And then it’s onto the good stuff: your channels. How you connect with your audience, and how effective your communications channels are – looking at:
- Whether you’re active on the right social media channels
- The effectiveness of your website, and what it says about your company
- Whether you should be investing in paid social or PPC advertising
- The comprehensiveness of your content strategy
- What kind of email marketing you’re using
Sound like a lot? Don’t panic. To prevent audits from becoming too overwhelming, most companies will focus on one thing at a time, such as social media, website or landing pages.
Benefits of a marketing audit
You can’t expect to do what you’ve always done and see better results.
The benefit of a marketing audit is the recommendations: advising you on what to continue, what to stop, and what to try; whilst clueing you in to what’s delivering the best ROI (Return On Investment).
An audit is all about helping you to maximise your marketing; helping you to realign your goals, refocus your efforts, and discover new approaches you might not have thought of or had the confidence to try.
Perhaps most importantly, audits save you a great deal of time and money by eliminating anything that’s not working for you, and maximising your marketing investment by:
- Finding out what’s working well, and what’s not
- Generating new ideas and approaches
- Differentiating you from your competitors
- Realigning your marketing with your business goals
- Focusing on activities that work for you and your audience
Do remember that in order to get the best from your audit, you’ll need to provide relevant business information and/or access to marketing and sales data. This enables a full analysis of website analytics, social media metrics, and anything else that might feed into the review.
We’d also recommend carrying out periodic marketing audits, rather than waiting until there’s a problem; to quote the old adage, “prevention is better than cure”. Because by the time your marketing efforts have gone south, it’s easy to get stuck in a rut.
But not on our watch!
Book an audit
Prices start from £150 per channel
Are you unsure if you are making the most of your social media platforms? Are your pages growing? Is anyone engaging with your content?
I can provide a detailed audit of your selected channels, reviewing how well optimised they are, your brand message and content strategy. I will also look at some of your key competitors and analyse their social media activity.
All audits include recommendations and a traffic light system to show you what you are doing well and what you can improve on. Your audit includes:
- Initial discovery call
- Onboarding questionnaire to fully understand your business
- Audit review of your platforms and current strategy
- Competitor review
- Written document with my recommendations
Contact Emma at hello@biscuitcommunications.co.uk to find out more.
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