The Important Role of Marketing Audits

Many businesses today fail to take advantage of marketing audits. This is unfortunate since marketing audits can help businesses achieve the results they are looking for when it comes to marketing their brand.

In the simplest terms, a marketing audit is an independent assessment of a business’s marketing performance. It allows a business to understand how to best move forward to achieve the results it is looking for.

Many businesses shy away from marketing audits because such audits can be costly. However, costs can be kept to a minimum if done correctly. Further, the results of such an audit can improve your marketing efforts substantially, allowing you to drastically improve sales in the long run.

Perhaps the most important aspect of any marketing audit is to be sure that you aren’t relying solely on internal managers and other personnel for data and opinions. While their input is important, you also need to talk to customers, vendors and other outside sources. All of these people should be interviewed by an independent telemarketing services firm so that you can be sure the results are impartial.

The importance of outsourcing these interviews to the correct firm cannot be underestimated. Only experienced professionals will know how to ask the right questions in the right way. The questions also need to be scripted in a manner which will garner as much information as possible. Interviewees should feel as if they can add their particular insights when it comes to a business’s marketing strategy rather than being led in a particular direction. They also need to feel as if they are not being judged. In other words, they should never feel as if they are being pressed for the “correct” answer.

A quality marketing audit will provide a clear picture of a business’s marketing strategy and will identify the particular strengths and weaknesses of that strategy. It also will alert the business to any internal and external marketing threats.

Unlike financial audits which depend strictly on numbers and data, marketing audits have a structured side as well as a more subjective element. Finally, a marketing audit does more than just assess a business’s current marketing strategy, it helps a business develop a new and innovative marketing strategy when that time comes.