Internal marketing audits are essential to keeping your marketing efforts running smoothly. Think of your internal marketing audit as giving your marketing strategy an MOT – one damaged or inefficient part can affect your whole marketing effort, and your whole company, so it’s a good idea to check regularly that your marketing strategy is working to the optimum standard.
Internal audits should be closely structured and controlled. Before you start, take the time to plan exactly how to do it, which areas to explore, and which tools to use. Consider who you want to do the audit – if you do it yourself, you could subconsciously bias the results. It’s worth getting a true, objective outside view of your organisation.
You also need to decide how often you want to do an internal marketing audit. It can be beneficial to have a large scale audit every year, with smaller audits on key areas every quarter for example. Find your own balance of how often you wish to audit your marketing and how deep you want the analysis to go.
There are 5 areas to consider in your internal marketing audit:
- Strategy – Is your strategy realistic? Does it fit your company objectives? Are there any tweaks or changes you could make to improve it?
- Structure – Does your marketing function fit in with the rest of your company? Is there good communication, both within the areas of marketing and with the rest of the company?
- Systems – Are your systems as effective and efficient as they can be? Are they followed properly? Are there any blind spots or inefficiencies in the systems you use?
- Productivity – Are you getting enough return on your investment in your marketing department? Is it consistently hitting targets? Why or why not? What can you do to increase productivity?
- Functions – How well are the tools you use working? Are they worth the investment of time and money? Are there tools that can do the job better?
Once you identify where your problems lie, you’ll then know where to concentrate your efforts in order to move your business forward.
We have included an example of full Strategic Marketing Audit, including internal audit so you can see how this all fits together. Happy auditing!
