Creating a Marketing Audit and Plan

A Necessary Exercise If A Solid And All-Encompassing Marketing Effort Is To Be Maintained

Whether you are a head coach or quarterback of your favorite college or professional football team, a world-renowned chef who is noted for their culinary creations, or an event planner who is hired to think of every possible item that needs to be taken care of for a successfully executed production ? one thing is certain, every game plan, recipe, or schedule of events will from time to time, needs to be flexible, changed, or altered to address those unexplainable momentary variables that can change the outcome of any plan or itinerary.

Your marketing and advertising plan is no different, and needs to have that kind of spontaneous response that will ensure its overall success and completion of its goals and objectives. But while spontaneous is often good and needed, there always must be some degree of predetermined intelligence as to what goals and objectives are to be executed, and how those are to be attained with the best possible results, and always within a predetermined budget of expense.

To make sure that your overall marketing and advertising strategies are indeed successful, most experts will agree that there are two vital procedures or steps that must be completed to properly set your efforts in motion. The first, is a complete marketing and advertising audit, while the second is taking those results and compiling a complete marketing and advertising plan complete with a contingency outline that will be able to react and respond to those ?unexpected variables? that can create havoc with your intended goals and objectives.

Performing a Marketing Audit

What exactly is a Marketing & Advertising Audit? What does it accomplish? How do you properly execute this plan? What are the benefits of completing a Marketing & Advertising Audit? All of these answers will help you get on track with a much needed evaluation and creation of a solid, well-planned and strategically sound plan of attack.

A Marketing & Advertising Audit is a simple, systematic, examination of every aspect of sales, marketing, customer service, and even of aspects of operations that affect sales and marketing. It is, for all practical purposes, the quickest and easiest way to take a hard, strategic look at your entire marketing process. It can accomplish several things ? but the most important is that if executed properly, it will reveal hidden weak spots so you can focus on strengthening them in the overall promotional plan of your business or product line. Many experts often refer to this exercise as ?revealing the weak links in the entire marketing and advertising chain? that your company or business engages during the normal promotion of its product line or services.

Simply stated, a well organized and efficiently implemented Marketing & Advertising Audit will enable you to quickly and with much accuracy, review and analyze many aspects of your sales, marketing and advertising efforts in order to identify those areas that are crucial to success and in need of streamlining or improvement.

Unlike accounting audits, Marketing & Advertising Audits are best performed by those who work within the organization and in most cases know the operations best. If you are fortunate to have a sizable marketing and advertising staff, they should be tasked with completing the audit. If your operation utilizes a smaller group, an executive, manager, or designated staff should be the ideal person to conduct the review and evaluation. There are numerous books and resource guides that will enable you to learn more about and design an audit that best suits your business or organization, but for the most part, a few areas need to always be included in your ultimate choice of an audit design.

First, it can be used for fact-gathering and trouble-shooting, to more or less identify those cases of poor performance and help in many cases to define the appropriate course of action that will correct them. And second, it will be vital in the ultimate preparation of the planning process that can identify and address both broad and specific areas in desperate need of attention in the final plan design and application.

Areas to be reviewed and included should touch upon the following:

Customer Acquisition: Find out exactly how you reach out and obtain customers for your business and services. You always want to make sure you have sufficient exposure to enough customers. Make sure you engage in enough communication within the industry. Make sure you recruit new customers that are not satisfied with the competition by offering incentives, discounts, and valued benefits.

Information Gathering: Make sure that you are gathering relevant information about your promotional efforts. Set up effective methods to identify and monitor the competition, and be aware of the pricing in the market and how it fluctuates. Analyze and test the information you gather for accuracy, and if possible utilize focus groups to your advantage.

Marketing and Advertising Plan: Periodically review and update your plans for increased sales, for a sagging market, or for up-selling your current client base. Take a hard look at where your advertising dollars are being spent, and look for different places to test some new methods. Try advertising in print, on-line, radio, TV, or community resources such as local cable tv channels, community bulletin boards, and your local Chamber of Commerce.

Customer Service: Make sure your staff is trained properly, and that they are caring, concerned, and always willing to assist your clients. Make sure current clients can get assistance by phone, e-mail, or through your company website. Take a look at your current phone system, your on-going training offerings, and the method in which you communicate to your clients. Do you offer a monthly newsletter, weekly update, or some type of forum or ?blog? that enables you to effectively communicate to your customers and them to you?

Formulating An Effective Marketing & Advertising Plan

Once your profile is completed and you have all the necessary information to the questions that you have asked ? now comes the time to formulate an effective Marketing & Advertising Plan. It is a useful planning tool in addressing and applying strategies and remedies to those areas that have surfaced in the entire auditing process.

Finally, remember that an additional result of reviewing your current plan is that ?strengths? will also be unveiled that you will want to maintain and even continue to take full advantage of. Don?t ignore your strengths while working on your weaknesses. Sometimes, it makes perfect sense to strengthen your best areas first, to generate more surplus profits, so that you can then address those exposed weak areas.

Now that you have an accurate overview of what your Marketing & Advertising Plan should be, organize your thoughts and strategies, and formulate a plan of attack that addresses those areas that have come to light in lieu of your auditing efforts! Along with proper planning is an effective budget, and once you?ve accomplished these goals and objectives, the result is a strong, all-encompassing Marketing & Advertising Plan that will help your business and clientele grow to new heights!

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