What Is a Marketing Audit and How To Perform Your Own

If you aren’t conducting regular marketing audits, you could be leaving money on the table. Marketing teams have a lot to do and they have to move quickly. Pressure to meet tight deadlines and produce a large volume of work can quickly spell chaos if nobody is taking stock of what’s actually working.

A marketing audit is a powerful tool you can use to ensure that your marketing team is acting intentionally and supporting larger business goals. In this article, we’ll explain what a marketing audit is, how it helps you, and how to conduct your own.

What is a marketing audit?

A marketing audit is an evaluation and analysis of your marketing channels, collateral, strategies. The goals of a marketing audit are to:

• Determine what is working and what isn’t
• Identify areas of strength and weakness
• Discover any missed opportunities
• Uncover insights that might help future marketing decisions

Performing an in-depth analysis of your marketing efforts is necessary to determine if your resources are being efficiently utilized. It should be noted that a marketing audit is not the same as a marketing plan or strategy. However, it can be used in the creation of a plan or strategy.

Marketing audits can be as broad or niche as you need. They can cover the entire marketing department or a single tactic or channel such as content or social media. 

Why do I need one?

If you have been running your marketing campaigns for six months or longer, you should invest some time into performing a marketing audit. Marketers today have so many different channels and tactics available that it’s important to focus on the right ones. A marketing audit can help you determine what’s working and how to achieve the results you want to see.

A marketing audit should be performed at least once a year, if not twice, to ensure your efforts and making the biggest impact. It will allow you to:

• Revisit your marketing goals
• Connect your marketing activities with your goals
• See what isn’t working
• Think outside the box
• Gain data-driven insights
• Understand your competition
• Make better decisions moving forward

How To Conduct a Marketing Audit

Marketing audits can really help you understand what’s working and what’s broken. But now you’re probably wondering how to conduct a marketing audit and get those valuable insights I keep talking about.

Keep in mind that you will probably be working with a third party, so the process may vary depending on how your partner works. Also remember that marketing audits are usually very in-depth and can take awhile to perform depending on the size of the project.

These are the basic steps of a marketing audit:

1. Decide what you are going to audit (SEO, social media, website, etc). Will it be a channel-specific audit or a comprehensive marketing audit? Once you determine what you will be auditing, using an unbiased third party for assistance can be beneficial.
2. Analyze performance and identify gaps. Look at how your marketing is performing and decide if you are pleased with the results. This means identifying your KPIs and creating benchmarks to work off of.
3. Measure performance against goals. You should already have set your marketing goals before launching your campaign. The audit is your chance to see if your campaigns are performing as hoped or if changes need to be made.
4. Observe your competition. It’s good to know how your marketing is doing, but it’s even better to know how your competitors are performing. Doing a competitor analysis will tell you if you are beating your competitors or not. It will also tell you if they are doing things that you should be doing. 
5. Review the data. Without data, marketing is nothing but gut feelings and strong opinions. It’s important to review the data and use it to make informed decisions. Data will tell you what your strengths are, your weaknesses, and what optimizations need to be made.
6. Analyze and prescribe. Once you understand the data and what it is saying, you are ready to take action. Take your goals such as “increase # of meetings booked” and break them out into separate activities like “send more emails” or “add customer testimonial page.”

Turn Your Insights Into Action

All organizations and marketing departments should perform a marketing audit of some type at least once a year. Whether it’s a technical SEO audit, content audit, or an all-encompassing marketing audit, it can help to ensure that everything is working properly and your marketing dollars are going to good use.

Audits are usually performed by a third party to remove bias and provide unfiltered insights. If you need help with your website or marketing, WEBITMD has helped businesses of all types and sizes grow and scale their marketing efforts. Contact us today or download your free Growth Stack Guide below.