The marketing audit process helps your company analyze and evaluate your B2B marketing strategies, activities, goals and results. While the process takes time, the results can be enlightening and might:
Focus your communication of a consistent message to the right customers.
Reveal new, unknown or neglected markets.
Help fine-tune current strategies and plans to help increase market share.
Here are the eight steps for conducting a marketing audit to capture the information a corporate marketer needs about their company and how they do business.
1. Assemble an Overview of Your Company. The details to include are:
Company location, date established, sales history, number of employees, key personnel and chronology of company events like mergers, acquisitions and divestitures.
An estimation of the current awareness level of company as well as perception of your company has among your buying influencers.
2. Describe Your Marketing Goals and Objectives. They can be concepts like increase company visibility, increase audience size, differentiate from competition, increase or maintain market share, generate qualified sales leads or increase usage within existing customers. List your goals and objectives as being:
Long-term, with 6 to 8 goals listed a priority order to be accomplished in the next two years.
Short-term, with a narrowing to 1 to 2 goals to be accomplished in the next 12 months.
3. Describe Your Current Customers. Include information like:
Job titles or functions, industry or SIC codes, geographic location, company size and other demographic, ethnic or behavioral descriptions.
Size of current customer audience.
4. Describe Customers You’d Like to Target. Include the same type of information used in # 3 but also include:
If target customers are outside your usual industry, geography or size of current customers.
Any internal or external factors that have changed in your business or industry causing you