A marketing audit is an evaluation of the marketing within an organisation to see if their strategies in place are effective within the marketing environment.
There is an “internal and external” form of audits. The internal audit assists with considering the effectiveness of the marketing strategies in place at the time of the audit. The “external” audit considers the factors that are external to the organisation - for example environmental changes, Customer preferences, trends and competitor’s activities. Competitor’s activities can present a threat to the organisation (gaining more market share) and therefore an organisation may need to change its marketing strategies to combat that situation.
When doing a situation analysis the marketing audit would involve the four characteristics- eg: it should be a broad focus, it should be horizontal- eg: fully comprehensive in looking at the company’s internal strategies, systems and objectives. It should be a vertical-eg: look deeply into key marketing functions like the sales force, the advertising methods, the pricing of the product or service. It should be an independent, systematic and periodic.
There is a process that MUST be followed when conducting a marketing audit.
The first step is to define the object to what the Marketing Team are trying to solve, once they have defined the problem the team is then to do a situation Analysis and an informal investigation; which involves reading and obtaining information about the company and its business environment. Which could involves, web search, customer enquiries or asking staff who may be close to the problem to gain a better understanding. If you’re able to end the project a report must be produced with results. If you’re unable to close the Situation Analysis and wanting to undertake more study you will need to plan and