We are halfway through 2024 and barrelling toward the official beginning of summer. As the pools open and vacation plans are made, don’t forget this fun summer activity: a mid-year audit of your marketing approach. The middle of the year is the right time to analyze the last six months of data, assess your tactics, and plan for the remainder of the year.
A marketing audit is a deep dive into your organization’s current marketing efforts. Conducting regular audits will help you understand what’s working and what’s not. You can determine what social platforms are most effective for your brand, where you can best direct your advertising and paid social budget, and investigate the timing and cadence of your marketing messages.
Your answers to these questions and others will provide the information needed to improve your marketing strategy and secure even better results in the future.
Step 1: Gather and Analyze Data
The first step on the marketing audit checklist is to gather hard data. As you’re gathering data and information, make sure you’re pulling numbers from every single marketing tactic you employ, including email newsletters, text messages, all social media platforms, organic and paid search, organic and paid social, blogs, and website conversions. For example, if you’re performing an audit on your social media strategy, you can look at your number of followers, your engagement rates, your click-through rates, and the days and times that posts perform best. For a special event, you may consider how many customers were invited, how many attended, and how much product was sold, both in units and revenue.
Step 2: Determine What’s Performing Well
The numbers you gathered in Step 1 provide an honest look at how your marketing efforts are performing. Once you have the data gathered, you can objectively see which areas are performing well and which need improvement. First, note what is working. These tactics can be continued as part of an effective marketing strategy, although consider making slight tweaks to keep them fresh and relevant for your audience.
Step 3: Identify Areas that Need Improvement
In Step 3, you’ll return to the data to determine the areas that need improvement. Your data and analysis will reveal some areas that are not performing as well as planned. This happens to the best of us, which is why a regular marketing audit is so important! Seeing what is not working allows you to pivot and divert resources to more effective initiatives.
Step 4: Perform a SWOT Analysis
Once you have a good idea of which initiatives to stick with and which to discontinue, it’s time to closely examine your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
Strengths include information gathered in Step 2 and additional advantages unique to your organization. You may have significant support in your community, be the only business of its kind for miles, or be known for your outstanding customer service. You’re looking for positive traits that competitors cannot easily emulate.
Your weaknesses may be determined by data gathered from Step 3. You can also include challenges such as location, staff size, budget, internal environment, and other factors within your company’s sphere of influence.
While strengths and weaknesses can be determined by reflecting on your organization, opportunities and threats can be identified by looking outside your immediate locus of control. Opportunities could include increased market demand for your product or service or technological advances that can improve the way you do business.
Threats are events that are outside your control that can still negatively impact your business. Examples could include a new competitor in town, relentless supply chain issues, rising inflation costs, and more.
Step 5: Look at the Competition
Yes, competition can be an undesirable threat. But chances are, if your competition performed their own SWOT analysis, they would list opportunities and threats that are similar to yours. Use this knowledge to see how they are overcoming those potential obstacles: What types of promotions are similar businesses holding? How often are they posting on social media? What type of content is getting the most engagement?
Consider this market research as a peek into best practices that you can put your creative spin on!
Step 6: Update your Strategy and Track It
You’ve gathered and analyzed data, determined what is working and what is not working, performed a SWOT analysis, and studied the competition. For the final step of the marketing audit checklist, you will use all of this information to update your marketing strategy and work toward improved results moving forward.
Be sure you have tools in place to measure how the new efforts are performing. Then, build time into your schedule to perform another regular marketing audit to ensure continued success!
Do we need a third party to conduct a marketing audit?
Marketing audits are best performed by a third party, like Green Apple Strategy, to ensure unbiased results. A third-party audit can also provide objective advice, insights on best practices, and opportunities for improvements. Marketing specialists also have access to technology and tools that can make launching new initiatives seamless.
Analyzing efforts for meaningful insight—and using the findings to make helpful recommendations—is part of our core process at Green Apple Strategy. Contact us today to learn more about how we can optimize your marketing strategies and help your business grow.