What is Marketing Audit? Definition of Marketing Audit, Marketing Audit Meaning and Concept
The marketing audit is an instrument that companies use to know how the activities of the marketing department are planned and how they are developing.
It is a way of evaluating the performance of the company in its marketing activities, the results of the evaluation will serve to learn and make better decisions, which allow better performance.
The marketing audit is a marketing evaluation and control procedure, since corrective measures can be taken through the results obtained. The audit can also help to find areas of opportunities or problems in the company that can be exploited or solved if the right actions are taken.
Marketing audits should be performed periodically, to be aware of the performance and efficiency of the business ; but at least it is recommended that an annual audit be carried out, to always have information that serves to improve or reinforce what is being done well.
Aspects to be evaluated
The main aspects to consider when preparing a marketing audit can be summarized as follows:
- Commercial area
- Market share: in the commercial part, an element that is very important is the participation that the company has in the market. This can be measured by the percentage sales level over the total market sales. It can also be measured by the participation that the company has on the target market, since in this way its position in the market would be known; for example, if you are a participation leader, or a subordinate competitor.
- Customer satisfaction: here the level of customer satisfaction is measured, but the most important thing is the reason why the customer is dissatisfied, to take the appropriate corrective measures. In any case, it seeks to exceed customer expectations.
- Customer retention level : this variable allows the company to know that, if it is losing customers, it is losing sales income. There are also clients that are not profitable, these can be lost. But the best clients are the ones we must retain, because the permanence of the company depends on them.
- Quality of the product or service: data will be obtained on how the quality that we are offering is being perceived, with respect to competitors and thus focus on what we must deliver to the client, according to what they expect to receive.
- Financial aspect
- Profits : the result of the profits or, where appropriate, the losses, will indicate to the company what action guidelines to take. Being that if they are increasing the earnings can improve the price of their shares and attract new investors.
Conversely; if you are having losses, it will make the capital become scarcer and it will have to be better managed, this forces to review the budget used in advertising, research and development, among others.
The graph summarizes that the marketing audit is used to gather information on how marketing tasks are performing and what actions have to be taken when their performance is not as expected.
These aspects are general issues, but in reality the marketing audit must review many more aspects, what we must consider is that currently markets change quickly and drastically, so it is necessary to maintain control and evaluation processes.
Finally, we can say that the control and evaluation should serve to obtain information to be able to provide feedback on the marketing actions, plans and procedures. So that we can adapt our strategies to the changing and competitive market; but above all to the requirements of our clients.
