Sometimes we do not know what to do. We can no longer take the step back. We think that something new could be nice or some improvement, but no idea is coming. Or we are embroiled in a situation without knowing how to get out. This is THE breakdown. The lack of inspiration.🧟♀️
This happens in all fields and marketing is no exception. Audit can be the solution. Not an account audit (all people would laugh, if I started in this kind of analysis). I’m talking to you about marketing audit.
A Polaroid of marketing
The marketing audit is like a kind of Polaroid: it is a snapshot of the situation. I am talking about your business situation in marketing.
This photograph will be analyzed in all its aspects as would be the last masterpiece of Banksy auction (yes, sir, we follow the news!) Or an old drawing of Leonardo da Vinci found between two old wheels of parmesan cheese.
We will use X-Ray to inspect every aspect of your company’s marketing. The goal is to make a balance sheet, but especially to draw conclusions that will be useful to you to continue to optimize your marketing.
Analysis in four steps
Here are the steps of a marketing audit:
1. Marketing media analysis
All of the company’s marketing current media used or used in the past are analyzed. Yes, we will even remove the 2 cm layer of dust on these old flyers that you keep in the bottom of your drawer.
Some means of communication may be further probed if this is your request. But in any case, the marketing media will be replaced in the general map.
A marketing media is ALWAYS a part of a global marketing strategy. Even if we focus on a nuance, we must observe it in the whole picture to measure the harmony.
2. Into perspective
I continue with my example of masterpiece of painting. Now that we have measured a nuance and the interraction of this nuance within the entire masterpiece, it is time to put it into perspective. I mean we we will see if this nuance is found in other painters.
Obviously, we still focus on painters of the same current. We will not compare Il Caravaggio with Basquiat. Not that it would not be interesting, but it’s just not really useful to reach the goal of your marketing audit at that time.
If you followed me, you understood that one would put in perspective the marketing of your company with that of the other companies of the same field which are on the market. And this market can be limited to your city, your region, your continent, the world, the universe …
It’s not so much about whether others are doing better or not. It is rather to know your positioning and if your marketing follows the tendencies or is a rebel. And if that makes it good or not.
Well, in Message In a Bottle, we like rebels 😉 And just by the way, these are not necessarily the ones who painted by respecting the academic rules that are still in the minds of the public now … to meditate.
3. Improve. Or not.
After these first two stages, we know each other well. It is time to take risks, to leave one’s ego aside and to look clearly at our painting with lucidity. It is necessary to ask which are the parts holding masterpiece and those comparable to the doodles of a child of four years.
But the REAL question is mostly: why? Why this part will revolutionize the painting and not the other one. We can master the composition of a painting and not have the sense of color harmony.
In marketing, it is the same: one can be excellent in his ideas of posts on social networks and plumbing it all with ugly spelling mistakes.
In short, at this stage, we will list all that is well and all that can be improved. Remember that for the future.
4. Enough theory. It is time for concrete tips
It would be a mess to leave you like this! We will therefore offer you concrete solutions to develop or improve your marketing. You will leave with an huuuuuuudge to do list! I’m joking. You will leave with new ideas and a new imput for your marketing.
Be careful, not with wacky ideas, huh. With real proposals adapted to your area of application and realistic in relation to your business.
We are not going to suggest the same things to you if you are alone managing your company or if you already have 2 community managers. You see what I mean?
The importance of an external expertise
Now you have the main principles of a marketing audit. You can start your analysis alone. Thanks WHO?
However, if you read the beginning of the article, when you need a marketing audit, it is because you can not have a step back. You know this new point of view and this renewal of vitality that can bring you a freelancer!
And I would be delighted to carry out your marketing audit. You send me a message?
Do you want us to analyze your marketing with a x-ray?
par Delphine Berclaz