Marketing doesn’t come cheap. Because of this, business owners need to apply the most effective marketing strategies to get a good return on their investment.
But as many entrepreneurs know, there’s no one-size-fits-all marketing strategy for businesses. Each has specific target markets and business goals, which often require marketers to be more creative in their efforts.
Businesses need to perform regular marketing assessments or audits to minimize the risk. This helps analyze their assets and activities and gives them insights into their strengths and weaknesses.
Importance of a Marketing Assessment
Is a marketing assessment necessary? For businesses that are serious about improving their marketing and branding, the answer is yes.
Performing a marketing assessment lessens the need for trial and error, reducing marketing spend and allotting its resources to more important aspects of the business.
Not only will it increase a business’s ROI, but a marketing assessment will also help them learn where they stand in the market and re-target their efforts to the right audience. At the end of the day, the result is driving more leads and sales for their business.
Marketing Assessment Methods to Maximize Your Marketing
A marketing audit needs to be comprehensive and systematic to yield useful insights. To create a holistic audit, marketers need to analyze several components—from external and internal environments. Read on to learn which components work best for every business.
Marketing Environment
The marketing environment comprises two major segments: the macro environment and the microenvironment. Let’s analyze the two.
Macro-environment
These are external factors affecting a firm’s marketing, which includes the following:
● Demographics – age, gender, race, and employment
● Cultural factors – beliefs, lifestyle, and other consumer-based factors
● Economic factors – taxation policies, inflation, and interest rates
● Environmental factors – technology used by the consumer
Microenvironment
These are internal marketing efforts controlled by the firm. They include employee performance, marketing tools, social media marketing, and other marketing methods.
Performing a marketing environment assessment is relevant for most businesses, including e-commerce stores and service-based brands.
Task Environment
A marketing assessment based on task environment looks at potential factors influencing a business’s marketing efficiency. Also known as specific environment, task environment focuses on external forces that affect the company, which may include the following:
● Customers
● Competition
● Suppliers
● The workforce
● Government regulations
For example, a business selling scented soy wax candles will first assess its customers. Customers create demand for these candles, and it will be harder for the business to market their products if there’s only little demand.
Marketers will also want to look at competitors selling the same products or catering to the same customers. What are their strengths and weaknesses? What worked for them that may work for you?
On the other hand, suppliers also affect a business’s marketing strategy since they’re responsible for making the candles. Inadequate suppliers in the market will hinder operations.
Businesses need to assess every aspect of their task environment to generate accurate insights.
Marketing Strategy
The most successful businesses are guided by a core goal, mission, and vision. Working toward a common goal makes them more likely to reach it through unified efforts.
This is the focus of a marketing strategy audit. It aims to assess the feasibility of a business’s marketing goals, objectives, and strategies. It helps businesses answer the question: do our marketing strategies align with our overarching business goal?
A business can have different marketing objectives, including the following:
● Increasing qualified sales leads
● Growing their audience size
● Establishing a solid online presence
● Increasing user satisfaction
● Increasing their market share
Ideally, marketing goals need to be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound). The smarter the goal is, the more achievable it is.
If a business wants to drive more sales to its online store, it will more likely achieve that goal by expounding it. Following the SMART method, you can optimize the goal to this:
Increase sales by 20 percent through social media marketing and paid advertisement over the next three months.
Marketing Systems
This type of audit analyzes whether or not a business’s systems support its current marketing efforts. Marketing systems include those focusing on marketing planning, new product development, marketing information, and marketing control.
These are a few questions businesses need to ask when assessing their marketing systems:
● Does the planning system lead to reasonable quotas?
● Does the marketing intelligence system produce accurate information about marketplace developments on time?
● Does the company apply the best methods for market analysis and forecasting?
● Does the company do sufficient business analysis and concept research before investing in new product ideas?
● Does the company perform adequate product and market testing before launching new products?
Marketing Productivity
Aside from marketing systems, business owners also need to know whether their current marketing strategies are working or not.
With a marketing productivity audit, businesses get valuable insights into the profitability and cost-effectiveness of their marketing efforts. It aims to review the effectiveness of a business’s marketing channels and campaigns compared to the cost of each marketing collateral.
For example, brands looking to increase sales-qualified leads may focus their marketing efforts on organic and paid ads. A marketing productivity assessment enables marketers to evaluate whether their advertising performance adds up to the advertising spend.
Otherwise, a business may need to employ professional help from agencies that can handle and maximize their Google Ads performance. This may be an additional investment, but it may result in more efficient advertising results in the long run.
Marketing Function
This type of audit analyzes a company’s branding, as well as its 4 Ps: product (or service), pricing, place (or distribution), and promotion. One thing a marketing function audit also focuses on is its product’s unique selling proposition (USP) and how it stacks up against the competitor’s.
Let’s take a deep dive into some of the questions to ask related to the 4 Ps:
● Product – Which products should be added to or phased out? How do buyers perceive the firm’s and its competitors’ products in terms of quality, features, and brand name?
● Pricing – What are the company’s pricing processes? Is the pricing in line with the value of the product?
● Place – Is there enough market coverage? Is there a need to change distribution channels?
●Promotion – What are the advertising objectives? Is there enough advertising budget? Is there a good return on the advertising spend?
Companies can learn the answers to these questions and leverage these new insights into tweaking their current marketing strategies through a marketing function audit. For instance, a company may need more vendors for their online store to potentially boost sales.
Marketing Organization
This assessment focuses on the workforce and the overall staff performance. The key areas it taps on include organizational structure, training and development, employee motivation, working relations, and employee communication.
Businesses need to evaluate their structure, levels of hierarchy, and function to learn if it aligns with their business goals.
The analysis also gives them insight into whether they need to hire more staff or retain existing members and increase movements within teams. Businesses can also use this audit in line with their employee appraisal scheme.
This ensures they’re eliminating redundancies and, therefore, eliminating unnecessary resources that can be used in other more essential aspects of the business.
The Takeaway
Choosing a marketing assessment method depends on a business’s structure and end goals. If they aim to improve their marketing at a holistic level, a marketing environment audit will help them best. If they’re looking to improve more specific aspects of their marketing, they may focus on productivity, systems, or function.
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