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A Thumbnail Dipped In Tar

The title of this page of the website, "A Thumbnail Dipped in Tar", is stolen from Henry Lawson's iconic poem, Clancy of the Overflow and features an occasional opinion piece on issues of relevance to people with marketing and communications responsibilities.

Time for a marketing audit

If management is to be truly accountable for what ends up on the corporate bottom line, then there's a strong case for an audit of an organisation's marketing activities to determine what is being spent on marketing and whether it is money well spent.

In fact it's easy to argue that auditing of a corporate activity that is often treated as an informal after thought to the sales function, should be subject to much more scrutiny on all fronts - strategic and operational.

It's sad but true that in too many instances marketing is treated in an unplanned, spasmodic and ad hoc manner that therefore fails to deliver the best return on investment.

While an audit won't dictate what resources and infrastructure are required to support a corporate marketing function it nevertheless can act as a pointer to these things

The key outcomes from a marketing audit are a cohesive enterprise-wide view of the marketing program and a high level planning document which includes recommendations for the most appropriate marketing tools and the supporting creative rationale.

The creative rationale which examines branding, themes, slogans and even the corporate graphical image ensures a uniform approach to the development and deployment of the marketing tools, whether by in-house or external resources.

If the findings and recommendations resulting from the audit are to receive broad endorsement, it is preferable to involve all people with a stake in the corporate marketing function.

An audit is conducted by way of briefing meetings with stakeholders. The auditor facilitates these meetings and documents the answers to a comprehensive series of questions which seek to confirm what products or services a company sells, how it sells them and to whom, its business objectives in the next financial period, key corporate messages, the perceived challenges, strategies and tools, priorities, deadlines and budgets.

Some of the topics examined critically in an audit, which can lead to a better marketing ROI in the longer term include a look at present and future target markets, what influences each of the target markets in their buying decisions, how to build on current product/marketing strengths and how to overcome current market/product challenges.