Completed Financial Audit..? Now its time for Marketing Audit

Looking at the marketing strategies and performance of major companies in current recession time as compare to those of economic boom five years ago, the most striking impression is marketing strategy obsolescence. Companies marketing operations were performing well before few years which are now affected badly due to recession with no hope for economic recovery even in current fiscal year.

Today Marketing managers are facing challenges to survive in this turbulent situation where cut throat competition, lack of demand and liquidity, switching of customers, advertising cost increasing, govt. regulation etc. affected their marketing performance badly than ever. These changes represent both opportunities and problems and may need periodic examination of the Company's marketing operations.

Many marketing managers now realizes that their marketing operations should be regularly reviewed and examined, but do not know how to do it. Sometime they are simply making small changes that are economically and politically feasible, but fail to get to the heart of the matter which keeps them unaware of real situation.

In present scenario of economy, It is now necessary for each company to know current situation of their business, effectiveness of current marketing strategies and plan and measure performance of marketing operation which can be performed by conducting systematic marketing audit.

Marketing Audit is a process of comprehensive, systematic and independent analysis and assessment of company's marketing environment, objectives, strategies and activities to identify problem areas and operational strengths and weaknesses and recommends the courses of action to be taken to improve company's overall marketing performance and make marketing strategies and plan more effective and result oriented.

The marketing audit is having four major characteristics:

-It should be comprehensive and broad in focus covering the entire marketing environment of the company.

-It should be an objective exercise and independent of the managers directly involved in making the marketing decisions.

-It should be a systematic and orderly sequence of diagnostic steps as compared to an unstructured and random investigation.

-It should be carried out periodically. The marketing audit should be undertaken on a regular basis and not only when major problems arise.

The main 2 variables of marketing audit are External and Internal Environment. External variables are uncontrollable such are macro economic, politics, social, cultural etc. while internals are controllable such are marketing operation, marketing functions, system, strategy etc.

Marketing audit process comprises of basic three steps. First step is to identify the objectives and scope. This has to be done in consultation with the company officials and auditor. Second step is to collect the relevant data. While collecting data, insider company personnel are being interviewed but at the same time an outsider customers also considered a good source of data collection. The third and last step is to prepare report. The report contains main objectives, major findings and suggested recommendations.

Full Marketing Audit comprises of six components viz. marketing environment audit, organization audit, strategy audit, systems audit, productivity audit and function audit. If company does not want to carry full marketing audit then each component can be audited separately. However, full marketing audit is recommended to get whole picture of real situation.

Although all the companies can benefit from a systematic audit of their marketing operations, but however, marketing audit can provide better results where company is production oriented or technically oriented. Young start ups can decide their marketing approach even if being inexperienced. To the non profit organizations also marketing audit can provide educative and diagnostic approach. Companies having troubled divisions can be easily cured by marketing audit and like wise high performing divisions can also be maintained and improved with the help of marketing audit.

In present global recession where each company is affected badly, survival in this critical situation is the ultimate goal of any company. The marketing managers are analyzing every possible solution to survive and one such tool they can use is the Marketing Audit. It is an invaluable instrument to help an organization to establish its unique competitive position and to identify its superior skills, resources and capabilities. Marketing Audit is now a days proving itself a prerequisite for achieving a sustainable competitive advantage.