Marketing Audit: 10 Critical Components

The marketing audit is to the marketing department what a financial audit is to the
accounting department.

A comprehensive review of a company's marketing environment, objectives,

strategies, and activities compared to world class standards, the marketing audit
identifies operational strengths and weaknesses and recommends changes to the
company's marketing plans and programs.

Here are 10 of 25 key dimensions a marketing audit should assess:

1. Key factors that impacted the business for good or for bad during the past
year.
Including an evaluation of marketing "surprises"—the unanticipated
competitive actions or changes in the marketing climate that affected the
performance of the marketing programs.

2. The extent to which each decision in the marketing plan—e.g. targeting,

positioning, pricing, advertising, etc.—was made after evaluating many
alternatives in terms of profit-related criteria.

3. Marketing knowledge, attitudes, and satisfaction of all executives

involved in the marketing function.

4. The extent to which the marketing program was marketed internally and
bought into by top management and non-marketing executives.

5. Customer, distributor, vendor, and intermediary satisfaction based on

research among key target groups.

6. The performance of advertising, promotion, sales force, and marketing

research programs in terms of ROI.

7. The performance of non-traditional programs, particularly digital

offerings, in terms of ROI.

8. Whether the marketing plan achieved its stated financial and non-
financial goals and objectives.

9. Which aspects of the plan that failed to meet objectives with specific
recommendations for improving next year's performance.

10. The current value of brand and customer equity for each brand in the
product portfolio.