Marketing Audit

Looking at the marketing strategies and performance of large firms in times of recession are comparable to the economic boom five years ago, the most striking impression is outdated marketing strategy. operations marketing companies have been successful for some years that are now hard hit by the recession, with no hope of recovery, even in the current year.

Today, marketing managers are facing challenges to survive in this turbulent situation where the cutthroat competition, the lack of demand and liquidity, customer switching, the cost of increasing publicity, Govt. Regulation etc. influence their marketing performance worse than ever. These changes present opportunities and problems and may require periodic review of operations of corporate marketing.

Many marketers now realize that their marketing operations should be regularly reviewed and considered, but do not know how. Sometimes they are just small changes that are economically and politically feasible, but fail to enter the heart of the matter that is not aware of the real situation.

In the present scenario of the economy, it is now necessary for every business to know the current status of their business, the effectiveness of current marketing strategies and plan and measure the performance of marketing operations can be performed providing audit systematic marketing.

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

The marketing audit is to have four major characteristics:

"She must be comprehensive and broad guidance on environmental marketing society at large.

-There must be an exercise objective and independent managers directly involved in marketing decisions.

-We need a systematic and orderly sequence of diagnostic steps with respect to an investigation unstructured and random.

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

The 2 main variables of the marketing audit external and internal environment. External variables are uncontrollable such are the macro-economic, political, social, cultural, etc. while the internal operation are controllable marketing, marketing functions, system, strategy etc.

marketing audit process consists of three basic steps. The first step is to identify the objectives and scope. This must be done in consultation with representatives of the company and the auditor. Second step is to collect relevant data. Although data collection company personnel interviewed insiders, but at the same time an outsider customers also considered a good source of data collection. The third and final step is to prepare a report. The report contains key objectives, key findings and recommendations.

Full Marketing Audit is composed of six components namely. marketing environment audit, auditing organization, the audit strategy, audit systems, auditing and audit function of productivity. If the company does not perform the full marketing audit and each component can be controlled separately. However, the full marketing audit is recommended to get an overview of the actual situation.

Although all companies can benefit from a systematic audit of their marketing operations, but nonetheless, marketing audit can provide better results when the company is focused on production or technically oriented. start-ups, young people can decide their marketing approach e.