If you plan on being the tops in your competitive arena in 2015, you better start planning now. One of the best tools to make your marketing strategy a success in 2015 is to do an audit of your present campaigns to find out what is making money for you and what is not.
This unconventional and radical approach to solving your marketing dilemma is based on simple numbers. Most organizations have a marketing dilemma because they do not know what strategy or campaign is bringing in the most new clients and the most money. Usually, the data is available to you, but the data is not working for you like it could. The idea behind an unconventional marketing audit program is really simple. There are only three steps:
| Image by Flickr user Scott Maxwell |
To find out where you are, look at every marketing effort, strategy, and campaign in terms of dollars spent and results produced. Results can be new clients or sales dollars. When in doubt, make a list. Make a prioritized list of all of your marketing efforts based on what you spent on each item and the results each effort produced in dollars or new clients. Determine the return on investment that each marketing campaign or strategy produced. Collect this data for the past three years of your marketing efforts.
Finding out what works means finding out what makes you money. Look at the itemized list of marketing efforts in terms of return on investment. If any item does not produce at least twice the amount of money you spent on it then that strategy or campaign needs to be reevaluated.
Some marketing strategies that do not produce a return on investment do produce a potential for increased profits. Some examples are the strategies that create new potential sales or markets and those that increase the efficiency of your work force. Do not scrap these types of marketing efforts because you will get paid back over time.
Once you have sorted out the winners and losers in your marketing campaign, you are ready to make changes. Scrap the items that do not produce a high return on investment. Look at what is hot on the net, social media, and phone marketing. This investigation will give you a direction to focus your new marketing campaigns and strategies on. Remember that digital sells more with lower costs and less effort.
Now, that really didn't hurt as much as you thought it would, did it? Most of the data you need to do a comprehensive marketing audit that gets you ready for 2015 is available from your accountant, sales force, and systems manager. Once you do the analysis, you will see where your efforts are working for you and can plan the marketing strategy that puts you ahead of your competition in 2015. You must remember that now is the time to act if an unconventional marketing audit is to produce profitable results in 2015.