all aspects of the marketing program, beginning with the business plan; the end result is a written presentation identifying the strong and weak points of the marketing program.
A marketing audit provides necessary direction for refining and enhancing the marketing and business plans of an organization. Consistency, clarity and goal orientation in the marketing plan and audit can help provide the focus for all employees to work toward a common goal. Employees involved with production, scheduling, inventory and shipping are involved with marketing audits because they have production deadlines to meet and product deliveries which have to be accomplished on time or the entire marketing plan may well be ineffective. By focusing on the internal functions of the organization, the marketing audit can help a company determine where it can improve its processes, where it current strengths are, and the steps the company can take in order to improve its competitive position in the industry.
In order for a marketing audit to be successful, it requires that all employees involved in providing information to the auditors be fully committed to the process. To achieve this commitment, management must educate the employees about the goals and objectives of the audit. Thus the critical first step is to determine exactly what the audit is designed to determine, and why that information is important. In the case of Brown Industrial, the company recognizes that there is poor understanding of the company's marketing activities and wants to ensure that all employees understand and are in accordance with the program. This should be clearly communicated as the overriding goal of the audit.
Once the goal of the audit has been determined, it is necessary to find an auditor who is perceived as impartial and objective. This can make conducting the audit internally a troublesome approach because employees are likely to be suspicious of another em...