The Marketing Audit: An Opportunity for Social Media Marketing
Social Media is a great opportunity for marketing and one which provides many new ways of thinking about and organising marketing efforts. However, social media can also be hard to grasp; objectives and strategies might be difficult to handle. The widespread possibilities of social media marketing also make it a challenge to identify key strategic issues and possible problem areas.
For a successful social media marketing campaign it is hence important to be aware of the many challenges ahead by using a marketing audit. The benefits of extending a traditional marketing audit to the social media marketing realm are several, among other things, the audit will answer to these questions:
- Where are we now?
- How did we get there?
- Where are we heading?
The answers to these questions depend on analysis of the internal and external environments of a business. Naturally, the analysis of a social media marketing campaign benefits from a clear mission statement since that defines the boundaries of the environmental scan and helps decisions regarding strategy and objectives.
An internal audit concentrates on those areas that are under the control of ‘the marketing management’ e.g. the person/s who are running the project or managing the marketing efforts. An external audit on the other hand focuses on those forces beyond control. The result of a marketing audit for your social media effort should be seen as a key determinant of the direction of the business and may give rise to refined business or mission statements.
Alongside a marketing audit, a business may do audits of other areas such as production or finance. The coordination of and integration of various audits during time produces a composite business plan in which social media marketing could be led to play a large role. Clearly a business plan built upon the experience of multiple marketing audits coupled together with production, finance and HR have implications for the whole company and might be a tool for the marketing manager to successfully integrate different departments into the social media marketing effort.
Image by infoaestethics
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
It’s definitely a good idea, no matter what kind of social media marketing you plan to employ, to have a clear set of goals about what you hope to accomplish with these tools. These goals may evolve over time with new opportunities and challenges, but a plan for using social media will give you a starting point and a way to decide what’s working and what isn’t.
Indeed, especially since social media marketing contains such a vast array of possibilites and choices, it’s all the more important to stay organised and know where you are going.