Advertising and promotion audit program

A marketing audit is a systematic examination of the way a business is being marketed. Marketing audits will show business owners and marketing staff where marketing efforts are successful, a marketing audit may also show the failures so the necessary changes can be made for your business to thrive. Businesses are like living, breathing entities, and their marketing is that air they breathe. In order to keep your marketing in tip-top shape, there is a high volume of preparation and planning involved called a marketing plan.

And, in order to determine your current marketing state, one must complete a marketing audit. Though it may sound intimidating, marketing audits are good for your business. In this post, we will break down exactly what a marketing audit is, why marketing audits are important, and how your audit can be carried out.

The marketing audit will systematically analyze, as well as evaluate and interpret both the internal and external marketing environment; its goals, and the means by which the business will reach these goals. A marketing audit will look at what your business wants out of its marketing strategy, and determine how best to get there. An audit is typically a prerequisite to a marketing strategy or when a problem arises that makes a change to the marketing plan necessary.

Even if you already have a marketing strategy in place, marketing audits are still extremely useful. They can benefit the business in multiple ways, including but not limited to:.

Ultimately, a marketing audit can help inform the most crucial decisions about marketing the upper management of your business will ever make. Businesses typically examine three major components during a marketing audit: the external environment, the internal environment, and the current marketing strategy.

Within these three categories, seven identified types of marketing audits exist. Each audit will be unique to the company it is performed on. After all, companies have different goals, products, and industries that will affect their reasons for conducting a marketing audit in the first place. However, the performance of each marketing audit can be broken down into three phases or stages. In this phase, the company will first determine who will perform the audit.

Companies here have two options: self-audit, and outside audit. In a self-audit, the audit is performed by employees of the company chosen by management. The marketing team can perform the marketing audit, unless management believes this will create issues with objectivity. In this case, an outside department may complete the audit.

A self-audit can also be performed by high-level executives or management, or, in the case of much larger companies, an organization may have a dedicated audit department. With an outside audit, the company will hire the services of an outside auditor.

This is obviously a more reliable means of running an audit, as the outside auditor is guaranteed to be objective. The auditor could be an independent practitioner or a company that specializes in marketing audits. The second part of Phase 1 is the timing of the marketing audit. Essentially, when will the audit start, and how often will it be performed?

For your business to reap the benefits of a the audit, it must be performed regularly or periodically. Markets change frequently, which necessitates that marketing strategies change just as frequently. In order to make effective changes rather than blind ones, audits must be performed regularly.

The third objective of Phase 1 is to establish the scope and objectives of the marketing audit. This is essential to properly guide and direct the audit team. Ensuring that everyone involved understands the objective of the audit will ensure that every member of the team is on the same page. It is also important to identify every stakeholder in the audit, whether direct or indirect. The final part of Phase 1 is to determine the methodology of the audit.

This is where the exact method by which the auditing team will proceed is decided. This is the phase where the magic happens, so to speak. This phrase looks vastly different, depending on the type of audit, methodology and goals of the company. However, we can break audit proper down into three basic steps. The first step is data gathering and collection. This will be the most tedious and time-consuming part of the audit. The watchword of data gathering is research, research, research. Internal audit should remind management of this important control consideration during contract review to help build accountability into the process.

The budgeting process is the most important process and also presents the biggest risk. Reviewing the budgeting process and determining if procedures are followed are very important.

The budget is a key control in monitoring advertising costs. For example, tracing media placement confirmation information back to the budget will help determine if the budget process is reasonable, controlled, and used to monitor costs. However, some budgets may be developed as a lump-sum percent of sales from previous periods based upon industry norms. Many marketing and advertising functions will generate financial analysis to both cost justify expenditures and support ongoing decisions for additional campaigns.

This analysis and the related assumptions should be reviewed considering the results will naturally tend to justify the overall function, budget, and headcount. In addition, there may be conflict of interest issues with external agencies considering it is not uncommon for agency personnel to be hired by the organization to manage or implement programs. Advertising is a relationship driven business and selection of service providers an often subjective decision based upon creative factors and difficulty in measuring effectiveness of promotional efforts.

Meet with advertising management team to discuss overall strategy, directives, and scope of programs. Create product development process maps. This may create a scope consideration to ensure critical components of product promotion are incorporated or risks adequately managed. Note: see Appendix A — Control Considerations as a guide to customizing review to applicable process es 6.

Discuss and review procedures for verifying or auditing print and sound radio media. Audit Objective: To ensure that new and existing promotions are authorized, lawful, and accurate including related expenditures. Do measures exist to ensure sales, marketing and promotional staff are trained about products, promotions, and lawfulness of advertising efforts?

Determine appropriateness of controls surrounding analysis, cost justification, and approval of sponsorship arrangements. Consider in light of organizational goals, related budgets, and decision criteria. Physical security in work area b. Logical access security for workstations and related applications, databases, etc. Document shredding and retention procedures and related policies d.

Data transmission encryption where appropriate especially with agency and publisher partners e. Adequate confidentiality measures for print outputs and meeting rooms, etc. Are employees trained on ethics and code of conduct mandates? Are key staff involved in product advertising and promotion subject to fidelity bonding or commercial confidentiality clauses in their employment contracts? Document narrative of process for ensuring adequate protection of intellectual property.

Document management controls around the product develop process. Authority levels and audit trails should be evident. Posting Komentar. Internal Auditor Indonesia. Audit Work Program 0 komentar. Posting Lebih Baru Beranda.