The (2nd) biggest marketing audit mistake
The biggest mistake companies make when it comes to marketing audits is not doing one. But let’s assume you are “smarter than the average bear” and are already planning an audit.
In that case, the biggest pitfall you will encounter is the desire to conduct your market in-house. Yes, you have great marketers on your team. And, yes, no one knows the ins and outs of your system as well as they do.
Yet there are good reasons not to do your own audit. Here’s why you want to outsource your marketing audit:
1) Familiarity leads to blindness
There is such a thing as being too close to a problem. Your marketing team can grow so used to looking at your campaigns, that they don’t really see them anymore. When you bring in a consultant to do your marketing audit, you are getting a fresh pair of eyes who can look at things from a new perspective.
In marketing, where the look of a button or the wording of a headline can make or break a landing page, you need that fresh set of eyes.
2) People take things personally
Marketers are passionate about their work; they can pour their heart and soul into crafting a campaign. Of course, that means they also look at their campaigns and see all their hard work, not the campaign problems. An outsourced consultant, on the other hand, isn’t emotionally tied to the campaigns and is able to provide a more objective point of view.
3) Your team is too busy to do it right
Marketing teams in growing companies very rarely have time to do a thorough marketing audit. That means, even where there are the best intentions, the audits don’t get done. Worse, when audits are conducted in-house, people often try to save time by assuming something is working right without thoroughly checking it. That means campaigns are not reviewed from top to bottom, which means details get overlooked – and problems get missed.
An outside consultant avoids these pitfalls because they have one purpose and one purpose only: to do a thorough marketing audit for your company.
Get a fresh perspective
In the non-profit world, it’s common for a consultant to be brought in to audit the finances. You need the same outside point of view in your marketing. After all, your future customers all have an “outside point of view” – you don’t want them to see something your team is missing.
(And, yes, I do marketing audits – you can contact me here.)
Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash.