“If you can't measure it, you can't manage it.” You’ve probably heard this phrase plenty of times in your career. This is particularly true when it comes to marketing your services—if you don’t measure your marketing efforts, how do you know if it’s effective? How do you know if you should execute the same strategy or modify it?  

As business owners, knowing where you invest your time and money is essential to your business’s success. It’s important to know which marketing channels are producing the best results, keep tabs on where your leads are coming from, and improve areas that aren’t achieving desired results. One method to get all this information is by conducting a marketing audit. 

In today’s episode, we'll be talking about the value of doing a self-audit on what you're doing and how you're doing to bring in leads into your business. Let’s go. 

What is a Marketing Audit?

Not sure what kind of content your target audience likes to see on your social media platforms? Your marketing audit can answer that. No clue how to refine your email marketing to improve your open rates? Marketing audits can answer that too. 

A marketing audit is simply a systematic process used to analyze all sides of marketing operations in your business, from your email marketing to your website. It helps you sort through all the marketing activities you’re currently executing while analyzing whether those activities are effective or not. The more information you gather from your marketing audits, the more you get a better understanding of the core systems of your business growth.

Marketing our business is something that’s valuable to us as Ergonomics Consultants because it lets people in our community know that you exist and makes the sale easier. But with so many things to focus on when running a consulting business, it’s so easy to forget to take a step back and check in with your marketing strategy. Conducting marketing audits can benefit your business in multiple ways, such as:

• Conducting marketing audits allows you to figure out which of your marketing efforts are successful and which ones aren’t working so you can make improvements. With the information you have, you can guarantee that you’re making more informed choices on your marketing direction in the future. 

• Your marketing audit will help you make an effective plan for your future marketing strategies. If you encounter any problems, you can easily review the recommendations you get from your previous audit.

• It’s very likely that some of the marketing activities you’re currently investing your time and money in aren’t generating outcomes that you want. Routinely conducting marketing audits will help you prioritize your efforts around those activities that are achieving better results and prevent you from being wasteful with your time and money.

Marketing Audit Checklist

If you’re planning to perform a self-audit, then you’re going to need a template to guide you. One way to ensure that you’re looking in the right direction and gathering data that are relevant to your marketing campaigns is to have a checklist. Doing a self-audit is all about asking yourself the right questions about the marketing side of your business. Of course, there are various ways to do this, but I recommend you look at  the factors listed below to help simplify your marketing audit. Read on to find out what questions you need to ask yourself to keep your marketing efforts on track.

Marketing strategy

This part is about evaluating your overall marketing approach. To find out whether you’re having the right impact on your clients and prospects, ask these questions:

1. Is my marketing strategy working successfully?
   Am I getting the desired outcomes with the approach that I’m implementing?
2. Am I tracking my marketing results?
   How do I evaluate the successes and failures of my strategy?
3. Do I use a referral strategy?
4. Can people find my business online when looking for ergonomic services?
5. Am I resolving customer pain points with my marketing strategy?
6. Am I sharing relevant and consistent content to my audience on my social media channels?
7. Who am I serving?
   What type of clients do I like to serve (e.g. industrial ergonomics, corporate ergonomics, laboratory ergonomics, self-employed, people working from home)?

Marketing channels

Doing a marketing audit is a great opportunity to find out how effective your marketing channels are when it comes to achieving your business goals. To avoid getting too overwhelmed, I strongly suggest that you pick one avenue that you enjoy doing and focus on that first. Some of the questions that you can ask yourself in this section include:

1. Am I relying on word of mouth to bring in customers?
2. Am I using my personal network to make sales?
3. What other valuable content could I invest in (podcasts, blog, video)?
4. Is my business website up-to-date and relevant?
5. Is there any social proof, customer testimonials or success stories on my website?
6. What marketing channels do I need to take out from my strategy?

Lead nurture

While lead generation is an essential aspect of marketing, keep in mind that the people who are part of your email list or visit your website aren’t always going to invest in your services right away. Remember that it can take anywhere between 7 and 13 touches to turn a prospect into a client. Don’t forget to evaluate your lead nurturing avenues as well. Ask yourself these questions:

1. Am I sending emails to my leads to convince them to re-engage?
2. Is the content I produce appropriate for the needs of my clients and prospects during different stages of their customer journey?
3. Am I connecting with my target audience on the right channels?
4. Am I regularly responding to inquiries or engaging with my social media followers?

Final Thoughts

In order for your ergonomic consulting business to continue to thrive, make sure that you regularly review and improve your marketing strategy. To determine what you need to improve in your marketing, conducting a detailed marketing audit is a must. A marketing audit is a really basic part of your marketing approach, which many business owners often overlook, only to suffer the consequences later on. 

Have you conducted a marketing audit recently? If you haven’t, would you consider conducting one in the future?

Still have marketing questions? 

The Accelerate program is your go-to system to get started with marketing your ergonomics services and get to where you want to be. I’ll show you exactly what you need to do to take your marketing (and your consulting business) to the next level! Sign up to the Accelerate membership now so you’ll be the first one to know when I open the next enrollment. 

Are you still on the fence about jumping into office ergonomic assessment? Take this short quiz to find out if it’s right for you.