Everybody keeps telling you how to promote your business in as many innovative ways as possible, with examples of social media marketing and targeted promotional campaigns that can raise the level of your business. The problem here is to find the right kind of marketing tools to ensure that your biz will benefit. Unfortunately, it is not possible to adopt a marketing plan unless you know what its impact and efficacy is going to be. Though there can be certain projections on what the outcomes of a campaign would be like, it would require the combined efforts of a team of marketing professionals and auditors to put together a sound plan for the future. While working on devising a new plan, it is essential that you do a complete and thorough audit of the existing strategy that is in place. This is when you need a full-fledged Marketing Audit to understand the gaps and put you on the right course.
Checking Collaterals
Till now you must have been thinking that collaterals are a term that refers to something that you give to the bank. As far as this kind of audit is concerned, there is no connection with the bank at all. Instead, what needs to be done is a complete inspection of all the collaterals or the material that you have been using for promotion till now. When you ask an audit firm to carry out an appraisal of all the promotional events and activities that you have been undertaking all along, you will find that they ask you to submit copies of the collateral that you have prepared and circulated with your potential customers. There are many things that they will be looking for while inspecting these bits and pieces of material that you have handed out. Some of them might be only available as soft copies and some might be ones that you have printed out and given away.
How Much Is Too Much?
This is always a problem and a tricky thing to solve. One has a budget for promotion and marketing and hopes that there will be no expense beyond this budget. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. When an audit firm is checking your material, they are also trying to find out whether the budgeting that you have done for the entire business development is adequate and appropriate. It would be necessary for you to justify the amount of money that you are spending on promotional activities and materials.