Marketing Audit

Apr 8, 2009 | Marketing, Uncategorized

The following is a letter published in the Journal of thre Australian Institute of Company Directors in their December 08 Annual report. http://www.companydirectors.com.au.

Very few businesses make a serious attempt at an audit of the returns from marketing expenditure. Why not? in many comapnies it is one of the largest items on the P&L, and it is certainly amongst the most important.

The Editor

Company Director

editor@companydirectors.com.au

 

9th September, 2008.

 

Dear Sir,

I refer to the article entitled “Pulling in the belt” in the current issue of the magazine.

 

Amongst other issues, in the article Mr. Corrigan refers correctly to the temptation for businesses to cut marketing expenditure when things get tight. Generally senior management sees the advertising budget as a fertile field for cutting, and it often is, but the complication is that “marketing” is a far wider question than just the advertising budget, and it goes to the heart of the commercial sustainability of the enterprise.

 

As directors, we spend substantial and increasing amounts of time managing the shape of the accounts of an enterprise, squeezing out other value adding activities that we should engaging in. We generally spend very little time on any sort of detailed review of the basis for marketing decision making that involves the wide range of resource allocation and management decisions that are driven by the competitive environment.

 

I speculate that this is because the accounting function is dealing with quantitative data,   and therefore relatively easy to measure whilst marketing is more qualitative, and far harder to measure, and further outside the comfort zone of many in senior management and sitting on boards, than are the accounts.

 

In many businesses, perhaps most businesses, the largest asset class is the intangibles, usually only crystallized on the sale of a business, but nevertheless, the core of the sustainability of the business. Why is it then that we rarely analyse in any depth the building blocks of these intangible assets, the things that will generate success in the future. 

As the guardians of shareholder interests, it should be incumbent on directors to spend more time considering the future of the business, not just reacting to the past, and a ‘Marketing Audit” should be on the agenda. 

 

Yours sincerely

 

 

Allen Roberts

FAICD

No longer masses

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You can only market to people who are willing participants, so the marketing task is to identify  that group of people to whom you can deliver something “remarkable”, to use the now classic description of Seth Godin

learn from sport

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We accept this as normal in sport, why is it so hard to get the same idea accepted in a business?

The scalpel or the axe?

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The temptation under pressure is to do something, expend a little brain time and make sure it is the right thing.

Is the customer always right?

Apr 6, 2009 | Demand chains, Management, Marketing, Strategy

 

The most difficult word in the English language for a small business owner is “no”. In most cases, it needs practice, the customer,(or worse) the potential customer is not always right, at least, right for you.

Be careful, be consistent,  be firm, and know which customers add more than the take, not just from the cash account, but from the energy, commitment, and time of your biggest resource, your people.