Audit your marketing

There are external factors – government regulations, laws, economic health and more – that can affect how your business and marketing performs.

There are also internal factors – the people you employ, the resources you have access to, your cash flow.

Both external and internal factors are really important. You have less control over external factors but you have the ability to understand and adapt.

You have a great deal of control over internal factors. So those are areas you can control and change.

In this lesson, we will mainly be looking at internal audits where you can effect change. The marketing and brand audits we will cover are about understanding your situation and managing it.

If you are interested in a deep dive into external factors that can impact a business, a good place to start is a PESTEL(E) analysis.

This looks at macro or external forces in society such as:

P – political
E – economic
S – social
T – technological
E – environmental
L – legal
E – ethical

Each of these areas can have significant impact on your business. If you’re interested in exploring this further, we have included links below to some resources to help you do this analysis.

But for most marketing analysis, the key area to focus is where you can make the biggest changes so we will be looking at SWOT Analysis and TOWS Analysis.

If you’re interested in a PESTEL analysis, we have added a few links below with some handy templates.