How to increase your roi by doing your own marketing audit

When was the last time you took a bird’s eye view of your business’ own marketing activities? You know a top-down objective review of what all that money and time is being invested in?

If the answer is “um, not in a long while”, or “never”, don’t worry, you’re not alone. To most entrepreneurs just the idea can feel overwhelming. What needs to be changed? What should continue? Where are the holes? How should these things be prioritized?

I’m going to help you simplify this - by using a basic framework that I use when I’m working with a new company to calculate their, what I call, “marketing baseline”. Instead of just adding more and more marketing on top of what you already have, it can be far more profitable to take a step back and look at the bigger picture to establish your own marketing baseline.

Here’s how you do that:

Step One: Make a list of your entire marketing inventory. This is a list of everything your business currently has or does to attract, convert or retain new business. It doesn’t matter whether it’s something done in-house, or by an outside agency - this list is a comprehensive one, bullet pointed in no particular order.

Here’s an example

Website
Sales presentations
Print ad
Facebook page
Instagram page
Company linked in page
Office signage
Public speaking
Social media campaigns

etc

Step Two: Now separate that list into two list categories: The first is a list of all your Marketing Assets that your business has (Your Marketing Engine) This is everything you company uses repeatedly as a marketing tool - from a website, or websites, to your social media pages, special reports, books, webinars, landing pages, blog articles, published articles, sales scripts, sales presentations, sales funnels, marketing collateral such as brochures, flyers etc - anything tangible that your business uses multiple times to assist you in marketing your business. These marketing assets are what I call your marketing engine - your marketing engine is, just like the engine in your car, the thing that drives your business forward. The more powerful your engine, the faster your business will go.

Step Three: The second category is everything else - Namely Your Daily, Weekly and Monthly Marketing Activities (Your Marketing Gas)

This is typically what you will be investing most of your marketing budget in - your advertising campaigns that are used to drive traffic and leads to your business. Things like social media campaigns, billboard advertising, print ads, etc. These regular marketing activities that you pay for every month comprise what I call your marketing gas - because they power your marketing engine. And just like gas in your car, once you’ve paid for these campaigns - there’s typically no residual value - your business got the response from the campaign.

It’s really important to separate ALL your company’s marketing into these two categories - it’s either a marketing asset that forms part of your marketing engine and can be used again and again to help your company attract, convert and retain new business - or it’s disposable marketing gas - that once used, is gone.

Most companies have 95% of their marketing weighted into the marketing gas category. That’s why they’re burning through so much marketing budget - because they don’t have the marketing assets - the marketing engine to help them attract, convert and retain new business and maximize every lead. If you’re looking for more detail on this, I dive more in-depth into the subject of a marketing engine and marketing gas in my book the Client Stampede - there’s a whole chapter written on it.

However just using this simple categorization to view all your marketing activity through - marketing engine or marketing gas, is going to help you increase your ROI. For example if an advertising campaign isn’t working, could it be because it’s not linked to your marketing engine? Could it be that it is linked to your marketing engine, but that particular component - maybe an automated webinar, or a special report, isn’t doing its job in actually converting the lead?

Doing a marketing audit on your own business to establish your marketing baseline is going to give you that missing clarity. Why aren’t we getting more clients? Here’s . Why aren’t our client’s buying more from us? Here’s why. What aren’t more people calling our office and booking consults - here’s why. Now you’re armed with the information to make the right changes to grow your business with.