Tradtionally these internal factors have been referred to as the 5Ms  – men, money, minutes, machinery and materials. The purpose being that you can structure the anlaysis of an organisation strengths and weaknesses by grouping relevant factors together.

Let’s make a start… well money – that would be financial resources. Men – that would be skilled people. Then it starts to get hard as marketing students and practitioners begin to spend more time worrying about what heading its under than the factor itself!

Given that the deliverable of a marketing audit is to supply a SWOT analysis you need to focus on the factors that determine these strengths and weaknnesses – not the headings.

An alternative approach is to amplify this. Assessing relevant internal factors can be simply grouped into three categories:

- Capability

- Capacity

- Contraints

Capability

Things an organsisational does well, not so well, can and needs improve upon. These factors can easilty be idenfitied as a strength or weakness.

Capacity

This is whether an organisation has the available time, assets, people, money, etc.  to carry out current objectives and future opportunities.

Constraints

Whether there are any things stopping the organisation doing what it needs to such as financial constraints, existing commitments, etc.

The end point for this analysis is typcially three situations:

- We want to… but do not know how to

- We want to… but do not have the resources

- We want to… but other things are stopping us

So simple, yet so powerful.  Trust in an individual can convince a potential buyer into a purchase that marketing efforts cannot.

These individuals are often known as Advocates. They are so powerful. This is why Advocates are top of the relationship marketing ladder.

Depending on your source they say an individual will tell up to 8 people of a positive experience, whereas a negative experience is shared with up to 13. We all like to tell tales of woe – its human nature!

Imagine a 5 deep multiplier of bad experience, 135 tales of woe. That’s a lot of negative tittle-tattle.

In the old days (pre-Facebook) it would take time for this negative tittle-tattle to grab hold. As a brand owner you would have time to turn things round, stop the flow of negativity.

Not anymore – negative word of mouth spreads like wildfire on social networks. The desire consumers have to continually post something means tales of woe are juicy tit bits to share at the cost of your brand reputation.

There are upsides; word of mouth marketing can be hugely successful. Just Google the top 10 viral campaigns to see examples of this.

The other dynamic is that consumers are the new commentators. This means that no brand is exempt from word of mouth whether they like it or not.

The key question is who is managing your online reputation?

The same principle applies to marketing plans. These are directional decisions a business will take that will often have an end in mind, or several to be determined. These decisions should always start with the current position.

In marketing theory establishing the current position is achieved through what is called a Marketing Audit.

There are issues with that term – it smacks of a forensic, very detailed analysis of an organisation’s marketing activity and the environment it operates within … well that’s what it is…

I can see an issue with the term for marketers – “this will highlight where I’m not doing my job?” I can imagine a marketing student saying to their boss “I need to do a marketing audit as part of my CIM assignment – you know, the one going to the marketing director!”

In reality the students that have used the audit, whilst at first are overawed by the effort involved, soon understand the value of creating the baseline for any marketing decisions. Furthermore once the baselines are set, objectives can be created that are realistic and that can also be measured.

So a marketing audit is a vital part of marketing planning but itself needs some repositioning so the true value of its worth can be appreciated.

I’m sure as time progresses and textbooks are revised a new term will be developed.  Some simple like ‘a baseline for success’ works for me or even simpler – “where are we now”