Growing the top line with a marketing audit

A marketing audit enables you to review your company's strengths and weaknesses, priorities and market segments, internal make up and personality as a basis for developing a successful marketing strategy for the future.

The best way to conduct a marketing audit is to ask all your key employees to complete an independent review along the following lines:

Profile of the company
What is your understanding of the nature of the company, its situation, and its mission?
Personal profile
What is your role in the company and why do you like working here?
Trends that affect the company
What is happening in the business environment that can affect the company?
The customer base
Who is the company serving and how? What do our customers want?
Trends that affect the customers
What will our customers want in the future and how might this differ from what they want right now?
Competition
What is the competition and what are they doing to meet customers' needs?
Customer service
What is good customer service and how can we improve it?
Key customers
Typically, a large proportion of our income comes from a relatively small number of customers. How did we acquire them, how profitable are they, and what are we doing to retain them?
Current marketing activities
What customers are we currently targeting and how?
Recruiting and training
What kind of people does the company need to meet the challenges of tomorrow?
E-commerce
How should we plan to develop our marketing to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the net?
And finally...
If there were one thing you would do differently in marketing, what would it be?

Once the separate reviews are completed you can collate the returns and try to understand what implications they have for your future marketing strategy. If our experience with clients is anything to go by you will be pleasantly surprised by the insights of your employees, and the pointers they provide for your future direction.

Easy Accountancy

Easy Accountancy is the UK’s only national specialist accountancy firm for freelancers, sole traders and small businesses

If you’ve just started out as a freelancer or run a small business, you’ll definitely need a small accountant and there are plenty of options out there! However, most accountants will charge you every time you get in touch with them; for every phone call, email or meeting.

We don’t want our clients to be scared to contact us and potentially lose out on valuable tax saving advice. It's even more important when you first start out as you really need to set your business up in the best way possible. As a start up you’ll probably have loads of questions and will really appreciate the fact you can call your accountant as many times as you like without the fear of racking up large bills.

Our low cost, all-inclusive fixed-fee accountancy service includes unlimited access to your own accountant throughout the year, so you never need to worry about picking up the phone and then receiving a bill afterwards for the privilege, and covers all your business and personal tax affairs needs. All clients additionally receive:

Help to run your business in the most tax efficient way possible
Help so you can understand the taxes you need to pay
Advice on the best ways to manage your business
Updates and reminders so you'll never miss a deadline
Help to ensure you maximise your tax allowances
Provide proactive tax advice throughout the year

We’ve saved our clients up to half on their accountancy bills – if you’d like a quote, click on the quote me button to the right of this page. Alternatively, call us on 0500 234111 / 01442 275767 or email jessica@easyaccountancy.co.uk

We also have a money-back service guarantee - all of your telephone calls and emails will be answered on the same day, or we will refund your monthly fee (another first within the accountancy world).

To appoint us as your accountants, please fill in our Client Agreement Form online.

If you are a contractor working through a limited company then visit SJD Accountancy (our sister company) who specialise in providing tax advice and accountancy services for Limited Company contractors. You can also keep up to date by following the SJD Accountancy Twitter

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