Marketing is an ongoing experiment—one you want to get better and better at over time. The thing is, most small business owners really struggle with marketing: having a plan, keeping up with it, knowing what works…shall we go on? So, when it comes time to think about how you can build on this year’s experiment to refine next year’s marketing strategy, well, you'd be right in assuming most people just keep on keepin’ on with whatever it was they even managed to do.

But what if you shouldn’t just keep on keepin’ on because your marketing isn’t working? Well, you only figure that out if you take the time to audit what you’ve been doing—and the end of the calendar year is a great time to do just that. So, if you want to make sure you’re doing what you can to continually get better at marketing, this is your sign to do a year-end marketing audit and use what you learn to plan your marketing strategy for next year. And you know we’re not going to leave you to figure it out all on your own—read on to learn more about why doing one is important, what you have to gain if you do it, and get a checklist to help you complete yours.

Why doing a year-end marketing audit is important

A marketing audit is like taking a magnifying glass to your marketing efforts. And if this sounds a bit scary to you, you definitely should be doing one! Because auditing your marketing allows you to see what worked, what didn't, and what can be improved—giving you valuable insights into your overall marketing performance, helping you identify areas of strength and weakness, and make data-driven decisions for the upcoming year. It also provides an opportunity to reflect on your goals, measure your progress, and course-correct if necessary.

By investing just a couple hours of time and effort into a year-end marketing audit, you can get what you need to make really smart marketing decisions moving forward. So even if the thought of doing one makes you feel uncomfortable (or judged or like “oh my god, what am I going to find?”)—again—this is your sign to push through and do it. Why? For a couple of reasons. First, it allows you to optimize your marketing budget by identifying which tactics and channels are delivering the best ROI (read: you can potentially spend less and make more). Second, it helps you understand your target audience better, ensuring that your marketing efforts are tailored to their needs and preferences (read: attract customers who are way more ready to buy from you…and sooner). Lastly, a marketing audit enables you to stay ahead of the competition by identifying new trends and opportunities in your industry (read: the least lazy marketer wins).

But also, the effectiveness of your marketing impacts every part of your business downstream—we’ll just leave this right here.

How to do a year-end marketing audit

Now that we’ve hopefully more than inspired you to block some time on your calendar for an audit, it’s time to talk you through it. Because—sure—you could go super deep and spend an entire day digging through and evaluating your marketing, but who are we kidding?! You run a small business and don’t have an entire day to dedicate to anything. So here are our top tips to help you check this project off your list. Note: The time constraints we suggest might seem tight, but that’s only because we know you’ve got to move fast or it won’t get done; if you have more time to spend on each item, please do!

15 minutes: Review your goals and objectives for the current year and think about the ones you accomplished, the ones you are still working on, what just fell to the wayside, and what goals you want to set and/or carry over to the next year.

15 minutes: Take a look at your customer persona(s) and make updates if you need. You can also decide you want to take this further and survey your customers and clients to do more research to work off.

15 minutes: Review your KPIs/marketing metrics. Where do the numbers say you were having success? Where do the numbers say you were on the struggle bus?

15 minutes: Take a look at the money you spent on marketing for the current year and look to your KPI/metrics to decide whether it was money well spent or not. For the things you feel like worked, brainstorm 1-2 ways you think you can make that money go even farther. For the things you feel like fell flat, brainstorm ways you can reallocate that money into something else.

20 minutes: Audit your website. Click through everything. Read everything. Test your forms and checkout process. Basically, make sure everything is up to date and in working order—and write down anything you want or need to change. If you want to dive deeper here, run SEO reports on your website (Ubersuggest has a good free one), review your Google Analytics, and scope out your reports in Google Search Console.

20 minutes: Audit your brand. And by this we mean check your branding in all the places you’ve “put” it. Places like your website, social media accounts, profiles on different websites, etc. Make sure the correct logos are being used and that any copy is up to date and written in your brand voice.

20 minutes x however many: Audit each of your marketing channels (read: the places you do your marketing). Dive into any channel-specific KPIs you tracked, go down a bit of a rabbit whole on the insights available to you on each platform, and evaluate the approach you took on each. Then take a step back and just listen to your gut and what it says about what you did and can do better. Take notes, brainstorm content ideas, and make decisions about where your time is best spent.

10 minutes x however many: Take a look at each of the marketing campaigns you ran this calendar year. Which ones where a success and things you should think about replicating next year? Which ones flopped and can either just be trashed never to be seen again or maybe with some tweaks can be given another go?

Marketing audit checklist for small business owners

Prefer a quick checklist? Here you go!

• Review your marketing goals and objectives
• Review your customer personas
• Review your KPIs
• Review your marketing budget
• Audit your website
• Audit your brand
• Audit each of your marketing channel(s)
• Review the marketing campaigns you ran

Creating next year’s marketing strategy for your small business

After you’ve gone through the exercise of auditing your marketing, you’re in a great spot to take what you’ve learned and create next year’s marketing strategy. But before you go and worry this part is going to be a ton of work, don’t—because creating a marketing strategy for your small business is easy with Enji! It only takes a few minutes to answer a quick questionnaire and Enji will create a marketing strategy customized to your business. From there you can review your marketing strategy and make refinements based on what you learned from your audit.

Pro-tip: Make this an annual habit because this is how you make sure you’re getting better at marketing every single year. But if you need more convincing, here’s more about why you need a new marketing strategy every year.

A year-end marketing audit is an essential process for small businesses (you!) to evaluate their marketing efforts, identify areas for improvement, and set the stage for success in the new year. So make the time todo an audit and refine your marketing strategy—and you’ll be setting yourself up for continued growth!