Any organization in its activities strives to achieve the desired end results. This can be achieved only if a concrete plan of action is built that will allow us to carry out our plans on the basis of a specific set of specific measures.
As practice shows, it is not always possible to realize the plan as it would be desirable, therefore it is worth considering the facts that indicate the state of affairs and regularly adjust the planned plan. To this end, a marketing control system has been developed. Thanks to this system, managers can identify errors in marketing activities and make the necessary decisions on their localization or timely change of strategic plans of the enterprise.
This article will talk about what types of marketing control exist, about their specificity and methods of its implementation.
The essence of control in marketing
It is important to realize that thanks to the monitoring of marketing indicators, the management team is able to avoid fatal mistakes. Marketing planning and control pursues the main goal - to timely make a number of necessary managerial decisions when deviating from previously defined parameters of the enterprise.
Means of control is the analysis of:
- indicators of sales opportunities;
- the ratio of marketing costs and sales;
- market share;
- customer attitude to products.
Types of control in marketing
Marketing control in market activity is divided into three types:
1. Implementation of plans for the year.
2. Monitoring profitability indicators.
3. Strategic control.
Monitoring market research performance indicators for annual plans is to regularly monitor current results and efforts. The essence of such tracking allows you to make sure whether the planned profit and sales figures are achieved.
Marketing control of profitability indicators allows you to identify costs and actual profitability of the producing goods, market segments, sales by territory, trade channels and volumes of various orders.
Strategic control makes it possible to analyze the implementation of tasks, programs and strategies of the organization. This control is carried out thanks to the marketing audit, which is a systematic, impartial, integrated and regular monitoring of the marketing environment, as well as its tasks, operational activities and organization strategies.
The strategic organization of marketing control has the goal of identifying new marketing opportunities and the organization's existing or potential problems. And also thanks to strategic control, recommendations are made about an action plan and prospects in the marketing activities of the enterprise.
An important fact is that the control task in marketing is also a detailed analysis of the return of goods sold, identifying the reasons. After the analysis, the organization’s action plan is necessarily developed, thanks to which the repetition of cases of product return can be eliminated.
The importance of the analytical aspect in the control of marketing activities
The marketing control of the enterprise is also largely based on the analytical aspect. Strengthening analysis in marketing activities should be considered as one of the directions in strengthening marketing in general.
Control of marketing activities completes the cycle of managerial actions in marketing and at the same time begins a new cycle of planning the actions of the enterprise in marketing activities. Those firms that monitor current and strategic results achieve incredibly great success in marketing activities.
Situational analysis in marketing management
In the enterprise management system, control is very closely linked to reporting and accounting. A huge benefit to the marketing management and control over the performance of the organization brings a situational analysis.
The purpose of the situation analysis is to provide the heads of individual departments and the main management with a "photo portrait" of the real situation in which the organization is at the time of the analysis.
Situational analysis in its entirety reflects all the activities of the organization and, as a result, should lead to the development of new goals and the assessment of their methods of effective achievement, as well as the adoption of important decisions and the development of the necessary appropriate strategies. Situational analysis is an effective controlling method for the organization’s position in the market.
Properly conducted, it helps the management team to get rid of possible illusions and soberly look at the true situation of phenomena at the enterprise, to identify new, promising areas of the main economic activity.
If this enterprise has representative offices, branches or a commercial network of agents, including those abroad, then a situational analysis of a slightly modified or complete program should be carried out by the management of the sales network.
Critical Marketing Assessment
Monitoring the marketing activities of an enterprise is also determined by a critical assessment of marketing. Since the level of marketing efficiency is not always based solely on current performance, many enterprises critically evaluate the effectiveness of their marketing in general, that is, according to the developed system, authorized persons carry out strategic control.
Marketing Critical Tools
There are two tools for critically evaluating an organization’s marketing activities:
1. Questioning of the management team.
2. A comprehensive assessment based on marketing audit.
When questioning the management team, attributes are identified that determine the strategic effectiveness of the organization’s marketing activities.
These attributes include:
- focus on consumer demand;
- organizational integration of marketing activities;
- the adequacy and relevance of marketing information;
- the level of effectiveness of marketing management.
Marketing audit
The marketing control system includes a marketing audit, thanks to which it is possible to identify the area in which problems exist, as well as identify new ways to solve them. After identifying the problem areas, a list of recommendations is made, which allows you to develop a plan for effective improvement of marketing activities. Thus, there is a comprehensive and independent verification of the marketing macro and the target strategies of the enterprise.
Ways to implement a marketing audit
An audit is implemented using:
- independent audit;
- audit involving higher organizations;
- involvement of independent groups for the audit.
The most effective way to implement a marketing audit is to involve independent consultants, since independent auditing can be insufficiently objective, which may entail pathogenic solutions to the difficulties encountered in various parts of the enterprise and marketing control itself may become ineffective.
Marketing Audit Questions
Marketing audit answers a number of questions:
- whether the work of personnel involved in the trade in manufactured products is productive;
- what exactly does the company make money from;
- Are the promising actions to find new customers;
- Are current transactions of the organization with customers profitable;
- if the organization has subsidiaries or branches, then how effective are their work and in which region the best indicators of profitability and profitability;
- whether the actions that stimulate the marketing of products are effective;
- Is the organization effectively using the resources it owns?
Audit of marketing is not just a check of the marketing department of the organization, but is an independent assessment of the current state of affairs of the organization as a whole and indicators of the position of the company on the market, analyzing its competitiveness.
A marketing audit is necessary for any organization, because as a result of its conduct, the management team receives objective information regarding the affairs of the enterprise, about bottlenecks, options for solving existing problems and determining the algorithm of actions in case of any problems.
Marketing Audit Features
There are 4 features of marketing audit:
Firstly, it widely covers indicators in marketing activity, that is, not only problem areas of the enterprise are considered, but also the main areas of the organization’s activity, due to which it is possible to draw up a more effective marketing control plan.
Secondly, the marketing audit is systematic and allows you to regularly study the micro and macro environment of the organization’s marketing activities.
Thirdly, the independence of the audit, which allows you to assess the actual state of things in the organization.
Fourth, regular periodicity, which allows not only to solve the problems that have arisen, but also to prevent the emergence of a crisis situation in the organization.
Marketing Audit Elements
Marketers use the following series of elements in marketing audit:
- balance sheet assessment (liquidity, structure, quality indicator of assets, capital dynamics, solvency);
- analysis of the cost structure of the organization;
- analysis of reporting profit organization;
- analysis of profitability;
- analysis of economic security;
- analysis of the reliability of operations in trade;
- building a chronology of the business scheme;
- analysis of the effectiveness of product groups;
- analysis of the movement of stocks of goods;
- A comparative analysis of supplies to warehouses and sales;
- analysis of the rhythm of supply and sales.
Stages of marketing audit
Marketing audit consists of the following stages:
1. Assessment of the current state of information support. The structure of this assessment also includes an analysis of the customer base. And also a very important component of the audit of information support is the assessment of:
- sales (by managers, by customers, by assortment, by region, division);
- movement and availability of marketable products;
- the effectiveness of the implementation of business strategies and the systematization of financial data;
- competitors.
2. Planning, and specifically the level of strategic planning, the state of operational planning, the use of financing principles;
3. SWOT analysis.
4. Determination of the company's labor efficiency, which depends on the labor of the departments that display and analyze the detected current problems:
- on purchases;
- sales;
- in accounting and finance;
- for storage facilities;
- on logistics;
- on marketing activities;
- through sales channels.
5. Analysis and study of the interaction of structural units. The frequent lack of coordinated actions in the interaction is a clear cause of not only errors in activities and customer service, but also slows down information processes within the organization.
Marketing Audit Result
The result of a marketing audit is:
- Description of the enterprise marketing information system;
- development of recommendations for the localization of identified discrepancies.
An additional result of marketing audit is the determination of the basic processes in the organization, which can be laid in the basis of competitive advantage.
Summing up, it can be noted that marketing control is the way to achieve success and achieve goals with periodic identification of pathogenic processes in the micro and macro environment of the enterprise.