Small to medium-sized financial services firms, just like all SMEs, often grapple with the challenge of scaling their marketing efforts without overstretching their resources. This is where a fractional CMO becomes transformative.

A fractional CMO serves as your part-time marketing executive, bringing in a wealth of experience and strategic insight, tailored specifically to your firm's needs.

Many small and medium sized firms face frustration in their marketing efforts due to a lack of a cohesive strategy, and so, more often than not, the priority project when working with a fractional CMO is a full marketing audit that will form the basis for the development of a complete marketing strategy.

The marketing audit will identify the most pressing issues and will provide your firm with a roadmap that you can use to prioritize improvements in a sensible and structured way that will ultimately increase your marketing ROI and potential for growth.

So, what does a marketing audit look like?

Marketing Audit Framework

1. Market Analysis

• Market Dynamics: Review of the market conditions, industry trends, and economic environment.

• Competitive Landscape: Analysis of key competitors, their market positioning, strengths, weaknesses, and market share.

• Target Audience: Identification and segmentation of the target market, including demographics, psychographics, and buyer personas.

2. Brand Analysis

• Brand Positioning: Evaluation of the brand’s current positioning in the market and its alignment with the target audience's expectations.

• Brand Messaging: Assessment of consistency and effectiveness of brand messaging across all channels.

• Brand Assets: Review of all brand assets (logo, tagline, brand guidelines) for current relevance and consistency.

3. Digital Presence and SEO

• Website Audit: Usability, content quality, conversion optimization, mobile responsiveness, and speed analysis.

• SEO Performance: Current rankings for relevant keywords, backlink profile analysis, and on-page SEO effectiveness.

• Social Media Presence: Evaluation of the brand’s presence, engagement, and consistency across social media platforms.

4. Content Strategy

• Content Inventory: Catalog of all existing content (blogs, whitepapers, videos, etc.) and its performance.

• Content Gaps and Opportunities: Analysis of content gaps in the market and opportunities for differentiation.

• Distribution Channels: Review of content distribution channels and their effectiveness in reaching the target audience.

5. Advertising and Promotions

• Current Campaigns: Overview of ongoing advertising campaigns, their objectives, channels, and performance.

• Budget Allocation: Analysis of the marketing budget distribution across different channels and its alignment with strategic goals.

• ROI and Effectiveness: Assessment of the return on investment and overall effectiveness of promotional activities.

6. Marketing Technologies

• Martech Stack: Inventory of current marketing technologies in use and their integration.

• Utilization and Impact: Evaluation of how effectively the martech stack is being utilized and its impact on marketing efficiency.

• Gaps and Recommendations: Identification of technology gaps and recommendations for improvements or new tools.

7. Sales and Marketing Alignment

• Lead Generation: Review of the lead generation process and the quality of leads being produced.

• Sales Funnel Efficiency: Analysis of the marketing-to-sales handoff, conversion rates at each stage of the sales funnel.

• Feedback Loops: Assessment of the feedback mechanisms in place between sales and marketing for continuous improvement.

8. People and Agencies

• Team Skills and Roles Assessment: Assess internal marketing team's composition, pinpointing skill gaps and alignment with marketing objectives.

• Agency Relationship Review: Review efficacy of agency partnerships against marketing goals, ROI, and quality of collaboration.

• Integration and Synergy: Identify the effectiveness of collaboration between internal teams and external agencies towards achieving unified marketing objectives.

9. Performance Metrics and KPIs

• Current KPIs: List of current marketing key performance indicators being tracked.

• Data Analysis: Deep dive into the data collected to assess marketing performance against KPIs.

• Recommendations for New KPIs: Suggestions for new or revised KPIs based on audit findings.

This framework provides a structured approach to conducting a comprehensive marketing audit. Each component is designed to uncover insights that will inform the development of a strategic marketing plan, ensuring that efforts are well-targeted and aligned with business objectives.

Let’s Get Started

We specialize in fractional CMO services for small to medium sized financial services companies. We offer all qualifying companies a free 30 minute marketing assessment with the goal of providing you with at least one high-value, actionable insight you can use immediately to level up your marketing. To see if we are a match and book a call, click here.