The Marketing Audit

Marketing in the 21st century has become a challenging endeavor for small business owners. One thought leader described the new environment as follows, "There is a huge evolution in the world of marketing as traditional forms of media are decreasing in effectiveness and are being replaced by new media." In a recent survey by a team of researchers, two-thirds of survey respondents (business owners) felt they were overwhelmed by advertising services that had little or no relevance to their daily marketing and sales needs. At the same time, the introduction of new technologies such as digital video recorders, smartphones, video-on-demand, online webcasting, and social media has allowed consumers the ability to bypass advertising messages based upon their personal preferences rendering current accounting and marketing audit activities ineffective.