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Marketing Assessments: 16 Questions to Ask

A marketing assessment for your association or other type of nonprofit organization involves a thorough examination and evaluation of your marketing practices and results. Here are several key questions to help you attain a “quick read” on how well your staff and organization employs marketing principles.

…About Marketing Planning

Is there a written marketing plan that articulates goals, strategies, and tactics in terms of time, people, and money?
Is the marketing plan shared throughout the organization?
Does the plan include all the critical pieces? Is the plan thorough?

Sounds obvious, but many forgo the annual practice of developing a written marketing plan. Admittedly, this requires a hefty dose of discipline. But you can’t achieve a goal without first articulating it, identifying where you are, and determining how to get there.

Writing down your goal allows your marketing team to easily share information and avoid unforeseen breakdowns such as when the marketing department initiates a promotional campaign but forgets to tell call center staff, who find themselves deluged with questions.

. . . About Marketing Research

What do our customers want and need, and why?
What is our procedure for capturing, storing, and updating customer information?
How do we collect, analyze, and act on competitive information?

Your staff should be able to articulate a customer profile for each product or service and explain the want or need each product or service satisfies for each customer type.

. . . About Customers

Who are the primary customer groups that purchase from us today?
Which customers are the most profitable?

The correct answer isn’t necessarily “those who pay us the most per order.” Why? Because, if tracked, you may discover customers who don’t prefer big-ticket items may routinely spend more on multiple purchases over time.

Customer groups are defined by geography, type of industry, job title, type of training, purchasing pattern, demographics, or other significant characteristics. Understanding how your product or service fulfills a customer want or need and how wants or needs vary by customer type allows you to prioritize the market. It also helps you find the largest consumer groups that are most likely to buy repeatedly.

. . . About Cost and Price

What is our unit cost for each product or service?
How does our pricing compare to similar products or services?

Without an eye toward cost of goods sold and the competition, marketing initiatives will lack any focus on profitability.

. . . About Convenience

If our product or service did not exist, how much would it cost a customer in time, money, or other resources to satisfy the same want or need that we are satisfying?
Are there multiple venues for customers to acquire the product or service from us? How many? How efficient are they from the customer’s perspective?

With innumerable options available, ease of use and ease of purchase can turn into a competitive advantage or a deal-breaker. If you offer high quality at competitive prices and satisfy customers, but make them work too hard to buy, you risk losing sales.

. . . About Brand Communication

What is the single primary benefit that will motivate prospects to act?

Listen for a three-sentence answer that articulates the most sustainable benefit that gives the greatest leverage for the product or service, which cannot be owned by any competitors. If your organization doesn’t own the answer to this question, how will you communicate your value?

What single net impression or attitude, if adopted by prospects, will move them to make the desired behavior change?
What do we want the target audience to think and do as a result of our communication?
What is standing in the way of moving prospects or customers from what they currently think to what we want them to think?

There are no permanent, “right” answers in marketing. Customers’ wants and needs are moving targets, and marketing initiatives require testing and re-testing to find the most profitable formula. As such, the activity of examining your organization’s marketing practices and results is itself germane to productive marketing.

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