Ask the following questions in your internal auditing team and to your customers and stakeholders. Compare the answers and start developing your cutting edge marketing plan.

(Reproduced with permission from the IIA–UK & Ireland and taken from Effective Marketing, Guidance on Marketing your Internal Audit Function (2000).)

1. What are the key objectives for internal audit?

2. How, if at all, can we state these in qualitative and quantitative terms?

3. What are our strengths and weaknesses?

4. What opportunities and threats do we have?

5. What are our marketing goals?

6. Who are our stakeholders and what do each of these require from us?

7. What are the products and/or services we are offering and to whom are we offering them?

8. How do our stakeholders perceive the benefits of our competitors’ products and services?

9. Are our marketing goals realistic in terms of what the marketplace will accept?

10. What benefits, both tangible and intangible, do our products and/or services need to have to give us a differential and sustainable advantage over our competitors?

11. What is our stakeholders’ perception of value?

12. Where on the attitudinal spectrum (e.g. compliance through to risk based) do we believe our stakeholders lie?
13. What is going to be our vision statement and how will we communicate this to our stakeholders?
14. How are we going to monitor the performance of our marketing activities?