Effective Marketing
This extract from the IIA publication entitled ‘Effective Marketing gives some useful
tips and tactics for raising the profile of your internal audit function. Full copies of
the publication may be ordered from the publications department at the IIA in the
normal way.
Executive Summary
There has never been a more important time for Internal Auditors to market
themselves. Within the framework of Risk Management, Corporate Governance, best
value and the Turnbull Guidance in particular, internal auditors have a unique window
of opportunity in which to raise the status of the profession of Internal Auditing and to
contribute in an unprecedented way to external communications objectives of the
organisation as a whole. On the basis of this platform, the time is equally ripe for
internal auditors to undertake to achieve internal marketing objectives correcting
misapprehensions and shoring-up an unappreciated and misunderstood role from a
position of strength.
The wider issues of Turnbull and governance generally are set out fully in the first
publication in this series, Effective Governance. The aim of this manual is to draw on
the findings of desk research and best-practice examples in order to synthesize them
into a usable resource for internal auditors to effectively market themselves.
What is marketing?
‘A wise man makes more opportunities than he finds’.
Francis Bacon
It is useful at the outset to be clear about exactly what we mean by ‘marketing’. The
Chartered Institute of Marketing favours the definition, “the management process
responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements
profitably”. There are many others including ‘marketing is the identification and
probable satisfaction of customers’ needs’. Peter Drucker, an American business
writer, said back in 1973, that marketing is “to know or understand the customer so
well that the product or service fits him and sells itself.” Fortunately, effective
marketing actually requires little more than commonsense and the ability to adhere to
a few guiding principles.
Let’s get one thing absolutely clear now - marketing and selling are not the same
thing. To quote Richard Gossage, Past President of the IIA-UK & Ireland, “marketing
creates demand for a broad range of perceived benefits from your products and
services. It creates a ‘pull’ force. Selling is the opposite – it is a ‘push’ force. It says,
‘this is the product to buy – buy it!’ An alternative way of looking at selling is that it
is simply that part of marketing concerned with persuading customers to acquire the
product or service…’
For most internal audit functions ‘public relations’ is the real issue…it’s about
communication…It is about spreading understanding of what internal audit is and is
not, and what the benefits can be. For most internal audit functions their mandate
should be to create the demand for the function. Therefore the challenge is to
communicate to the different audiences a number of key messages, to ensure the
perception of internal audit in their eyes is positive, value adding and helpful to them
to achieve their goals.
Another misconception is that marketing ‘tools’ are marketing itself. By tools, we
mean brochures, advertising, editorial coverage via articles and press releases, reports,
presentations and workshops, web site, intranet, in-house journals, surveys, personal
contact and the like. But to decide which tools you need, how to construct and then
how to use them, you have to start at the beginning.
Why Market Internal Audit?
‘When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind
wonderfully.’ Dr Johnson
By definition Internal Auditors should know the value of efficient and effective
management processes. Marketing is just such a process. So why haven’t all Internal
Auditors embraced the notion of marketing and applied it to themselves? One answer
is that many Internal Auditors have failed to appreciate what marketing can offer
them. Examine the idea, and it becomes easy to see that the concept of winning is
meaningless to people unless they recognise the possibility of losing. To a certain
extent Internal Auditors can be seen as the advisors and regulators of excellence, so
how can they possibly lose? The idea is not logical. It does not compute.
This may have been the case a number of years ago but now internal audit functions
are facing threats from everywhere – the threat of outsourcing, of being replaced by a
high level assurance function or simply the threat of no longer being needed at all by
the organisation.
Professor Jeffrey Ridley’s benchmarking research BRACE31 for the Housing
Association Internal Audit Forum (HAIAF), identified a potential misconception
amongst Internal Auditors, who believe that they are not in a competitive situation.
‘Losing’ is therefore not seen as an option. This is a potentially disastrous misreading
of the position, most commonly found among those operating within in-house
departments. With such a mind set, the mystified Internal Auditor, quite rightly, as
he or she sees it, questions the relevance of marketing, “If my organisation already
owns the Internal Audit function, why should I have to sell it to them?”
Complacency is dangerous. Just because the function is not currently put out to
regular competitive tender, doesn’t mean it won’t be. IIA guidelines state that an
external review of internal audit should be undertaken every 3 years. It can and may
be replaced, either by outsourcing or by internal restructuring, if a “better value”
proposition is perceived by management elsewhere. We have seen this happen
‘BRACE3: Best Practice Marketing in Internal Audit in Housing Associations’, Professor Jeffrey
Ridley 1998.
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already this year with a number of large internal audit functions becoming outsourced
to external providers.
Perceptions of Internal Audit – Gestapo or Bean Counters?
Internal Audit has an image problem. Anecdotal evidence from internal auditors
throws up some colourful terminology for auditee or customer perceptions of the
service such as “the secret police” and “management moles”. This is underscored by
the fact that there is a persistent and general misapprehension that internal audit is
either about financial control or ‘catching people out’. The often quoted perceptions
of internal audit are outlined below supported by what we would like people to think:
Auditee/Customer Perception

In their ivory tower
Auditor Perception or what we would
like customers to think

Professional

Unhelpful

Helpful

Policemen

Necessary

Bureaucratic

Positive

Nitpickers

Thorough

Basic

Contributory

Retrospective

Forward looking