Lesson 2: Meet the Example Business: Situation Audit

Meet Brightside Bakery

From now until the final challenge you will follow one business. Brightside Bakery is made up for this course. It is a small, two-person bakery on a high street in a mid-sized UK town.

• Owners: Priya bakes. Tom runs the counter, the books and "the marketing", which so far means posting on Instagram when he has time.
• What they sell: bread and pastries over the counter, celebration cakes made to order, and a daily delivery of bread to three local cafés.
• The problem: sales are flat. Tom doesn't know which of the bakery's marketing efforts actually work.

In Level 1 you learned that marketing means finding people with a need, making them an offer and building a relationship that brings them back. Before Brightside can improve any of that, it has to know where it stands today. That is the job of a situation audit. A doctor examines you before writing a prescription, and a marketer audits a business before writing a plan.

Do this now: pick the business you will plan for. It can be your own, a client's or a friend's. If you have none, use Brightside.

Task 1: Complete the One-Page Audit

The audit is one page with five headings. Keep it short and factual. Write down what is, not what you hope.

1. Products and services. List what you sell, the price, and roughly what share of revenue each brings in.
   • Brightside: counter sales about 60%, celebration cakes about 25%, café wholesale about 15%.
2. Customers. Describe who buys today, in plain words. Detailed research comes in Level 3.
   • Brightside: local office workers in the morning, parents ordering birthday cakes, three café owners.
3. Current channels. List every way customers find you or hear from you.
   • Brightside: shop window, word of mouth, an Instagram account, a basic Google Business Profile and a one-page website. There is no email list.
4. Results. Note the numbers you actually have and where each one came from.
   • Brightside: weekly takings from the till. Calls, website clicks and direction requests from the Google Business Profile performance screen. Instagram follower count. Cake orders logged in a notebook.
   • If a number doesn't exist, write "unknown". Gaps are findings too.
5. Resources. Record the time, money, skills and tools available.
   • Brightside: Tom has about 3 hours a week, there is a small monthly budget, Priya is a good photographer, and they have a phone and a laptop.

Do this now: fill in all five headings for your business. Leave no heading blank, even if the only entry is "unknown".

Task 2: Run a SWOT Analysis

A SWOT analysis sorts what you found into four boxes:

The test for each item is this: could the business change it directly? If yes, it is internal (a strength or a weakness). If no, it is external (an opportunity or a threat).

1. Go through your audit and move each finding into a box.
2. Aim for 3–5 items per box. Be specific: "cakes get 5-star reviews" is more useful than "good quality".
3. Ask a customer or colleague to challenge your list. Owners tend to overrate their strengths.

Brightside's SWOT:

• Strengths: distinctive cakes, strong photos, loyal morning regulars, café contracts.
• Weaknesses: no email list, results not tracked, Tom's limited time, a website that doesn't take cake enquiries.
• Opportunities: a new office block opening nearby, more local searches for celebration cakes, cafés in the next town.
• Threats: a supermarket bakery counter opening, rising flour and energy costs.

Task 3: Turn the SWOT into Three Priorities

A SWOT is only useful if it leads to action. To turn it into priorities, pair boxes together:

• Strength + Opportunity: use what you are good at to win something available.
• Weakness + Opportunity: fix a gap that blocks an opportunity.
• Strength + Threat: use a strength to defend against a risk.

Steps:

1. Write 4–6 candidate priorities using these pairings.
2. Score each one for impact (1–5) and effort within your resources (1–5).
3. Keep the three with the best impact for the effort.

Brightside's three priorities:

1. Use the cake photography to win more local cake orders from search (Strength + Opportunity).
2. Add a cake enquiry form and start recording results (Weakness + Opportunity).
3. Stand apart from the supermarket by featuring the bakers and the handmade process (Strength + Threat).

Three is deliberate. With three hours a week, ten priorities would mean none of them gets done.

Where AI Helps, and What You Must Check

AI is useful here:

• Speeds up: turning messy notes into the five audit headings, suggesting SWOT items you missed, and drafting pairings.
• You must check: that every number is a real figure from your own records. AI can invent statistics, competitors or "market trends" that sound plausible and are false. Delete anything you cannot trace to a source.
• Your judgement decides: which three priorities fit your time and money. AI does not know your week.

Task 4: Start Your 90-Day Plan Document

Create one document, either a word-processor file or a spreadsheet, called "90-Day Marketing Plan: [Business name]". You will add to it at every level. Today, add:

1. Date of the audit. Platforms and numbers change, so date everything.
2. Section 1: Situation audit: your five headings.
3. Section 2: SWOT: your four boxes.
4. Section 3: Priorities: your three priorities, each with the SWOT pairing it came from.
5. Empty headings for later sections: Customers, Positioning, Offer, Channels, Budget, Measurement, Checks.

Do this now: save the document where you'll find it again. Level 3 adds to it straight away.

Key Takeaways

• Audit before you plan. Use five headings: products, customers, channels, results, resources.
• Write "unknown" where data is missing. A gap is a finding.
• Strengths and weaknesses are internal; opportunities and threats are external.
• Pair SWOT boxes to create priorities, then keep only three.
• AI can organise and suggest, but every fact must trace back to your own records.
• Your dated 90-day plan document starts today and grows with each level.