Is it time to review your digital marketing? If it’s been a while since you took a look at your marketing strategy, plans, platforms, and recent data, then the answer is yes.
The start of a new month or year is also always a great time to perform this audit: assessing and reflecting on where you’re at in terms of your business plans and goals, and setting new goals and intentions, so you can move forward with more clarity.
A digital marketing audit can also be helpful if:
- Your business feels stuck or stagnant
- Strategies that were previously working for you seem to have plateaued or stopped working altogether
- You’re lacking direction on the next steps to take to grow your business
- You want to introduce a new platform into your marketing strategy, or a new offering into your business
- You are looking for ways to grow your traffic and sales to hit your goals
- You want to streamline the tasks you’re doing and reclaim some of your time
- You want clarity on what’s working in your business and what isn’t
- You’re rebranding or introducing other structural changes to your business
- You recently ran a marketing campaign and want to gauge its effectiveness
My Digital Marketing Audits are one of my favourite services to offer and work with clients on, because of the transformation and clarity that comes from looking at the data, and creating a plan for moving forward.
Let’s break down what this looks like, and why it’s so valuable for your company.
What is a digital marketing audit?
When doing digital marketing it’s easy to get into the weeds and lose sight of the bigger picture.
There are so many daily tasks to “check off our to-do list,” we often forget to step back and ask ourselves if what we’re doing is really making the impact we want in our business.
Beyond that, I often work with clients who have started in so many different directions in terms of the tactics they’re trying to grow their business, that it’s simply not sustainable.
They aren’t posting as frequently as they should be for optimal results.
They’ve forgotten to update important information (phone numbers, website URLs, or hours) on certain platforms.
Their website has broken links or outdated pages.
They’re not getting back to direct messages from potential clients.
They’re overwhelmed and confused about where to focus their energy.
And they don’t have the resources (time, energy, and/or money) to show up everywhere.
The reality is, you don’t need to be showing up everywhere anyways.
What you need to be doing is focusing on the platforms and strategies that will make the most impact for you and your unique business; the platforms and strategies that are most likely to connect you with your ideal clients.
A digital marketing audit will answer the question of what works, what doesn’t, and how to best change your approach to maximize results.
While digital audits will look different for every business, the basics are this:
- Getting clear on your business and marketing goals so you know where you’re going
- Reassessing and refining who your ideal client is so you can ensure the strategies you’re using are relevant
- Looking at the marketing tools you’re already using, and analyzing the data behind them to see what’s working and what isn’t (based on your goals)
- Finding ways to optimize the tools, strategies, and platforms you’re using
- Creating a plan for how to most effectively move forward
There’s no point in continuing to execute on tasks that aren’t actually helping you move the needle in your business.
Instead, we want to streamline what you’re doing so you can put more time and energy into the actions that are going to grow your company’s online presence, and help you reach your goals.
How to conduct a digital marketing audit
To perform a digital marketing audit for your business, you’ll want to start by listing out every place you’re showing up online.
- Do you have a website? What about a Google Business profile?
- Are you running online ads? Where?
- What social media platforms do you have set up? Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and/or Tik Tok?
- Do you have an online store?
- Do you have an email list?
These are all the places you’re going to want to analyze for your audit. Let’s break them down a little further.
Website
Your website is often where you’re trying to funnel traffic, whether it’s to buy your products, learn more about you, or book a consultation.
To audit your website, look at analytics including traffic month over month, visitor numbers (how many are new visitors vs. how many are repeat?), bounce rate, time spent on page, and traffic source (where are these visitors coming from?).
Ensure your offerings are correct and up-to-date, and that your website has good user flow (pretend you are visiting your website for the first time, knowing nothing about your business. Is the information easy to find? Is it clear how to connect and work with you?), that there are no broken links, and that you’ve optimized your website as much as possible for SEO (search engine optimization).
Google Business Profile (formally Google My Business)
Your Google Business Profile is a great way to get your company in front of new people.
This is the sidebar on Google that appears for a specific business when you type their name in Google (assuming they have it set up), that shows you where they’re located, recent reviews, photos of the business, business hours, a short description, and links to their website and social media.
This is incredibly valuable information for potential customers or clients, but only if it’s utilized properly.
If you don’t have a Google Business Profile set up, it’s likely time to create one.
If you do, you’ll want to audit it to ensure the information is up-to-date, and that you’ve filled out as much as you can to make it easy for visitors to determine whether or not they’d like to learn more about you.
You’ll also want to monitor and respond to recent reviews, and find ways to encourage your current and past customers to leave reviews so your business has more credibility and social proof.
Online Ads
If you regularly run ads for your business, you’ll want to audit them to ensure that you’re maximizing your ROI (return on investment).
How many people are you reaching with your ads? How many people are clicking them to learn more? What do your conversion rates look like? What platform are you running your online ads on, Google, Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest? Which is the most effective?
Based on these details you can make tweaks to the ads to optimize them moving forward.
Or, you might decide that ads aren’t the most impactful way to grow your business, or they are costing you more than you are making in sales, and to pause them indefinitely or seek help!
Social Media
Each social media platform has its own collection of analytics to browse and review. Use the tools embedded in each platform to analyze your reach and engagement.
While some metrics are more important than others, in an audit you want to review as much data as possible.
So, take a look at your follower numbers and trends over time, the number of likes, saves, shares, clicks, and comments on posts where applicable, and your overall reach compared to audience interactions.
It’s also important to look at how often you’re posting, as well as the types of content you’re posting, and compare that to recommendations for the platform you’re on. If your content isn’t performing well on a platform, it might just be that you’re not showing up frequently enough – not that your audience isn’t on that platform.
All of these analytics can provide insight into what content is resonating with your audience, and what isn’t. You’ll also be able to decipher more clearly if it’s time to say goodbye to a specific platform, and hello to another; making changes to your strategy and content plan(s) moving forward based on the trends you see in your data.
Online Commerce Store
If you have an online commerce store, this is a great opportunity to review sales, new buyers, conversion rates, and abandoned carts.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is still incredibly powerful.
To audit your performance and find areas of improvement, take a look at how your subscriber numbers have changed in recent months. Are things trending up or down?
Also take a look at your open, bounce, and click rates, the frequency of emails sent, and the content and subject lines of those emails, to decipher what seems to be appealing to your audience.
After the data collection
After you’ve collected all of this data, you need to take the time to analyze it so you can determine how to move forward.
Consider:
- What’s working?
- What isn’t?
- Where are the leaks? Where are things falling through the cracks?
- Where are the opportunities for improvement and growth?
Take into account your goals, your audience, the platforms themselves, and the content you’re creating as you perform this analysis.
From here you can create a realistic and sustainable long-term digital marketing strategy focused on growth and alignment with your ideal client and your business goals.
It’s important to note that this process involves a great deal of time, energy, knowledge of digital marketing platforms, and patience. That’s why it’s oftentimes easier to get support.
The Crummy Media Digital Marketing Audit
I’ve designed my digital marketing audit service to help walk you through this process with ease.
I’ll collect all of the data so you don’t have to, giving you a comprehensive analysis and overview of your current online presence, and what to continue or change moving forward.
First, we’ll take the time to review and reassess the goals that you have for your business, and every digital marketing tool you’re utilizing, so we can ensure you’re showing up in the right places.
From there, we’ll collect all the necessary data on the performance of your platforms to determine who interacts with what and why.
Based on this data and additional information from specialized tools we will deliver a report to help guide you in the next steps to take to maximize your digital marketing results.
We’ll also make sure everything is being tracked properly, so you can continue to review your progress moving forward.
Our comprehensive digital audit helps you to:
- Know the effectiveness of your digital marketing strategies
- Measure the results of your strategies
- Identify loopholes and strategies that aren’t working, and recommend proven tactics to address them
- Know the effectiveness of your paid campaigns
- Know the effectiveness of your SEO and website performance
- Identify impactful social media marketing strategies
It also includes an analysis of 3 main local competitors, a 1-hour consultation regarding audit results, and recommendations for improvement! Learn more and get started here.
If you choose not to perform these regular audits (in general I recommend one every 6 months), you’ll likely find yourself taking aimless actions, and robotically checking items off your to-do list without real clarity and data to show that they’re helping you get closer to your goals.
It’s simply not an efficient use of time or energy!
Let’s get you back on track quickly, and give you the steps you need so you can feel confident in your digital marketing. Book your free 30-minute consultation with me today.