Are you a digital marketer wanting to elevate your game? Have you been tasked with performing a digital marketing audit but need help figuring out where to start? Understandably, the concept of an audit can seem daunting—but fear not!
We’re here to guide you through the process step-by-step, so you can ensure that every part of your digital marketing strategy is at its highest level. But before we go any further, let’s start by better understanding what a digital marketing audit is.
What Is a Digital Marketing Audit?
In short, a digital marketing audit is an analysis of all the aspects of your digital marketing efforts. It’s a comprehensive review that considers quantitative and qualitative data to assess your performance across all areas.
This means looking at everything from website design and SEO to social media accounts and content creation to identify any opportunities or areas for improvement. It also allows you to compare your current efforts against industry standards and best practices to stay on top of the competition.
Ultimately, a successful digital marketing audit should provide you with an actionable plan for achieving maximum reach, engagement, and conversions for your business.
Why Do a Digital Marketing Audit? Signs You Might Need a Digital Marketing Audit
There are a variety of reasons why you should conduct a digital marketing audit. For starters, doing so can help you pinpoint areas where your current efforts may be falling short and uncover opportunities for improvement.
If you’re seeing any of the following signs, it’s likely time to do an audit:
- You do not see the expected results from your digital marketing efforts
- You don’t have a unified strategy across all channels
- Your content is outdated or poorly targeted
- You’re missing out on key trends in your industry
- You’re not tracking your performance metrics effectively
These are just a few reasons why it’s essential to audit your digital marketing strategy.
Now, let’s dive into how you can do just that.
How to Perform a Digital Marketing Audit
A successful digital marketing audit should include an assessment of both your external and internal environment. On one side, you’ll analyze your competition and how they stack up against you. On the other, you’ll need to evaluate your performance across all areas of digital marketing.
Let’s take a look at each step in more detail.
Step 1: Evaluate Your Competitors
The first step in any audit is to evaluate your competition. This means doing your research to get an understanding of their strategies, tactics, and performance metrics. Take a look at their website, social media accounts, content marketing efforts, and more to identify areas where you can gain an advantage.
As we touched on a moment ago, it’s important to consider both quantitative and qualitative data, which certainly applies to conducting your competitor analysis.
Pay attention to metrics such as website traffic, search rankings, open rates, and click-through rates, but also look at the quality of their content, user experience on their site, and other elements that could give you a leg up.
Step 2: Analyze Your Digital Presence
Next, take some time to assess your digital presence. This means looking at everything from your website design and SEO to your social media accounts and content creation. Pay special attention to user experience, website speed, and keyword optimization.
As a business, it’s easy to lose sight of how our digital presence looks from the customer’s perspective. Taking time to step back and objectively assess your efforts can make all the difference when reaching new customers.
Step 3: Analyze Your Performance Metrics
Another critical element of a successful digital marketing audit is to analyze your performance metrics. Once again, this involves looking at everything from website traffic and search rankings to open and click-through rates. But this time, the focus is on how your efforts have been performing over a given period.
This is known as heuristic analysis, and it’s designed to provide you with insights into how well your digital strategies are working. The goal is to identify both areas of success and areas where improvement is needed.
It’s important to remember that these metrics will only tell you part of the story. Still, they can give you invaluable insights into how your efforts are paying off, where you may need to focus your energy, and which areas may require further attention.
Step 4: Identify Your Goals
Once you’ve analyzed both the external and internal environment, it’s time to set some goals. This is an excellent opportunity to determine what you want to achieve with your digital marketing efforts and how you plan to get there.
You can start by creating short-term and long-term goals.
For example, your short-term goal is to increase website traffic by 10%, while your long-term goal is to double your email subscribers.
Setting realistic goals can be incredibly motivating and help keep you on track. Just make sure to regularly review and adjust your objectives as needed.
Step 5: Create an Action Plan
The last step in your digital marketing audit is to create an action plan. This involves making a list of the areas that need improvement and brainstorming potential solutions.
You can create a timeline and assign tasks to the relevant team members. This will help you stay organized and ensure everyone is on the same page.
Elements Worth Auditing
You should consider many elements when performing a digital marketing audit. To recap, this includes:
Website: In what is perhaps the most crucial element, examine your website’s overall design and user experience. This will allow you to identify potential issues discouraging customers from engaging with your brand.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): An audit of your SEO strategy is essential for ensuring that your content reaches its intended audience. Look at both on-page and off-page SEO, such as keyword optimization, link-building, and content creation. Knowing which keywords your competitors use can also be a great way to stay ahead of the game.
Social Media: Evaluate your presence across all major social media platforms. This includes the type of content you’re posting, how often it is being posted, and who your target audience is. A solid social media strategy can help you to build relationships with your customers, gain valuable insight into their interests, and increase brand awareness.
Advertising: Take a look at your paid advertising efforts. Analyze the effectiveness of each campaign, and determine which ones deliver results. This will help you to focus your energy and budget on the tactics that are producing the best results.
Analytics: Examining website analytics is an absolute must. This will allow you to identify which strategies are working and which may need some attention.
By following these steps and conducting a thorough audit, you’ll be well on your way to creating a successful digital marketing strategy that yields the desired results.
What Are the Characteristics of a Strong Digital Marketing Audit?
Several vital components make up a robust marketing audit. Let’s look at each of them so you can perform one like a pro.
Comprehensive: First and foremost, your marketing audit must include an in-depth analysis of all current marketing campaigns, from strategy to performance. This ensures you understand what works and needs to be optimized or changed altogether.
Systematic: An effective marketing audit should be conducted in an organized, logical manner. This helps ensure that you get all important areas and makes it easier to draw meaningful conclusions from your findings.
Objective: It’s important to conduct a marketing audit with an unbiased, objective approach. This helps ensure you’re not letting personal preferences or biases influence your decisions. In doing so, you can make sure you’re making the right decisions based on facts and data.
Actionable: A strong marketing audit should provide actionable insights to help you make better decisions and improve your marketing results. This means the audit should assess each campaign objectively, identify areas of improvement, and provide recommendations for how to achieve them.
Independent: When conducting a marketing audit, it’s essential to ensure it is conducted independently of the team that created the campaigns. It’s a crucial step, as it further ensures that potential issues can be identified objectively and without bias.
Ultimately, an effective marketing audit should provide insight into the current state of your marketing campaigns and guide how to improve them. With the right approach and tools, you can be sure that your marketing audit will be a success.
Make Your Digital Marketing Audit Count with Mediatool
A digital marketing audit is only as good as its implementation. To ensure you’re getting the most out of your audit, bring in Mediatool to help you make sense of the data and recommend actionable steps. Mediatool helps automate and streamline the process, so you can focus on optimizing your digital marketing strategies and driving results.
