Audits are crucial before jumping into any digital marketing campaign. Without audits it would be like shooting arrows in the dark.
Digital Marketing Experts say measure seven times but cut once. This is correct because once it has been cut it cannot be reverted.
Digital marketing audit encompasses audits of all of its components like SEO, SMO, Content, Backlinks, Usability, Structure, paid campaigns, etc.
Have you ever performed a digital audit of your company?
The digital ecosystem in the present day and age is truly vast and complex. A host of communication channels with the different audiences of the company, technical implementations, innovative technologies based on data and a large number of metrics and business performance indicators give information on every detail.
In this perspective, it is important for company managers and those involved in digital marketing need to ensure a few things on their own.
Is your business generating leads conceivable?
Are too many users being lost at some point in the conversion funnel designed for the business?
Could the target audience be better reached and “hooked” through a channel not being used?
If you are looking to perform digital marketing for the profit of your business, in this article we explain what it consists of, what are its benefits and how to carry it out.
What is a digital marketing audit?
In order to have a certain viewpoint of a broad reality, as is the digital marketing ecosystem today of almost any company, it can be a great idea to start a digital marketing audit.
A digital marketing audit is a simple check-up of all the practices, approaches and results that the organization has carried out to set up and develop its web presence.
More than a particular method, it is something that companies must carry out once in a while since otherwise, the improvement points of any digital strategy cannot come to light. And if yes, there are always things to be refined.
The basis of a digital marketing audit typically focuses on the following key areas:
Scope:
It includes the evaluation of the impact and the extent of your payment as well as the organic initiatives in the internet field. For example, ranking for major keywords of your target products or services, the extent and effect of your posts and publications on social networks, or the opening rate of the emails you send to subscribers or external databases.
If you have put display, programmatic or PPC campaigns on Google and Bing into effect, are these campaigns having the wished-for impact (impressions) and are they pertinent to your targeted audience (clicks, leads, etc.)?
Is your website negotiable? With practical and easily discoverable information (visitors, bounce rate). A digital marketing audit helps you know if you are leveraging enough users and if there are potential improvements to enhance that impact.
Conversion:
After the outreach, it is imperative to settle on whether the people you reach are taking the much-loved actions with regards to your business.
If you have impressions and clicks in the PPC campaigns, but people do not purchase or fill out your form, certainly a digital marketing audit will reveal the facets of your website, call-to-actions, creatives, emails, organic listings and posts that can be improved to enhance the conversion rate. Obviously, a critical part of assessing conversion is measurement.
Measurement:
to resolve the success of your current digital activations, it is essential to be clear about the measurement of objectives, for example, conversion, awareness, social engagement, or other actions.
If you are clear about these measurement metrics, great, you simply have to bear out that you are gauging them flawlessly by dint of analytics and a consistent and returning reporting structure.
If there is a far-reaching change in the results metrics, do you have a process to review what caused the modification and how to act in response?
Digital Architecture:
another salient feature in any digital marketing audit is to ascertain if your website carries out well the functions of UX (usability), ease of finding information, products and services, and if it is mobile-responsive, or pertinent for users who prefer the mobile.
It is also important to review your social channels or other channels that you have (such as chat, blog, etc.).
How do they compare to what your competition does?
Are you maintaining these channels again and again with extra information with regards to your company (address, phone, links, etc.)?
Are you on social media where your target consumers are?
Do you use the languages that effectively reflect your user base well configured?
Content:
Companies that are at the leading edge in the market typically have a content plan – this plan should be in agreement in terms of content type and publication frequency.
The type of content (video, articles, gif, user content, photos, apps, podcast, how-to explanations, etc.) should be in agreement with the type of business you have and the users who utilize it.
However, provided is that it should be quality content – you better post less and have content assets that actually reflect the image you want to put across.
Content calendar:
It is a great way to plan and the audit can help you to ensure whether the frequency and type of content you produce is acceptable, and the measurement that you have activated helps to ascertain what works and what does not work.
Salient factors to evaluate in a Digital Marketing audit:
Web positioning:
Resolve the keywords through which you are assaying to position yourself in search engines and the actions that can turn around your SEO positioning.
Online Communities:
It is something to have exercised power over the social networks in which you are, deal with the communities and, on top of that, to know to what extent social networks are helping you position yourself and acquire leads.
Website audit:
Check that your website adapts to different mobile devices, that the content is well distributed, the position of the “call your action”, effectiveness of the landing pages…
Competitor analysis:
It serves to know how we are positioned in the market with respect to the competition. You may have wonderful ideas, but if you do not know what your competition is doing, your efforts can be frustrated.
Benefits of conducting a Digital Marketing audit:
- Find out where you are to learn what strategies and actions you have to complete to attain your goal.
- Determine the loopholes of your website with a view to looking for extra competitive alternatives.
- Think twice if the content you are offering is worthful or you are blogging simply because your competition does.
- Ensure whether the social media strategy you are using is the most relevant to achieve your goals.
- Last not least, determine if the leads that are reaching you are of quality or if the audience you are targeting is the right one.
What does a digital marketing audit include?
The audit of a brand in the digital field must have the following sections:
- Analysis of the preliminary situation of the brand to be audited. Study that identifies where the brand is in a general area, and not only in the digital environment: business objectives; evolution in recent years; local, national and international presence; etc.
- Analysis of the brand’s own channels. This is the most relevant point of the audit and consists of determining all the channels in which the brand is present in order to subsequently measure how it performs in each of them: results obtained, quality and care of the channels, strategies and actions performed, etc.
- Analysis of the competition and its channels. Research to delimit the main competitors of the brand, in which channels they have a presence, how they perform in the channels they currently use, what are their general strengths and weaknesses, how they surpass the brand and how the brand surpasses its competition, etc.
- Analysis of the sector and trends. Study that focuses on assessing where the brand to be audited is with respect to the sector to which it belongs. This section goes a step beyond the analysis of the competition and is completed with an analysis of the most relevant trends in the sector in question.
What to measure in a digital marketing audit?
1.SEO audit
Search engines are the heart of any digital marketing strategy. They are one of the primary ways that help the public discover targeted products and services online.
Optimizing a website for search is a challenging, exhaustive and long process. This makes current efforts particularly difficult to verify. However, there are some key steps to assessing where your SEO strategy stands and how specific factors leveraging your search ranking can be improved.
Phases of the Detailed SEO audit: aspects to be analyzed
Competitive Analysis:
The first step in determining the effectiveness of your SEO is identifying your strengths. Take stock of the content, keywords, and links currently on your site. You will be able to see which one performs best in your search engine ranking.
Technical issues:
The next step in the digital marketing audit process is to determine if there are any weaknesses resulting from flaws in your site’s programming or design. Are there too many no-follow links? Badly written or outdated content? Identify and resolve any issues encountered.
Page Optimization:
After identifying the strategies that work and fixing any obvious errors on your website, now is the time to optimize this content. This is where best practice research will be crucial. Prepare your site to rank well using title tags, metadata and keywords.
Link building:
Once you have fully optimized your site and understood the content that works, use a link building strategy that helps you seize every opportunity. Look for links from other relevant pages with good traffic or produce content that you know your audience will share.
2. Social Media Marketing Audit
Searching within major search engines can be the ultimate way that people search for specific product information. However, social media is the fundamental way target audiences are influenced by a brand or organization.
A social media digital marketing audit should be able to resolve questions about how your target audience communicates or will communicate with your brand within digital social settings.
How to apply a digital marketing audit on social networks?
Engagement Rating:
First, take stock of your up-to-date social media activities on each of the dynamic channels to resolve which of your posts are reporting the utmost levels of engagement. This data will display which kinds of posts are attractive to your target audience. Likewise, they will tell you what your strong points are on social media.
Profile Standardization:
The next step is to resolve the cracks or gaps where your brand is omitted or where your message can be seen as incoherent. This includes taking stock of your current resources and skills. You will be able to determine how many channels your team can optimally target.
Trend Assessment:
Once you have seen your strengths and weaknesses, it’s time to appraise the trends. Then, you can see which ones are encouraging the conversation within your target audience.
Create the plan:
After conducting a methodical analysis, identify key channels and resolve the best practices. To do this, work with your social media team to integrate the audit results into a comprehensive and comprehensive editorial calendar.
3. Content marketing audit
Content is the basis on which any digital strategy can be created. This is exactly what adds significance to marketing efforts.
If the content features the best quality, it is much easier to position the brand. This way you can improve your visibility, attract customers and build a good online reputation. Therefore, auditing your content is important and should be done by observing:
Content Consolidation:
Many brands can create content, but these efforts are regularly fragmented. Identify all the content your brand has produced across all channels and resolve where it can best be consolidated.
Audience Assessment:
carrying out an audience analysis that can really connect with that content.
Content strategy:
Once you have decided which audience you will target and the channels through which you will communicate, determine not only where your content will live, but also what types of content and how often it would be most appropriate for this channel.
4. PPC Audit
Now that we have talked about SEO, SMM and Content Marketing audit, it is time to discuss pay per click audit, another significant paid digital advertising.
Pay Per Click or PPC is a reliable technique to pull in and hook your target customers to your website online and give a boost to your lead generation.
To achieve the vision, it is essential to evaluate each digital marketing channel you are using by yourself to understand the purpose they are serving in your overall digital marketing strategy.
After launching and carrying out a campaign, make sure to assess its effectiveness in each channel and keep a tab on which campaigns are on the go, including which channels they are currently active in.
Delve into your assets to ensure you are not whiling away your resources but rather apportioning them to the most sought-after places.
When it involves PPC, review your digital marketing audit as a good opportunity to cut down on the fat from your marketing strategy.
Ensure the KPIs of every single campaign, and the techniques you utilize to assess their success. Also, ensure whether you can comprehend the number of leads or customers being produced including your traffic-to-lead and lead-to-customer conversion rates?
Also, ensure the number of pixels you have on your website. Question yourself whether you are getting the most out of the conversion points that are in line with the campaign’s specific offer.
Determining the pros and cons of your PPC strategy can help you redistribute and streamline your ad budget.
Now that you have a better idea of why a digital marketing audit is important and some of the key components of conducting a comprehensive audit, you can begin to plan your own!
Conclusion
In conclusion, conducting a digital audit can be daunting for many companies, due to issues such as lack of time and staff to perform it.
Even so, it is a necessary tool that must be considered in any digital marketing strategy, because thanks to it, knowledge about the sector and the competition can be significantly increased, in addition to improving production and the achievement of results.
If you feel you do not have the necessary equipment to carry out your digital marketing audit, at USR Digital, we accompany you in the implementation of a strategic digital marketing blueprint that will allow you to achieve your goals.