How do you know if your digital marketing strategy is working? Why are you not seeing results for this particular campaign? How can a digital marketing audit help bolster your business’s performance and presence online?
Conducting a digital marketing audit allows you to determine whether your digital campaigns are succeeding or if you need to follow a different approach. This lets you monitor your business’ performance, identify the strengths and weaknesses of each campaign, and discover what you need to do to streamline your strategies and campaigns to get better results.
What Is a Digital Marketing Audit?
Simply put, a digital marketing audit is a thorough review of your digital marketing performance and practices, which can include your website, PPC campaigns, and SEO. Each component is scrutinized to see if it’s getting you the results you want or if it needs to be optimized for success. Given its thorough nature, a digital marketing audit is an extensive process.
When conducting a digital marketing audit, you get a custom set of reports that give you a glimpse of your current performance and how you’re utilizing digital resources. In addition to these benefits, these custom reports can offer recommendations on how you can optimize the use of digital resources, as well as help you come up with a solid action plan that will allow you to get the results you want while strengthening your marketing campaigns.
Digital marketing audits often entail components such as quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis, competitive analysis, and website audit.
Other important components that comprehensive audits should have include accessibility audits, internal governance audits, an outline of a strategic timeline for a set period, and tactics for multiple channels.
Common Types of Marketing Audits
Several common digital marketing strategies are subject to audits:
Search Engine Optimization
An SEO audit allows you to see the state of your website’s traffic. Are you applying SEO best practices to ensure that your site can be easily found online (higher rankings on SERPs) and that it offers excellent user experiences? Optimizing your website for SEO, with the help of digital marketing audits, allows your website to be more visible, allowing potential customers to easily find your business online.
How to Optimize Your SEO Strategy: Key Questions to Consider
To enhance your SEO strategy and improve your site’s visibility, it’s crucial to ask yourself the right questions. Here are some essential considerations:
- Is Your Website Mobile-Friendly?
With mobile users constituting a significant portion of web traffic, ensure that your site and landing pages are responsive across various devices. - Do You Use Secure Protocols?
Secure your website by implementing HTTPS. This enhances user trust and is favored by search engines. - Are Your Images Optimized?
Properly compress and tag images to improve load times and usability. Use descriptive alt text for better indexing by search engines. - Have You Acquired Quality Backlinks?
Building backlinks from reputable sites can significantly boost your site’s authority and search ranking. - Is Your Content Keyword-Optimized?
Research keywords that are relevant and realistic to rank for. Incorporate them naturally into your content to increase visibility. - Do You Leverage Keywords in Campaigns?
Analyze the potential to integrate important keywords into both your paid and organic marketing efforts for maximum reach.
By addressing these key areas, you can create a robust SEO strategy that drives traffic and enhances user engagement.
PPC
A PPC audit helps ensure that your PPC ads give you the results you want. This means that your PPC ads are optimized to encourage your audience to click on your ads and complete the desired action like buying your product or signing up for a trial.
When conducting a PPC audit, evaluating your landing pages is critical for improving performance. Here are key questions to guide your assessment:
1. Alignment with User Intent
Is there harmony between what users search for and what they find on your landing page? Ensuring that your content meets visitor expectations is essential for maintaining interest and encouraging conversions.
2. Quality of Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
Are your title tags and meta descriptions clear, engaging, and aligned with your brand messaging? Effective titles and descriptions can significantly enhance click-through rates and set the right expectations.
3. Strength of the Call to Action (CTA)
Does your landing page feature a prominent, persuasive call to action? A powerful CTA directs users toward your intended goal, whether it’s purchasing a product, subscribing, or obtaining more information.
4. Mobile and Desktop Compatibility
Are your landing pages fully optimized for both mobile and desktop devices? With an increasing number of users accessing content on-the-go, responsive design is crucial for a seamless user experience.
5. Visual Appeal
Is your landing page visually engaging without being cluttered? Clean, attractive designs can capture attention and improve user engagement, making it easier for visitors to follow through on your CTA.
By addressing these questions, you can uncover opportunities to optimize your landing pages, enhancing the overall success of your PPC campaigns. When conducting a PPC (pay-per-click) audit, it’s essential to focus on key metrics that directly impact the success of your campaign. Here are the main metrics to review:
1. Click-Through Rate (CTR)
CTR measures the percentage of users who click on your ad after seeing it. A high CTR indicates that your ad is relevant and engaging to potential customers. Monitoring this metric helps in understanding how well your ad copy resonates with your audience.
2. Conversion Rate
This metric shows the percentage of visitors who complete the desired action, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter, after clicking on your ad. A high conversion rate indicates effective ad targeting and landing page performance.
Analyzing Misalignment
If your CTR is strong but conversion rates are lacking, it may highlight issues with your landing page. Consider these questions:
- User Intent: Does the landing page content align with the user’s search intent?
- CTAs: Is there a clear and compelling call-to-action guiding users?
Mobile Optimization
In this mobile-centric world, ensure your landing pages function seamlessly across devices. Poor mobile performance could affect both CTR and conversion rates, making mobile optimization a priority.
Visual Appeal and Functionality
The aesthetics and usability of your landing pages are crucial. Make sure they are both visually appealing and fully functional to keep visitors engaged and prompt conversions.
By scrutinizing these metrics and elements, you can uncover opportunities to refine your PPC campaigns and maximize their effectiveness.
Social Media
A social media audit lets you know whether or not your audience finds or engages with your page. Factors like conversion rates and impressions are measured to assess the performance of your paid, organic, and earned media.
Conducting a Social Media Marketing Audit: A Step-by-Step Guide
Conducting an effective social media marketing audit involves a series of organized steps that ensure you capture the complete picture of your current strategy. Here’s how to do it:
1. Organize Your Data Collection
Start by creating a dedicated spreadsheet for your audit. This will help you systematically collect and categorize data. Divide your spreadsheet into tabs for each social media platform you use. Add direct links to your accounts to ensure easy access for yourself or your team.
2. Evaluate and Analyze Your Content
Once your data is organized, it’s time to dig into the content of your posts over a specific timeframe. Focus on evaluating your brand’s consistency and levels of engagement. Ask these key questions:
- Is your branding consistent in terms of color palettes, fonts, and logos?
- Does the tone of voice align with your brand’s identity?
- Which posts, themes, or viral content resonated well with your audience, and which did not?
3. Implement a Rating System
Establish a straightforward rating system to assess the effectiveness of your content. For instance, a simple scale like Poor/Average/Excellent can help quantify performance. This allows you to easily see what’s working and identify areas needing improvement.
4. Strategize Based on Insights
After your analysis, use your insights to refine your strategy. Double down on successful elements and eliminate or adjust the tactics that fell flat. This strategic approach ensures that you’re building on strengths and learning from shortcomings.
5. Summarize and Communicate Findings
Conclude your audit with a comprehensive summary highlighting key discoveries. This should be digestible for team members or clients and should include a clear plan for how these findings will shape your future social media marketing strategy. Clear communication ensures that everyone is aligned and ready to implement changes effectively.
By following these steps, you can conduct a thorough and actionable social media marketing audit to enhance your digital strategy.
Distinguishing Vanity Metrics from Strategic Analytics in Social Media
In the realm of social media analytics, it’s crucial to recognize which metrics truly reflect your brand’s effectiveness. To differentiate between vanity metrics and strategic analytics, focus on insights that drive meaningful action rather than those that simply look good at a glance.
1. Dig Deeper Than Surface-Level Engagement
- Vanity Metrics: Follower counts and likes. While these numbers can be impressive, they don’t necessarily correlate with the real impact or success of your campaigns.
- Strategically Meaningful Metrics: Click-through rates (CTR) and impressions. These indicators provide a clearer picture of your brand awareness and how well your social media strategies engage your audience.
2. Assess the Impact on Business Objectives
- Vanity Metrics: The sheer volume of shares or retweets might seem impressive but without context, this data doesn’t reveal business growth or improved customer relationships.
- Strategically Meaningful Metrics: Conversion rates and engagement rates per post. These metrics reveal how well your audience is responding to your content and how effectively you’re turning interest into action.
3. Analyze Audience Interaction Over Time
- Vanity Metrics: Single-day spikes in comments or likes can be misleading if they’re not the result of a sustained engagement strategy.
- Strategically Meaningful Metrics: Longitudinal studies of audience behavior, such as consistent engagement over time, provide a realistic view of your content’s resonance.
By focusing on these strategically meaningful metrics, you can align your social media efforts more closely with your overarching business goals, ensuring that your marketing initiatives drive genuine value and measurable results.
Web Design
A website/user experience audit thoroughly examines your website to identify opportunities for improvement that may be affecting your website’s performance. For instance, one component of a website audit is a traffic audit, which gives you a glimpse of your website’s traffic, most viewed pages, highest or best traffic sources, bounce rates, and time spent on site.
Essential Questions for Auditing Web Design
When auditing your website’s design, start by focusing on high-traffic pages. These are critical areas where improvements can significantly impact user experience and conversions. Here are several key questions to guide your audit:
- Is the Page Load Speed Optimal?
Ensure that your website loads in under three seconds. Slow pages can deter visitors and increase bounce rates. Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to evaluate and enhance speed. - Is the Design Responsive and Adaptable?
Your design should seamlessly adjust to different screen sizes and devices. Test your site on various platforms to ensure consistency in appearance and functionality. - Is Navigation Intuitive and User-Friendly?
Assess whether users can easily find what they’re looking for. A clear and logical menu structure is crucial for guiding visitors smoothly through your site. - Does the Visual Design Engage Visitors?
Evaluate if the overall look of your website is attractive and aligns with your brand. A modern, cohesive aesthetic can significantly boost engagement and trust. - Is the Content Well-Structured and Keyword-Focused?
Examine your copy to ensure it is concise and optimized for search engines. Thoughtfully incorporate relevant keywords without sacrificing readability.
These questions form a foundational checklist to refine your web design, reduce bounce rates, and enhance user satisfaction. By addressing these elements, you can create a more effective and engaging online presence.
How Digital Marketing Audits Can Help Your Business
Conducting a digital marketing audit lets you optimize your digital marketing campaigns and strategies, as well as monitor your current performance so you can identify the strengths and weaknesses of each campaign. It also shows you potential loopholes or bottlenecks that may be hampering your progress, thus giving you the opportunity to address these issues and refine your strategy.
When Should You Conduct Digital Marketing Audits?
You should conduct a digital marketing audit if you’re planning to create a new marketing channel or if you want to measure the current performance of your website or content. If you haven’t done an audit yet or if it’s been a while since your last audit, components such as your website and its ranking may be adversely affected and you may see results like a drop in rankings. Moreover, without a regular or routine digital marketing audit, it can be difficult for you to determine whether your digital marketing efforts are paying off and giving you the results you’re looking for.
5 Steps to Conduct a Digital Marketing Audit
Conducting a digital marketing audit can be an intensive endeavor that will potentially take up a lot of time, depending on factors like your auditor and your organization’s size. Basic audits can take anywhere between 30 to 45 days, while more comprehensive ones can take up to six months to complete.
Here are the steps you can follow when conducting a digital marketing audit:
Identify the scope and goals of your audit
Because digital marketing audits can be exhaustive, it helps if you know the scope of the audit that you’re planning to undertake. You can prioritize audits that are relevant to your goals or operations, such as SEO and social media audits, for example.
Moreover, you need to determine what the goals and key metrics are for a particular audit.
Gather all your relevant data
Once you’ve identified the scope and goals of your audit, you can start collecting data from all the channels that you’re currently using. These can include data on website, email, and social media performance.
Make sure you have the right tools
You can use an array of free tools to conduct a digital marketing audit. These tools give you a glimpse of your website performance, as well as help you understand its performance in the context of your KPIs. Some of the free tools you can use include Google Analytics, Google Keyword Planner, Google Search Console, and Screaming Frog.
Conduct an SEO audit
From there, you can proceed with an SEO audit, which should be done regularly or at least twice a year. This lets you see how your website fares when it comes to SERPs. Your SEO audit should include key areas, such as technical, on-page, and off-page SEO.
Follow up with other audits
After conducting an SEO audit, you can follow up with other audits, such as social media marketing, brand reputation, website marketing, paid advertising, content, and email marketing audits.
How should findings from a digital marketing audit be reported?
Once you’ve completed a digital marketing audit, it’s crucial to effectively communicate your findings to stakeholders. Here’s how you can do it:
- Synthesize Your Data: Begin by distilling the vast amounts of data into a coherent narrative. Highlight key observations, performance metrics, and any significant gaps.
- Create an Executive Summary: Develop a concise overview that captures the essence of your audit—this becomes the go-to section for stakeholders who prefer a quick briefing.
- Prioritize Insights: Rank the issues and opportunities according to their potential impact. This helps in focusing efforts where they matter most.
- Develop Actionable Recommendations: Transform analytics into strategic actions. Specify clear steps that address the identified issues and capitalize on opportunities.
- Customize Reporting Formats: Use customizable templates from platforms like HubSpot or Semrush to format your report. A well-structured report should include visual aids, such as graphs and charts, to make data interpretation easier.
By following these steps, you ensure that your digital marketing audit results not only inform but drive informed decision-making.
Comprehensive Digital Marketing Audits for Your Business
At EWR Digital, we offer four different types of digital marketing audits:
Optimize your performance today and address any loopholes that may be preventing your progress. Find out more about the digital marketing audits we’re offering and discover how each one can benefit your business. Schedule your free consultation today.