Regardless of your brand’s size and scale, budget spending on marketing efforts should be monitored. From small to big brands, everyone should regularly conduct a marketing audit. A marketing audit reviews all practices, strategies, results, etc. that a brand is trying to achieve. It helps us know whether we are on the right path and where we need to make changes.
63% of brands have increased their marketing budgets due to rising competition in the market. To stay relevant and competitive, brands must regularly monitor and evolve their strategies.
In this blog, we’ll learn what a digital marketing audit is, when we should conduct it, and how to initiate it.
What is a Digital Marketing Audit?
Digital marketing audit is a data-oriented document that shows how well your digital marketing strategies, efforts, etc, perform. It also informs us about potential areas to grow and which areas need more attention and effort.
It is one of the most important documents as it displays how well your resources are utilized. You might think that a campaign has worked well for you, but without a digital marketing audit, you can’t make an accurate judgment.
75% of brands don’t have a clear understanding of their digital marketing metrics, it is difficult for them to set realistic KPIs. It is important to understand key performance information because it helps understand the performance of your marketing strategy and plan for the future.
Digital marketing audit helps in optimizing website performance, taking data-driven decisions, improving the digital marketing strategy, improving return on investment, and conversion rate. It also helps in eliminating risks, improving consistency and gaining useful customer insights. It keeps you ahead of the competition and enhances cross-team productivity.
When should you do a digital marketing audit?
Are you running a marketing campaign for 6 or more months? Or does your brand run campaigns simultaneously? Then you should perform a marketing audit.
With new technologies emerging, the scope of marketing has increased. With so many platforms available, it is important to select the right platform for communicating with your customers. Marketing audit helps in understanding which channels work best for you and why your current channels aren’t giving you the desired results. According to a report, 63% of brands don’t have a documented content marketing strategy, which makes it difficult to measure the efficiency of your content. In such a scenario, conducting a marketing audit becomes a necessity.
Marketing audit also helps in gathering additional information such as customer data, their likes and dislikes, needs, and expectations. You can use competitor analysis and customer persona to analyse this. It also helps in analyzing how your budget is being spent.
You must conduct a marketing audit annually. You can do so in six months as well for better understanding and results.
Digital marketing audit can be done when launching a new website, changing target audience or objective, notice a significant change or decline in conversion rate, change in market trend, emergence of new marketing channels. You should conduct a marketing audit in case of rebranding, pre-merger, and post-merger acquisition.
Best Practices of Marketing Audit
Here are some of the best practices of marketing audits
- Your marketing audit should highlight marketing techniques and strategies that worked most effectively for your brand.
- It should include or provide short-term and long-term solutions.
- It should describe what the emerging challenges are and how to overcome them.
Here are some of the elements that your marketing audit should include
- Plan of marketing program and digital marketing audit objectives.
- Your target audience and all the social media channels that you have used.
- Data related to followers rate, engagement rate, bounce rate, conversion rate, and cost.
- All the marketing assets that are used, such as the infographic, white paper, flyer, etc.
- Offer recommendations such as increasing posts, using different social media strategies.
- Conduct an audit for your content, revealing important data related to it such as keyword performance, engagement rate, views, etc.
Nothing works better than a well-conducted marketing audit. However, gaining the maximum from your marketing efforts is a long way journey. Also to accomplish this, you need some help. Conducting regular marketing audits helps in streamlining your processes. Do your social media strategies attract potential customers? Do your emails receive a high open rate? Getting accurate answers for such questions is important for creating a marketing strategy. Marketing audit answers all your questions from small issues like content views to serious issues of ROI, all the answers lie in your audit. Lumia 360 provides digital solutions to small and medium-sized businesses. To learn more about digital marketing audit, you can use our services.
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