Marketing Strategy Audits: Don't Fear the Audit
Marketing Strategy Audits: Don't Fear the Audit
For many companies, their greatest challenge is assembling a solid marketing strategy for the upcoming year—it’s a daunting task. Our advice? You better check yourself before you wreck yourself! The best way to know what you’re going to need in your 2018 marketing plan is to review where you are, what worked in 2017 and what missed the mark. “Audit” may seem like a bad word, but it’s a necessary evil for planning and implementation. Use the outline we’ve provided below and let us know how else we can help!
Competitive Analysis
It’s always good to (a) establish a competitive context for your website, and (b) know how a site stacks up against its competitors. When analyzing your competitors, pay special attention to:
• Content and Functionality: how does the content attract and engage visitors?
• Marketing Message: does the content present a compelling experience?
• Social Media Engagement: how often does the brand engage as opposed to promote?
• Mobile Performance: what is their user experience in the mobile (smartphone) and portable (tablet) environment?
Content Engagement Analysis
For those who use email as a means of attracting and engaging visitors, we find that there’s always room for improvement. Examinecampaigns that worked well and ones that didn’t perform to expectation, reviewing factors including:
• Optimal Time for Send: are emails always going out at the same day? Same time?
• Opens: is there a noticeable trend over time?
• Clicks: what seems to get the audience to engage?
• Unsubscribes: how can we minimize attrition?
• Subjects: are there any subjects that might flag as spam?
• Body: how much content is presented? How are the Calls-To-Action (CTA)?
• Images: are images suitable for the content? Are they compelling?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)/Analytics
Looking at analytics is vital for understanding your content and disposition in the eyes of search engines. How are people finding you? Whattypes of traffic are you getting? Which websites are sending visitors your way? As you analyze your SEO, break it down into two distinctive groups. On-pageanalysis is based off your content strategy (keyword ranking, meta data, mobile trends), whereas off-page analysis examines backlinks (volume, domains, andTLDs), referring websites, and anchor text.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
If you’re augmenting your search engine optimization efforts with PPC, examine performance by looking at the following key performanceindicators (KPI):
• Impressions
• Click-through Rate (CTR)
• View-though Rate (VTR)
• Conversion Rate (when available)
Conducting a Digital Audit places a marketer in the perfect position to get out of the gate in 2018 and hit the ground running.
