What is a digital marketing audit?
A digital marketing audit is the same as a marketing audit however it only focuses on the digital elements such as PPC, SEO, email and social to name a few. The digital marketing audit will review how well each element of your digital marketing is performing, where there is room for improvement and how it can be improved.
Many people see an audit as a bad thing or take it as a personal reflection of their work. However, a digital audit is for everyone’s benefit as it increases your performance and helps you to grow your business further.
Knowing when you need an audit can be tricky which is why we’ve broken down some common themes of why people choose to have an audit undertaken.
Top 5 signs your digital marketing can use a tune-up
Performance is decreasing
An obvious one that most people come up against is a decrease in the effectiveness of their marketing which shows as an increase in the cost or time it takes to acquire a new lead. Depending on the channels you’re working on you might notice the following:
SEO
- Search traffic starts to level off
- Your position tracking shows you losing ground to your competitors
- Organic leads start to slow down or drop off
PPC
- Your quality scores are decreasing
- Cost per click has steadily been increasing
- CPA (cost per acquisition) has been increasing
- The click-through rate of your ads is dropping meaning fewer conversions
Social
- You’re seeing less engagement on your posts
- The CPA is increasing over time
- Your account is being tagged in an increasing number of customer service or support requests
Website
- You’re seeing an increase in abandoned carts
- Your bounce rate is increasing
- Your session recording shows users becoming frustrated
Many external factors could mean your performance is dropping. These can include competitors investing more into their digital marketing, seasonality (it’s important to compare your performance year on year for this reason), change in consumer behaviour (such as inflation) and new tools and products in the digital space that you haven’t yet explored.
A digital marketing audit will help you uncover the cause of the drop in your performance and will help you get back on track.
Questioning your performance or ideas
All marketers at some point question themselves on their own performance and the ideas they bring to the table. If you’re questioning whether your marketing can be performing better or if you’re not sure your ideas are resonating with your audience then an audit can get you back on track. Sometimes an audit can uncover new opportunities and ideas for you to run with and other times they can be a nice confirmation that you’re performing well.
Our top tip would be to choose a marketing agency that specialises in digital but also works with a range of clients from your sector. This means that your performance can be benchmarked against similar businesses and the agency will understand your sector and your audience in greater detail, allowing more in-depth recommendations.
Not sure if you need a tune-up or an overhaul
If you’re wondering if you just need to switch up some ad copy, sprinkle in a few more keywords or if your strategy needs a complete overhaul, a digital marketing audit will help you uncover this.
Sometimes it could be that your strategy is right and just needs a few tweaks to the execution such as tightening your targeting for a paid social campaign or refreshing your ad copy. Other times the strategy could be taking you in the wrong direction and no amount of new keywords, refreshed ad copy or tighter targeting will help.
Unsure if you’re missing out on potential opportunities
With so many potential campaigns and so many angles to use it can be hard to know if you’re missing out on other potential opportunities. If you’re unsure whether your campaigns are the right campaigns or you’re running out of ideas for the next big thing, then an audit will help you uncover new opportunities.
Digital marketing spends are increasing
If you’re increasing your spend on digital marketing, whether that be on new tools, spending more time on it or increasing your ad spend then that is a great time to get an audit. If you’re going to be investing more in your digital marketing it’s best to know beforehand what you’re currently achieving and whether that can be improved further.
As an example, if an audit helps you reduce your cost per click or increase the click-through rate of your ads then there might not be a need to increase the total ad spend. Or if your email open rate is doubled then there might not be a need to buy more contacts or run a giveaway to try and collect more email subscribers.
By undertaking an audit before you increase your spends or invest more time you’ll be able to see a much bigger increase in the performance of your new investment into digital marketing.
The benefits of an audit
The benefits of a digital marketing audit are simple but powerful. By knowing how you are currently performing you can make changes to further improve the return on the investment in your marketing activities. While audits can seem like an expense they’re actually an investment. We find that 9 times out of 10 the cost of the audit is quickly recovered once the recommendations have been implemented.
Why use an outside agency/consultant to conduct the audit?
Digital marketing audits can be conducted by anyone and we always recommend that you conduct marketing audits internally to begin with. However outside agencies and consultants offer extra benefits to just doing an audit in-house.
An outside agency can really dig into the details of your current performance and can draw out insights that can be missed when you’re looking at the data day to day. When you do your own internal marketing audit you’re marking your own homework, when an agency conducts the audit they’re not.
An outside agency also has a team of specialists in each area that will be audited which allows for in-depth qualitative analysis. This is especially valuable if you work in-house as a generalist across all the digital disciplines.
All of this means that they can be more critical and give you much better constructive feedback on what is and isn’t working. This can be especially useful if you’re running a team as they may be more willing to give feedback to an external auditor than they would their boss.
Time for an audit?
If any of these signs resonate with you it might be time for a digital marketing audit. If you haven’t done one of these in house we recommend that you start by reviewing your own marketing performance to see what insights you can uncover yourself.
If you’ve already gone through the audit process yourself and you’re ready to pass it over to the experts to see what they can find then get in contact with our team. We will work with you to design the audit scope and more information can be found on our digital marketing audit service page.
