Every marketing professional or business owner has experienced the struggle to justify marketing expenses. A boardroom meeting shouldn’t feel like you’re begging for donations to a worthy cause.

Thankfully, there’s a secret tool - that we wish wasn’t so secret - to help you develop a data-driven strategy that drives growth and identifies impactful opportunities to increase your ROI.

A digital marketing audit involves looking at every aspect of your brand’s digital footprint. After completing one, you’ll have a 360-degree view of your brand packed with data-driven insights that you can leverage in almost any marketing conversation.

Having the results of a digital audit is like being dealt a Royal Flush in poker. It’s a game changer. And you don’t have to wait for a good hand to come your way – you can do this right now.

Do I need to complete a Digital Marketing Audit?

Whether you’re a seasoned marketing executive, or a growing company that is just starting to think about their digital footprint, these questions will help you decide if a digital audit is right for you:

1. Do you have a comprehensive digital marketing strategy for growing your brand?
2. Are you experiencing consistent, double-digit percentage growth in online engagement with your brand?
3. Do you have the right People, Platforms, Partners and Processes in place to set your brand up for success?
4. Are you ranking above your competitors in Google’s search results for queries related to your products and services?
5. Are you measuring your Key Performance Indicators and tracking the right data to generate the most engagement with your target audience?

This isn’t a comprehensive list, but if you’ve answered “no” to just two or three of these questions, it’s time to perform a digital audit.

Marketing Shouldn’t Be a Game of Chance

Once you can answer the questions above, you’ll be able to focus in on the things that will deliver the biggest impact to your company’s bottom-line. Instead of chasing your competitors in the marketing equivalent of “monkey see, monkey do,” you can identify the metrics and opportunities that matter most for growing your digital footprint.

Identify Your 8 Channels for Digital Growth

At Fratzke Media, we’ve honed in on 236 data points across the 8 Channels of Digital Marketing that define your brand’s success:

• Website
• Search Engine Optimization
• Social Media
• Email Marketing
• Digital Advertising
• Content Marketing
• Reputation Management
• Local Search

A digital marketing audit will dive into each of these digital channels. We seek to understand how your customers prefer to be engaged and provide a holistic picture of your brand’s digital reach. Each channel has unique characteristics. But without performing a digital audit, you’re just throwing darts at the board – blindfolded.

Engagement Stats: Your Brand’s Digital Vitals

When you take the time to assess your marketing efforts, you’re listening to the heartbeat of your digital presence. A doctor wouldn’t ignore vital signs, and it would be equally negligent to fail to collect accurate data about user engagement.

A comprehensive digital marketing audit will produce a collection of statistics that tell a story. Some numbers are more important than others. Some of your most important key performance indicators (KPIs) include:

• Unique Visitors – The number of people that have engaged with your site.
• Conversion Rate – What percentage of site visitors become customers?
• Opt-In Rate – Are visitors signing up for your email marketing?
• Traffic Sources – Where are your visitors coming from?
• Rate of Returning Visitors – How many people return after visiting your website?
• Duration of Visit – How long are they spending on each page of your site?

This really is just the tip of the iceberg. But it’s important to understand these numbers because it will focus your time and resources on the areas where you are weakest.

Drive growth leveraging Online Marketing’s most critical Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

Numbers tell a story. When you come to the table with competitive insights,  emerging trends and engagement statistics, you’re ready to handle virtually any obstacle that comes your way.

This data really is a win-win for marketers trying to justify their marketing budget. You can convince stakeholders to approve radical strategic changes based on your performance and business owners can better identify their next steps. In the areas where you are weakest, you can more effectively communicate a sense of urgency and identify opportunities for growth.

And, of course, the areas where you are strongest will serve as justification that what you are doing is making a difference. Once enough of these numbers are in the right place, you will be able to point to a growth in revenue, user engagement and brand recognition.

Website Performance: Blog Posts, Landing Pages, Call to Action

Many of the performance measures that you dive into will help you strategically expand your website. You might be asking yourself whether a topic should be covered in a blog post vs. a landing page.

If you’re a small business owner selling products online, you need to think strategically about how you invest your limited resources to achieve strategic goals. A digital audit will arm you with the information you need in order to justify an investment in targeted landing pages and blog content.   

WHAT IS THE DEFINITION OF MARKETING RESEARCH?

The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines marketing research as:

“...the function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information–information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve understanding of marketing as a process. Marketing research specifies the information required to address these issues, designs the method for collecting information, manages and implements the data collection process, analyzes the results, and communicates the findings and their implications.”

A digital audit enhances every facet of this definition - which is why we’re shocked that more marketers aren’t investing the appropriate amount of time and resources in learning how to perform digital marketing audits effectively.

If you have further questions about how to perform a digital marketing audit, or need help diving into what your stats mean, the Fratzke team is standing by to help. Our goal is to deliver the insights you need in order to be the smartest guy or gal in the room.