Digital Marketing Audits: A Guide To Cutting Costs & Improving Performance

This article is for people like you who are responsible for driving growth, reducing inefficient spend and maximising online performance in their company. It explains how digital marketing audits are critical in providing data-backed recommendations of what’s working in the business and what you need to do to meet your business objectives. They also show you what’s not working, where your weaknesses lie, and where the opportunities are.

The end goal of the audit is to give you confidence that your business efforts, processes, systems, and digital marketing strategies are all positively geared to allow you to generate the most revenue and the highest return on investment.

Let’s get started.

What’s the problem?

A lot of our clients come to us because despite spending considerable amounts of time and money trying to hit their business objectives, their digital marketing isn’t working as well as it should be.

Does the following sound familiar?

You’re pumping money into different channels and promotions with no clear understanding of how each contributes to your overall business strategy and objectives.

Your advertising is inefficient, which means your ad spend needs to work harder, and you need to spend more money to get the results you want. You know you can improve your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).

If you relate to either, or worse, both, of these scenarios, you have a serious problem. It could even have large scale implications that go beyond your digital marketing.

You company could perform much better.

• More leads and sales for each marketing dollar spent.
• Better conversion rates of visitors to your website.
• Streamlined sales funnels and business processes.

The money that you save from inefficient utilisation could then go towards other value-adding, or revenue-generating activities:  Hiring new sales people, upskilling staff, buying new plant or equipment or investing in automation software that grows your business.

By investing in a solution to this problem today, you could save your company from countless lost opportunity, recover wasted ad spend, and increase revenue in the long run.

A results-focused solution

A digital marketing audit will help you get the most revenue for the highest return on investment (ROI). This audit will analyse every component of your strategy, your campaigns, your staff, and your processes to make sure they are working together to achieve your business goals.

Digital audits provide both a birds-eye and an in-depth understanding of exactly what is working and what isn’t. They give clear recommendations of what changes need to be made for you to get to where you need to be.

For every aspect of your marketing, it’s important that you review the performance of your channels, software, processes, and tools, to confirm whether they’re performing optimally or if you’re leaving missed opportunity on the table.

The digital marketing audit focuses on a number of areas discussed below. Keep in mind that it’s possible to drill down further into each component by undertaking a detailed audit on that topic, for example, a dedicated SEO or website UX audit.

If, however, you don’t yet know where the main pain points lie, the digital marketing audit is a great place to start. It provides you with the data-backed confidence to quickly drive wholesale improvements.

Let’s look at what a comprehensive digital marketing audit covers.

Do you have the right objectives in place?

Start by critically analysing your objectives. Get other primary decision-makers involved.

Some questions you should consider:

• Are there well-defined objectives with measurable goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) in place?
• Are these regularly reviewed and adjusted to reflect current market conditions and enable continual growth?
• Or is your team working towards out-of-date objectives that won’t help your bottom line?
• Does everyone know what objectives apply to them?
• Are they getting clear support and plans to help them meet their objectives?

Have you developed a strong strategy?

You need a detailed strategy designed solely to meet your objectives within set budgets and timeframes. It should focus on exactly what you need to do to achieve business growth, strong competitive positioning, and solid financial performance.

The strategy must be clearly documented, communicated to, and understood by everyone responsible for carrying it out. When all staff and management clearly understand what they need to do,  and how they need to do it, the flow on effect is that you can make solid evidence-based business decisions about your offering, team roles, and systems. It will also give you consistency across your marketing and online branding.

Analyse your products and services

You need to make sure you are offering the right products and services to meet your objectives. Ask yourself:

• is there demand in the marketplace for my offering?
• are there data and research to back this up, or am I going by a “gut feel”?
• is my offering aligned to my strategies?
• do I need to adapt and evolve my existing offerings to better satisfy my customers’ problems and market need?
• based on current conditions, do I need to add new products and services to my offering so I can meet both long- and short-term goals?

Look at the skills force responsible for your strategy

Auditing your team by objectively by answering the questions below will give you the confidence to make decisions around resourcing. You may need to upskill existing staff, hire extra staff, or outsource if you do not have the time or skills inhouse.

• Does your business have the skills and capabilities to deliver on the strategy?
• If not, what skills are missing?
• Does the team realistically have the capacity to meet the deadlines?

Do you have the right systems in place?

It’s important to also analyse existing systems, from your website and CRM through to your advertising accounts. This analysis uncovers cost savings and efficiency-improving benefits.

As part of an overall digital marketing audit, check whether:

• your business has systems it needs to achieve the strategy and objectives in an efficient way
• the chosen systems are the best option to help you meet your goals effectively or are there alternatives that provide greater benefits and efficiencies
• a new system or automation can mitigate any time-consuming, manual activities
• all your systems are successfully integrated and working together like a well-oiled machine, or are there inaccuracies and problems?
• there are automations in place to nurture leads through the sales funnel
• the right team members are being notified from the right systems with the information they need

QA your Website Analytics

Your web analytics sets the foundation for accurate goal tracking and reporting. If your goals aren’t being recorded properly, or if you don’t have 100% visibility over each channel’s contribution to your goals, you can’t make correct business and marketing decisions.

Check whether:

• website analytics have been set to effectively measure performance
• goal and conversion tracking has been implemented
• session recording is used to identify conversion blocks and opportunities to improve UX (user experience) and CR (conversion rates)
• the right metrics are tracked and reported on
• data sources are correctly linked, allowing the correct passing of data from your analytics to your advertising platforms, and vice versa
• your advertising has URL tracking enabled and is correctly attributing delivery and conversion metrics to specific sources, campaigns, and ads
• you are analysing and considering multi-channel conversions when making marketing and business decisions
• any additional required tracking, such as call tracking and recording, has been set up
• all key conversion actions, such as form submissions and e-commerce transactions, on the website, are working
• the correct team members and systems, such as CRMs and email software providers, are receiving information about website conversions in real-time

With the fundamentals audited and recommendations implemented, a company like yours can now focus on what you came to this article for – gaining a competitive advantage, attracting more highly-qualified leads, and getting more out of your marketing dollar.

Review your brand and messaging

For your marketing to be successful, your brand images need to be consistent across online profiles, advertising, your website, traditional media, and the customer experience. Auditing you brand and message helps you understand your business image and how it compares to your competitors.

You can analyse brand awareness through Google search volume for branded searches and overall online perception of your brand through online reviews.

This process may show that you need an online review strategy or branding strategy. These will help reassure your potential customers they are making the right decision at every point along their buyer journey.

Carry out Performance Audits

Running average campaigns over a long period of time might mean wasting ad spend and losing revenue. This can be easily fixed with regular performance reviews of your digital marketing campaigns.

You need to be certain that each of your individual channels and marketing strategies perform optimally and work together to maximise results.

Review all your digital marketing and work out the current ROAS, CPA, ROI, and other key metrics that affect your bottom line. Take seasonality, trends, and current market conditions into account.

Also audit:

• on-site SEO & off-site SEO
• search engine marketing
• email marketing
• remarketing
• display advertising
• shopping campaigns
• video advertising
• content marketing (written, video, audio)
• social media accounts (e.g. through a Facebook Ads Audit)
• alternative advertising platforms such as Amazon, Quora, and Snapchat.

Depending on your business, you may need to review such things as programmatic advertising, SMS marketing, influencer marketing, event marketing, and more.

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Every channel that you’re spending time or money on to meet your objectives should have its performance analysed through intensive audits designed to identify opportunities for improvement. The ultimate goal is to get your marketing and website generating the highest number of goals (leads or sales) at the lowest possible cost.

Critically analyse your website

No matter how compelling your marketing may be, or how great your product or service is, if your website doesn’t reflect this and doesn’t convert visitors, your business will be extremely limited in its online success. A critical review of your website can help.

• Does your website reflect how great your product or service is?
• How do your website and landing pages stack up against your competitors?
• Is it time for a complete website redesign, or can you make easy and cost-effective tweaks to achieve your objectives?
• Are you using session recording software and behavioural analytics to identify conversion blocks and opportunities to increase conversion rates from each channel?
• Are you analysing the performance metrics on each page and using advertising insights to help plan your landing page strategy for SEO and different marketing campaigns?
• Do you regularly audit the website for potential changes to improve UX and conversion rates?

Audit your competitors to stay in the game

Regardless of your business objectives, we recommend you frequently take stock of your performance in relation to your competitors. By analysing your competition – what they are offering, their messaging, their strategies – and how this compares with your own, you can identify factors that reveal your weaknesses and opportunities.

Are your competitors’ discounts or promotions better than yours? Do you need to review your own approach and offering?

Are they more persuasive in their marketing messaging? Does your message need an overhaul to stay competitive?

Is their website more modern with strong call-to-actions on campaign-specific landing pages that appeal to users at each stage of the buying funnel? Identify what you can do to ensure you stand the highest chance of customers choosing you over your competitors

Make sure your budget isn’t limiting your results

Lastly, evaluate if your business has the budget to meet your objectives, or if your ad spend is standing in the way of your goals.

• How much budget is required to achieve the objectives at various levels of CPA?
• Are you using scenario planning to determine, based on your own historical data, what will give you the best bang for your buck?
• Is your ad spend heavily weighted towards the channels that are driving the most conversions, at the highest ROI with the lowest CPA?
• Is your overall media spend enough to hit your targets, or are you hindering your results by limiting your digital marketing budget?

How you will benefit

By auditing your business and marketing objectives, as well as the strategies and channels designed to help you achieve them, you will:

• gain higher quality leads, and more of them
• reduce how much you are paying per high-quality lead
• take back market share from your competitors
• increase the likelihood of converting leads
• increase your business revenue
• be confident that every channel and strategy has the right budget and high-performing campaigns to hit your business goals.

Implementing the Audit

Engage a specialist external digital marketing company to deliver unbiased digital marketing audits and recommendations. They can draw on decades of technical experience to uncover insights, weaknesses and opportunities that may be missed by those too close to the business.

By working with an agency experienced in digital marketing audits, the time and money spent on the audit can result in rapid cost savings and increases in ROI, often with no reductions in performance.

Once the audit is complete, there are a number of different ways to implement recommendations as quickly as possible. They will depend on your internal capabilities, resources, and objectives.

The agency who completed the audit can:

• provide a list of the required action items for you to implement
• upskill your team so they know how to implement the required action items
• implement the required action items themselves, or
• collaborate with you to implement the action items.

Cut CPA and boost ROI today – let’s go

As campaigns are optimised and all processes and systems are streamlined for success, you’ll be able to make informed decisions on how to scale and take your business to the next level. Which puts you in a very powerful position to succeed.

Living Online has worked with many companies just like yours, conducting in-depth audits and implementing the action items to generate amazing ROI and solid CPAs, in line with, or exceeding, business objectives.

Now it’s your turn.

If you want to maximise your online advertising results, speak to our friendly, experienced team of digital marketing superstars today. We can work with you to identify exactly what components you need to cover in your customised digital marketing audit.

Contact Us For Your Audit Today >>