Or, more importantly, moving beyond the “hope & pray” strategy
For small businesses, digital marketing can be a confusing venture. Should you invest your marketing budget on a fancy website upgrade or a social media campaign? What about SEO or how to get and use social proof?
Author Julia Rosien’s Motto: “Life is better together. We all want to succeed and when we work together, we can make great things happen for ourselves, those around us and the organizations we serve.”
If you’ve been operating on the “hope and pray” digital marketing strategy, it’s time to take a step back and review the lay of the land. What are your digital marketing goals? Are you tracking progress? Are you course-correcting if you veer off the path? Do you even know if you veer off the path?
Google – the world’s biggest search engine – is constantly progressing, changing the rules without advance notice. Have you noticed any of the following in your digital marketing efforts:
Receding website traffic
• Declining onsite conversions
• Waning social media audience
• Flatlining engagement on content
• Flagging click-through rates on email campaigns
Just as sales pitches and customer service philosophies evolve and grow over time, so should your digital strategy. A digital marketing audit is full systems check that will diagnose what’s right, what’s wrong and what needs to be done to get you back on track.
10 point digital marketing audit
1. Website audit. Your website is your digital headquarters. It’s where consumer traffic you’ve worked hard to acquire can gather to learn more about your business or transact a purchase.
a. Can consumers quickly learn as much as possible about your business so they can make informed decisions? The essential pages: About Us, Product/Services, Testimonials and/or links to your social media communities.
b. Is your navigation simple and responsive (renders properly on a laptop, tablet and various phone sizes)? Do you have a search function so you can see what people are looking for on your site?
c. Do you know which pages are converting and which are underperforming so you can take steps to either promote or fix? Consider conversion rates on each page, as well as time on the page and bounce rate.
2. SEO audit. Search Engine Optimization can be like a chameleon, everchanging and frustrating to understand. But since more than half of all web traffic originates from search, SEO is essential.
a. Ensure the pages on your site are indexing correctly on Google.
b. Analyze organic traffic to ensure the keywords you’re ranking for are the ones you want to rank for.
c. Check the ranking of your essential keywords and beef up content or rewrite landing pages as needed.
d. Examine your backlinks carefully. If they’re generating from spammy or irrelevant sources, consider disavowing them.
e. Evaluate on-page SEO, which means reviewing title tags, meta descriptions and URL slugs.
3. SEM audit. Whether your Search Engine Marketing efforts are paid for by the click or by impressions, you need them to convert. They should be reviewed on a regular basis to ensure quality scores remain high and that each campaign continues to deliver tangible results.
a. Evaluate your ad schedule to ensure timing of ad delivery matches your customers’ buying habits.
b. Reassess your bidding strategy (budget, location, negative keywords and conversion rates).
c. Examine your PPC ads for continued relevancy to your consumer – and of course, click-through rates.
4. Content marketing audit. I’m a big believer in content marketing – how effective is your content marketing? Does your content drive organic and referral traffic to your website and does it convert visitors into leads?
a. Identify content overachievers and consider how you can give those pages more visibility. Can you link to that content from other pages or feature them on landing pages?
b. Identify content gaps by analyzing keywords on your site – competitive research will help you identify gaps quickly as well.
5. Landing page audit. How are your landing pages performing? As your social media and SEM campaigns will be driving consumers to these pages, they need to have a solid proposition with measurable results.
6. Social Media audit. Your social media strategy should be driving traffic to your site but there’s more to social than just traffic. Here are just a few insights into the health of a social media strategy:
a. Audience growth rate
b. Content reach rate & content sharing rate
c. Engagement rate
d. Click-through (conversion) rate
7. Social Proof audit. Once you’ve taken stock of all your social proof assets (testimonials, media mentions, influencer campaigns and reviews to name a few), ensure you’re optimizing each piece effectively. If you’re unsure, do some competitive research and learn different ways to convert this type of content into marketing gold.
8. Email Marketing audit. The three most important metrics to review are open rate, click rate and unsubscribe rate. From there, look at how individual campaigns performed, honing on subject lines, body copy and even overall email design.
9. Brand audit. Key landing pages to social media and beyond, brand consistency will make it easier for consumers to understand your reason for being. Do your logo, image and content tone of voice – event font choice – convey the message you want to convey to your customers?
10. Overall Digital Strategy audit. Once you’ve reviewed every aspect of your digital strategy, it’s time to start measuring success. Every piece of the strategy you’ve reviewed and tweaked, should begin performing differently – hopefully better – quickly. Watch the day to day trends but don’t be afraid to step back and watch progress month over month as well. Remember, digital is a long play strategy and some of the changes you implement will take time to register in your analytics.
Embarking on a new digital strategy can be challenging but the right tools – and measuring along the way – will put you on a path to success.
Who the heck is Julia Rosien?
At the end of the day, it's night and it's my job to help you get a better night's sleep – and lead a healthier, longer life. Pretty awesome job, right? As Vice President of Brand & Digital Marketing for Restonic Mattress Corporation, I also serve as the brand liaison for Restonic's family of brands, which includes Scott Living and Biltmore.
My motto: life is better together. We all want to succeed and when we work together, we can make great things happen for ourselves, those around us and the organizations we serve. Connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter.