When Did You Last Perform a Digital Marketing Audit?
Most enquiries I receive are from clients with a niggling feeling that their website is not quite fulfilling its online potential. As part of getting to know their business one of my questions is “When did you last perform a digital marketing audit?” and often the answer is never.
This doesn’t make the business owner unskilled, on the contrary, people know their businesses inside out and are experts but it’s a question of time and knowledge in this area that frequently stops an audit from taking place.
So… What is a Digital Marketing Audit?
A digital marketing audit is essentially a thorough check through of various elements both on and off your website to get a good understanding of the current picture of your online presence. It uses your existing analytics data, customer data and competition to clarify areas that are working and areas that need improvement to drive more website traffic.
Why is it Important?
There is a useful tool used in business planning called a “SWOT analysis” and it’s helpful to think of an audit in the same way. An audit like a SWOT Analysis helps you stop and take a good look at your online business. It looks at your strengths like where most of your traffic is coming from to weaknesses, maybe you have a slow loading website, opportunities such as valuable content that could be optimised and threats like new competitors taking your share of the searches.
Taking stock in this way can help you start to prioritise areas that need urgent attention and those that can wait for now. It is also an important tool to help with creating an SEO Strategy or Digital Marketing Strategy, again giving you valuable insight into what’s worked and what has not so far.
Finally, its import for budgets. I typically do not have an endless stream of money to pour into online marketing so every pound (dollar, euro etc…) counts. An audit is a good way of working out what paid advertising is working and what is not in the bigger picture.
What Tools Help Carry Out a Digital Audit
Carrying out an audit does take time and effort but as you can see from my comments above its well worth it! So here are some free tools I would recommend helping you carry out a digital audit:
So, there you have it, its well worth thinking about a digital audit especially if you have a niggling feeling your website could be doing better. I am going to be putting together a basic digital marketing audit check list soon so keep an eye out for my next post!
