The Importance of a Marketing Campaign Audit

Our marketing campaign audit is a very important part of our Research, Audit, and Strategy phase. This audit is very thorough and it takes quite a bit of time for us to analyze all of the data that is collected and it also takes a lot of time to collect.

This is a very important phase or our partnership, especially if we’re going to be doing marketing for you right off the bat. We need to know everything you’ve done up until this point and whether or not it has worked so that we can decide whether we are going to continue on with campaigns you have that exist or if we are going to start from scratch and pivot directions.

We have 6 steps that we take to analyze all of your existing and past marketing efforts – let’s dive in:

Step 1 – Identify Opportunities for SEM and PPC marketing

Here we use various reporting platforms and tools to take a look at your keywords, where you rank, and where there is an opportunity. When looking at organic search, you want high volume/low competition and with paid marketing, you want high volume/low cost per click. We are looking for opportunities like this and then we will get a good idea about what type of content is going to be best for your campaigns to support a strong organic campaign, all while balancing your paid campaigns.

Step 2 – Social Media Audit – Marketing and Content Consistency

When we begin looking at your social media marketing, we start at your website, on your blog, and then on through any and all social media platforms you might be on. Here are some of the things we are looking for:

• The richness of the content being posted
• The responsiveness when someone asks a question on a platform
• The 3rd party content being posted is relevant to the brand and followers
• The consistency or the brand across all channels
• The number of total pieces of content going out from the client on a monthly basis
• How many people are liking the content
• How many are sharing it with their audiences
• Insights – reach, impressions, audience increasing or decreasing

We use the chart below straight from our internal audit report to pull together what we deem important metrics. We use a scale of 1-10 in comparing your social media marketing efforts to industry standard, and more specifically vertical standard if that applies. For example, your online jewelry store may have excellent scores on Facebook and Instagram but lower on LinkedIn. Since Facebook and Instagram are where you are going to find your target market, we may not be as concerned about lower LinkedIn scores.

It is possible that someone in your organization could fulfill this task, but what we’re really looking for are trends, strategy, and objectives that are aimed at a higher or more long-term goal. If these three things are not apparent in your current social media marketing campaigns, we are going to pull together some suggestions for your future social media campaigns.

Example:

Step 3 – Email marketing

Email marketing is not dead! It is still very effective, especially when done correctly as incorporated into a marketing automation campaign. If you are already doing email marketing, here is what we will look at:

• What platform are you using?
• How many subscribers do you have?
• What is your open rate?
• What is the average click rate?
• What is your unsubscribe rate?
• Are you using marketing automation?
• Do the copy, imaging, and overall feel of the emails represent the brand well?
• Is there consistency in your emails that are comparable across your brand? (i.e. in social media, your website, etc.)

We will look at your email campaigns from very start to finish as well, meaning:

• What ad are you starting with?
• What landing page does that lead to?
• If your clients engage with both of those and are pushed into a funnel, is the entire funnel effective?
• If they fall out of the funnel or unsubscribe, is there a survey or retargeting campaign

As you can see, this part of the marketing audit alone can be quite extensive if you have a lot of active email marketing.

Step 4 – Paid marketing

Here we will analyze all of your paid ads across all platforms. We will be digging in deep into your analytics to see what is working, what isn’t, and what’s missing.

The specific areas we will analyze and some of the questions we are looking to answer are the following:

Clicks
– Are the ads getting clicked on?
– Are you pausing or analyzing those that aren’t?

Click-Through Rate (CTR)
– Clicks per impressions – is your CTR comparable to your industry?

Quality Score
– How is your Google Quality Score?
– Including expected CTR, landing page experience, ad relevance, and ad format

Cost Per Click (CPC)
– Is your budget accurate for the bid rates in your industry?

Cost Per Conversion/Acquisition (CPA)
– Does the cost per conversion make financial sense?
– What is the lifetime value of each conversion?

Conversion Rate (CVR)
– Do you have a minimum of 15 in the last 30 days in order to optimize for conversions?
– Is your conversion rate increasing over time?

Average Position
– What is your ad rank?

Budget Attainment
– Are you over or under budget?
– Why?

Lifetime Value
– What’s the value of clients acquired paid search?

All of these KPIs that we will be looking at are dependent upon so many factors that could change constantly based on the market trends. So we will have to dig and compare and contrast all of these KPIs against each other.

Step 5 – Organic Marketing

If we’re doing a marketing campaign for you, we’re likely doing a full Research, Audit, and Strategy Phase audit which encompasses a lot of different areas of your omnichannel digital footprint. As a part of this, we’ve probably run a SerpStat and a SpyFu report to give us a bit more information into your technical backend. From these reports, we can pull your Estimated Monthly SEO Click value, for example.

These tools, along with Google Analytics, will give us some insight into your organic marketing. Organic marketing online will typically come down to SEO and rich content. How many people are searching for a term or question and coming across your website or blog?

We will also do a random page audit to see what other organic tools you are utilizing such as alt-text, bold text, numbered lists, bulleted lists, etc.

Step 6 – Other Marketing Platforms Being Used

There are so many various marketing platforms available online, and many that are industry specific. In our onboarding process, we will gather all login information for all platforms you are using so that we can analyze absolutely everything. In looking at what platforms you are using, we may also be able to recommend different options depending on our goals.

Sounds like a lot?

By now, you may be feeling a bit overwhelmed! A digital omnichannel marketing campaign can have many moving parts and they all work symbiotically to get your clients to your end goal – which is usually them purchasing something from you.

After such a thorough audit, we will give you recommendations based on what we’ve found, and we’d be more than happy to take you on as a client, but let’s start at step 1! If you’re ready for a change, or maybe an in-depth analysis of the efforts of your internal marketing team, contact us today and let’s get started!