How Effective Is Your Digital Footprint?

These days, businesses are spending an increasing amount of their marketing budgets in the digital sphere. But do they actually know how effective it is?

Digital is not a set and forget marketing tactic and each activity needs to be monitored and refined accordingly to make sure you’re getting the best bang for your buck. The great thing is, digital marketing is easily managed and reportable if you know how!

We’ve seen an increase in Clients requesting digital audits over the past 12 months to provide some assurances and recommendations in making their digital activity as effective as possible.

What is a digital audit?
A digital audit is an analysis of your brand’s online presence. Some of the benefits include:

• Understand where your brand sits in relation to competitors
• Know what your brand is doing right (or wrong)
• Identify improvements to better engage your audience and generate leads
• Identify wastage in your marketing budget to make your $ work harder for you

Digital marketing can be time-consuming and a digital audit will allow you to understand what areas provide the most beneficial return for your business and help to reorganise your online priorities.

Below we’ve put together an overview of what a digital audit covers and why.

Website
Your website is usually the first touchpoint for potential clients to source information. It’s vital that it’s kept up to date and is accurate. It’s also really simple to maintain if you have the right tools and know how.

A digital audit will review and provide recommendations on areas of your website including:

• Design and site architecture
• User experience
• SEO
• CMS
• Hosting
• SSL certification
• Analytics
• Search Console
• Social media and email marketing integration
• Content and content style
• Conversion optimisation
• Accessibility
• Google My Business Listing
• Page load speed for desktop and mobile
• Important keywords for copywriting purposes
• XML Sitemap Accuracy (as these should be updated as the site content changes)
• Identify any broken links
• Semantics of HTML code
• Contact Forms

Analytics
Having the correct analytical tools in place to monitor your digital footprint will give you valuable insight into how well your website is working, how people are finding you and how they’re navigating your site.

A digital audit will review your analytics to identify:

• Who is viewing your site (demographics), from where and when
• Where people are finding and accessing your site
• What sources or mediums are driving the most effective traffic to your site and how to monitor this activity
• Benchmarking your site against competitors

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
SEM is a broad term for paid advertising, and for the purpose of digital audits, we look at SEM from a holistic view to analyse all paid digital advertising including AdWords and digital advertising across social media and third-party sites.

This includes reviewing and providing recommendations on:

• Effectiveness of platforms utilised
• Ad content and landing page relevancy
• Targeting
• Functionality
• ROI

Social Media
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn (for B2B) are integral to most businesses marketing strategies. Like your website, your social media platforms can also be regularly visited by your current and prospective customers, so making sure your social footprint is up to date and relevant is really important.

Considering industry trends, post frequency, content types and paid advertising will show what areas are working for your brand and what areas you shouldn’t be wasting time on!

Email Marketing
Emailing marketing is a highly effective direct way to communicate with your audience. Analysing all aspects of your email marketing will provide a good understanding of how to optimise future campaigns and deliver better results.

An email marketing audit will review:

• Your chosen platform and making the most of its functionality
• Design and layout of your email templates
• Content review and analysis
• List retention and growth
• ROI

Think managing a successful digital strategy sounds hard? That’s where Monique can help!

With over 15 years’ experience working in Marketing and Communications, our Team Lead of Client Services and Digital Expert Monique is skilled in digital strategy and analytics, corporate communications, online advertising and marketing strategy.

Contact Monique or call 8232 2526 to chat more about how a Digital Audit may be just what your organisation needs.