RESOURCE GUIDE
Marketing Performance Audit
Monitor Your Success
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
YOUR EXPERIENCE AS YOUR ASSET
A Complete Guide To A Marketing Performance Audit
A marketing performance audit is a comprehensive analysis of a company’s marketing efforts, including its strategies, tactics, and results.
It aims to identify strengths and weaknesses in your marketing efforts and provide recommendations for improvement.Conducting a marketing performance audit can provide valuable insights and help you make informed decisions about allocating your marketing resources.
Whether you are a small business owner looking to fine-tune your marketing strategies or a marketing professional seeking to improve the performance of your campaigns, an audit can be a valuable tool to ensure that your marketing efforts are aligned with your overall business goals.
This guide details what a marketing performance audit entails and how it can benefit your business.
How To Gauge Your Marketing Performance
You can’t manage what you don’t measure, and you can’t improve what you don’t analyze–it’s that simple. That’s why digital marketing campaigns should start with identifying SMART goals and key metrics.
SMART stands for:
Specific: Your goals should be clear and well-defined so they are easy to understand and focus on.
Measurable: Your goals should be quantifiable so that the progress can be tracked and success can be measured.
Achievable: Given the resources and constraints of the business, the goals should be realistic and attainable.
Realistic: Your goals should be relevant to the overall business strategy and goals and align with your company’s values and mission.
Timely: There should also be a sense of urgency to your goals and a clear timeline for achieving them.
Using SMART goals can help you set clear, actionable objectives for your marketing campaigns and ensure that they are focused and aligned with your overall business goals.
By setting SMART goals, you can track your progress, measure your efforts’ success, and make adjustments to achieve the desired outcomes.
Five Key Metrics to Measure Marketing Performance
Here are the key metrics to determine if your digital marketing efforts are bringing you closer to your overall business goals. They provide insights into the effectiveness of your marketing efforts; hence, you should monitor them periodically.
1. Website Traffic
Website traffic is a metric that measures the number of visitors to a website over a given period of time. Such data gives you information on the overall health of your company’s online presence.
There are several ways to measure website traffic, including the number of unique visitors, page views, and bounce rate.
By tracking website traffic, you can identify trends and patterns in your audience behavior and make data-driven decisions to optimize your marketing campaigns and drive more traffic to your website.
2. Traffic by Source
Traffic by source is a metric that measures the source of website traffic, or simply, where your website visitors are coming from. This can include search engines, social media platforms, referral websites, and direct traffic (when visitors type the website’s URL directly into their browser).
This gives you data on the channels driving the most traffic to your website. For example, a high traffic volume from search engines may indicate that your SEO efforts are paying off.
3. Returning Visitors
Returning visitors are individuals who have visited a website multiple times over a given period of time.
A high number of returning visitors may indicate that your website is providing valuable content or resources or that it is meeting the needs of your audience. It may also mean your business successfully builds customer relationships and creates a loyal following.
Tracking this figure brings you the following benefits:
-lets you know the overall appeal of your website
-helps you identify the trends and patterns in your audience behavior
-assists you in creating customer retention strategies
4. Conversion Rate
It measures the percentage of visitors to a website who take a desired action, such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or filling out a form.
Several factors can impact a website’s conversion rate, including the website’s design and layout, the content’s quality and relevance, the ease of use and navigation, and the overall user experience.
Tracking conversion rates can help you understand the ROI of your marketing efforts.
5. Bounce Rates
Bounce rate is a metric that measures the percentage of visitors to your website who leave after only viewing one page.
A high bounce rate may indicate that your site’s content is not meeting your audience’s needs, that your website is difficult to navigate, or that it has a slow loading time.
SWOT Analysis
SWOT analysis–which stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats–is a common strategy businesses use when looking at their competition or planning to improve a certain aspect of their operation.
In digital marketing, our job does not end once we execute a strategy (e.g., email marketing, paid ads, SEO campaigns, etc.). We must also apply SWOT analysis to determine a project’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
SWOT can guide your brand toward long-term success because continuous improvement is its primary goal.
Creating an Insightful SWOT Analysis in Digital Marketing
Take a look at the table below showing an example of how we conduct digital marketing SWOT analysis for our clients.
Strategy Development
Once we conduct a digital marketing SWOT analysis, we translate our findings into short- and long-term strategies using TOWS analysis in which the goal is to find solutions by “overlapping” your strengths with weaknesses and opportunities with strengths.
While TOWS may not eliminate all threats and loopholes, it can significantly minimize your weaknesses and the risk of inauspicious events.
SEO Audit
So, you’ve checked your website performance using Google Analytics and found that your number of visitors has dropped drastically or it’s not converting leads into actual buyers or subscribers.
As a result, you plan on making changes to patch up some loopholes and optimize your content.
Before you make any random changes to your site, you need to conduct an SEO audit, which is about evaluating your website’s search engine friendliness.
Understanding an SEO Audit
This process focuses on identifying problems and weaknesses that prevent your websites from ranking on Google and other search engines.
The following are the components of an in-depth SEO analysis:
-Checking a website for its on-page SEO issues
-Ensuring that a site is being crawled and indexed by Google
-Examining a site’s user experience (for both mobile and desktop users)
-Evaluating off-page SEO (e.g., outbound links)
-Watching out for duplicated and thin content
-Keyword optimization content
-Setting up and tracking a website’s performance
You can devise a more robust SEO strategy to improve your conversion rates, site traffic, and other key metrics through this analysis.
Key Benefits of SEO Audit
An SEO audit allows you to make intelligent and data-driven changes to your website, increasing your conversion rates and ROI while at the same time helping you address weaknesses and loopholes in your digital marketing strategies.
Here are the key benefits of an SEO audit:
1. SEO Audit Improves Your Site’s Overall Performance.
Google’s algorithm is becoming smarter and more user-centric than ever before. In fact, site performance and user experience are the key factors in ranking; that’s why no company should skimp on SEO audits.
With SEO audits, you can find if your website has issues with site maps, speed, and security–something that hurts your digital marketing strategy.
2. SEO Audit Allows You To Discover Which Keywords You’re Ranking For.
An SEO audit gives invaluable insight into your online visibility, Google ranking, and arguably the most important of all: the keywords you are actually ranking for.
Even if you write the best content about a certain topic, your target audience may not be able to find you if it’s not optimized for the correct keywords.
3. SEO Audit Combs Through Content With Antiquated SEO Practices.
The SEO algorithm is constantly evolving; thus, you should keep up with the changes and trends. Or you will suffer the consequences.
For example, years ago, it was a common practice to buy links that directed visitors to your website. It didn’t even matter if the links had anything to do with your brand or target audience.
Nowadays, link building remains an important part of a robust SEO strategy. However, websites with toxic links (i.e., they don’t add value to the user experience and have nothing to do with your business) are now penalized by Google.
4. SEO Audit Reveals Your SEO Position.
The business landscape, consumer sentiments, and online best practices are constantly changing. That’s why it’s important to perform SEO audits regularly to ensure that you’re always adapting to the new norm.
5. SEO Audit Lets You Know Which Keywords Deliver Traffic And Leads.
Ranking well for relevant keywords is a nice achievement. But your digital marketing strategies are meaningless if they are not generating enough traffic or attracting the right audience.
Note that it’s possible to rank well for a certain keyword even though it is not generating enough traffic. In this scenario, you’re probably using a keyword with low search volume or your target audience is not using it.
With an SEO audit, you’ll have a better understanding of the search terms and variations that your audience is using.
6. SEO Audit Helps You Understand Your Competitor Better.
A good rule of thumb is to run an audit on two to three competitors.
With a competitive SEO analysis, you can learn their strengths that you can apply and their weaknesses and gaps that you can fill in the market to give yourself a competitive edge.
Content Audit
You’ve probably heard the word “relevance” thrown around in SEO circles. It’s a term that gets tossed around a lot, and it can be difficult to determine what exactly it means.
If you’re wondering how relevant your content is, you need to know how Google determines whether or not it’s good enough for their standards (and yours).
Understanding Relevance Score
Relevance score is a way of measuring how relevant a web page is to the search query. Google calculates it, and it’s one of the ranking factors that influence the position of your ads in their search results pages (SERPs).
To determine relevance, Google looks at the user experience on your site, such as:
User behavior: How long users spend on your site after clicking through from an ad or organic result.
Pages visited on your site: Which parts they visit and in what order; which pages they’re most interested in; where they click next; etc.
Engagement: How frequently people engage with your content, how long they stay on the page, and what links they click.
Type of content: If you have many pages that are similar (or non-existent), Google may consider those pages as duplicate content. They will then begin penalizing them in ranking results.
Query from search engine: If a user searches for something specific, then it’s likely that other pages related to that query will rank higher than others. That’s because they’re more relevant for their query terms.
The more relevant your site is to the user’s query, the better. For example, if people are searching for “how to train a Labrador retriever,” your website about dog training must offer something useful and interesting for people who land on it.
PPC Audit
A Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Audit is a comprehensive analysis of a company’s PPC advertising efforts, including its campaigns, keywords, ad copy, and performance. A PPC audit aims to identify areas of strength and weakness in a company’s PPC efforts and provide recommendations for improvement.
PPC audits can benefit businesses of all sizes, as they can help companies optimize their campaigns and improve the return on investment of their advertising spend. Doing PPC audits can help you identify opportunities to increase the relevance and quality of your ads, target more effectively, and reduce unnecessary spending.
Common Areas for PPC Audit
Some common areas that a PPC audit might cover includes:
Keyword Research And Selection
A PPC audit can help you identify the most effective keywords to target in your campaigns based on factors such as search volume, competition, and relevance to your business.
Ad Copy And Landing Page Optimization
By conducting a PPC audit, you can improve the effectiveness of your ad copy and landing pages. This can be done by analyzing relevance, clarity, conversion rate, and other factors.
Campaign Structure And Organization
The overall campaigns of your ad spend should be effective and efficient, and a PPC audit is necessary to optimize your campaigns’ structure and organization.
Benefits of PPC Audit
Your business will benefit through PPC audits, specifically:
Improved ROI
By identifying and addressing areas of waste or inefficiency in your PPC campaigns, a PPC audit can help businesses maximize the return on their advertising spend.
Increased Relevance And Quality Of Ads
PPC audits can help improve the relevance and quality of your ads, leading to higher click-through and conversion rates.
Better Targeting
By identifying the most effective keywords and targeting options for your campaigns, you will reach the right audience and drive more qualified traffic to your website.
Enhanced Campaign Structure And Organization
PPC audit helps you optimize your campaigns to maximize the effectiveness of your ads.
Improved Performance
Last but not least, by addressing any issues or areas for improvement during a PPC audit, you can improve the overall performance of your PPC campaigns and drive better results for your business.
Doing a Marketing Performance Audit
A marketing performance audit allows you to take a cold hard look at your marketing efforts and gives you an honest view of what’s working and, more importantly, what’s not. It also acts as an excellent marketing benchmark tool, showing how much you have improved over time.
As you work on improving your marketing strategies, consider the steps below for conducting a marketing performance audit.
A Clear Plan of Action
The first step to creating a successful marketing audit is clearly defining your goals and objectives. To track your progress, you must know what you want to achieve and how you plan on getting there.
You should also include a clear plan of action to ensure that all aspects of the business are aligned. This way, you can easily identify where things went wrong and how they can be fixed in the future when mistakes are made.
The best way of doing this is by setting clear goals and objectives so everyone knows what needs to be done before starting any solution!
Comprehensive Diagnostic
The next step is to use that information to make a list of solutions you can implement. A good diagnostic tool will clearly understand where your marketing efforts are lacking and where they can be improved.
To start, look for an organization with extensive experience and expertise in this area. If it’s too difficult for them to figure out what needs fixing, how can they help you improve it?
Actionable Insights
An insight is not a conclusion, prediction, or hypothesis. It’s an observation that can be tested and validated through further research.
You’re trying to learn how people think about your product or service, so your insights should address why they’re doing what they’re doing. Helpful questions involve:
-Why do people choose one specific feature over another?
-Why do they use your product differently than you expected?
-What makes them decide not to buy at all?
A good marketing audit will involve talking with customers and observing their behavior to find these key insights. It would be best if you also considered whether there are any other areas where you could improve upon existing products or services.
Then you can develop new ones based on those findings. For example, if customers consistently report that they find it difficult to get information about a particular tool within your app.
High-Level Strategic Recommendations
The recommendations should be actionable, prioritized, and realistic. They should also be measurable and time-bound, such as highlighted above in SMART.
We recommend writing a list of all the necessary steps to complete each task. Then you follow it with examples of how to start each step.
That will hold you accountable when you fail to follow these tasks. But if you stick with them and succeed, it will be an invaluable learning experience that can help lead your future efforts toward even more successful outcomes.
How A Successful Marketing Performance Audit Looks Like
A marketing performance audit can be a valuable tool if you want to optimize your marketing efforts and drive better results for your business.
Several factors contribute to the success of a marketing performance audit; below, we have provided a checklist to help you ensure that your audit is focused, comprehensive, and actionable.
-Do you have clearly defined SMART goals for the marketing audit?
-Have you collected and analyzed all relevant data for the marketing audit, including marketing metrics, customer data, and industry trends?
-Do you have a team with expertise and experience in the field of conducting marketing audits?
-Are you collaborating and engaging with all relevant stakeholders during the marketing audit, including the marketing team members, executives, and customers?
-Does the marketing audit provide actionable recommendations for improvement, along with a plan for implementation?
Creating A Team For Your Marketing Performance Audit
A marketing performance audit is typically conducted by a team of marketing professionals with expertise and experience. This team may include in-house marketing professionals, consultants, or a combination of both.
In some cases, the marketing audit may be led by your company’s marketing director or other senior marketing executives; in other cases, it may be done by a consultant or agency like LOJO Marketing with expertise in marketing performance audits.
Regardless of who leads the marketing audit, it is important that all relevant stakeholders are involved in the process, including marketing team members, executives, and customers. This can ensure that the audit is comprehensive and actionable and that any recommendations are supported and implemented.
LOJO's Marketing Performance Audit
So you want to grow your company. You’ve heard the phrase, “the best way to succeed is to focus on one thing and do it well,” and that’s what you want to do.
You see the successful businesses around you—they have a laser-sharp focus on their core competencies, which gives them an advantage over others in their field.
But how do you get there? How do you know what your marketing efforts should focus on? How can you ensure every dollar spent goes toward something that works for your business?
LOJO's Process
We begin by getting to know your business. We analyze your current marketing performance and make recommendations to improve it. Then, we provide a detailed report of our findings.
A thorough marketing performance audit informs strategic planning—so you know where to focus your attention moving forward!
Marketing is a process, not a one-time event. It’s important to know what you want to accomplish with your marketing plan, but it’s even more important to put that plan into action and see if it works.
You can make changes along the way based on the data you collected in our audit, including a full analysis of your current website and marketing.
We’ll look at everything from the layout to the copy, including any technical issues like broken links or missing images. We will also analyze your competitors’ websites and content and other competitive factors such as price, location, and more.
These will help us determine our strategy for getting you more traffic and conversions.
LOJO's Comprehensive Marketing Plans
LOJO’s marketing performance audits help businesses big and small grow and reach more customers. Our in-depth analysis of your business will give you an honest look at how well your marketing is working, what needs improvement, what you’re missing out on, and how we can help.
Our monthly marketing report to our clients in one master report with all data from various sources. It will contain:
-A full review of all your digital marketing channels, including website design and development, social media, paid advertising (Facebook ads, Google AdWords), email marketing, SEO/SEM optimization, content creation/distribution, etc.
-An audit of key metrics to determine the overall effectiveness of each channel’s performance (i.e., time spent on page or site visit duration)
-An evaluation of whether existing strategies are having their intended effect (or if they should be modified)
LOJO's Other Digital Marketing Services
Our content marketing services can help you with everything from creating a blog to writing content for social media. We can also help you create and manage your email campaigns to get the most out of your online presence.
If you are interested in advertising on Facebook or Google, we have the experience needed to make sure that your ads are running smoothly and efficiently. We will also help you create an advertising strategy so that the right people will see your paid media ads at the right time.
Our social media plans are essential to any business’s marketing strategy. Our team can help you create a social media plan based on your goals and objectives and manage your accounts so they are always up-to-date and engaging.
We’re experts in marketing strategy, and we’re here to help your business grow. Our comprehensive marketing performance plans will help you identify opportunities to reach more customers and increase sales.
We work with businesses of all sizes to provide them with a strategic plan customized for their goals, budgets, and brand identity.
