When was the last time you evaluated the performance of your digital marketing strategy and made adjustments? Most experts suggest an annual, if not more frequent, digital marketing audit.
However, making time to assess your strategy is only part of the problem. Do you know what metrics constitute good performance and which factors show room for improvement?
One survey found that leads and sales are the top indicators of success businesses use for their marketing channels. But that’s only the surface of what companies should consider in an audit.
Digital marketing audit services from professionals like Forge Apollo in Philadelphia can increase your ROI. Our experts can provide an expert analysis of your efforts and suggest strategy adjustments to optimize for sales.
What is a Marketing Audit?
In a digital marketing strategy audit, experts evaluate the performance of each marketing channel and note which channels are performing well and which need adjustments.
Forge Apollo follows a three-step process to maximize the value of our audits. The first step is to meet with your team to get a deep understanding of your current processes, efforts, goals, and pain points.
Next, we do a deep dive into how each marketing area operates independently and in conjunction with other areas. We compile comprehensive notes in a detailed audit document of our findings.
Finally, we outline recommendations for how to adjust your strategy for the best results.
From there, the business can adjust budget allocation and focus accordingly.
Benefits of a Marketing Audit
The effectiveness of each marketing channel changes over time and depends on the business type and target audience. The benefits of a marketing audit may vary, but businesses can generally expect the following:
- Clarity on what’s performing well
- Identifying what needs improvement
- Visibility into how it all works together
- Organization of efforts split between different vendors
- Technical setup suggestions to gather better data for future audits
- Optimization suggestions to maximize ROI
How to Improve ROI With a Digital Marketing Audit
Many businesses struggle with how to improve ROI in digital marketing. A digital marketing strategy audit helps these efforts in the following ways.
Lead Generation
Lead Generation is the most important goal for 91% of marketers. But many companies are unsure of how to achieve that goal. A digital marketing audit can help you identify which platforms will drive leads for your business, like SEO, outbound email campaigns, or ads.
Budget Allocation
An audit identifies areas where the budget is working well and where it could work better. Reallocating the budget and effort between channels can bring higher ROI with the same base spend.
Improving Your Lead Nurturing Funnel
It takes an average of thirteen touchpoints to convert a lead. When those touchpoints work in a unified strategy, they’re more effective for higher ROI. An audit improves the return on investment of each touchpoint by improving how they work together.
Audits also improve lead nurturing by identifying areas where leads need more attention. An outside auditor, like Forge Apollo, can be an asset because they can see this more objectively.
For example, Forge Apollo performed an audit for Futures Recovery Healthcare. We identified the opportunity to nurture leads with automated campaigns. After implementing the suggested lead nurturing strategy, Futures saw a 521% ROI from the effort.
Optimizing Your Website
A business’s website is the keystone of its digital marketing strategy. A proper audit not only considers the website itself but also every way in which your efforts touch your website. With the information from an audit, businesses can optimize their websites and the marketing ecosystem around them.
For example, removing the navigation bar on a website landing page increases conversions from the ads that point there 100%.
Lasting Organic Efforts
Organic website efforts, like content marketing and search engine optimization, provide long-lasting ROI by building search engine rankings and traffic over time. In fact, organic search brings the best ROI for 49% of businesses.
Spending money on an ad campaign may bring in a handful of sales from that one campaign, but then it’s over. Spending the same amount on efforts for your website may take time to bring in sales, but it will keep bringing in sales over the long term.
Improved Tracking Capabilities
While an extensive, one-time audit can vastly improve a business’s strategy, smaller, more frequent audits should still occur moving forward. Through one audit, a company can find ways to improve the data it has to work with for the next one through one audit.
When Forge Apollo performs digital marketing audits, we evaluate what analytics and tracking platforms, such as Google Analytics or marketing attribution software, are in place.
Only 52% of businesses currently track marketing attribution for their efforts. Evaluating what a business is tracking allows the auditor to make suggestions for future data collection. By optimizing the data it collects now, a company can prime itself for more effective analysis and strategy pivots in the future.
Signs Your Business Needs a Marketing Audit
If your business experiences the following, it’s time to book a marketing audit:
- Difficulty tracking marketing performance
- Uncertainty about what’s “working”
- Poor marketing performance
- Disjointed efforts split between multiple people or vendors
- Low lead generation
Improve ROI With a Digital Marketing Audit from Forge Apollo
The digital marketing audit company Forge Apollo is a leader in marketing strategy in Philadelphia and other areas. Our audit will supply your company with everything you need to hit your goals, including a 100+ page document of our findings and strategy, a 2-hour presentation to review high-level findings and strategy, a breakdown of who should perform each effort, and pricing options to work with us. Contact us today for an audit that increases the ROI of your marketing efforts.
