Considering employing a digital marketing agency, or possibly want to make yourself aware of what is involved? Based on experience gained since the mid 1990’s, this series will shed some light to aid your decision (be it outsource vs. in-house, remain with your current supplier, or highlight considerations as to why you may want to move, review potential agencies, how to measure, and how to decide).
Welcome to Part 3 in this series – Digital Marketing Audit.
Picking up from part 2 and all other articles related to this series that you can access on our blog, we now commence with the drill down starting with a more detailed look at a digital audit as part of enabling successful, measurable and sustainable digital marketing.
So what should a digital audit encompass?
At a high level it should incorporate
- Composite marketing assessment (internal & external)
- Organizational understanding
So drilling down:
Organisational Understanding
When looking at marketing a business, via online marketing or more traditional channels, it is important to understand the business that you want to market. This might seem obvious. But the approach and impact of this can be far reaching. This aids in uncovering opportunities, historical considerations, limitations, applicable regulations and compliance, messaging and resourcing to name a few.
So, kicking-off with the organisational understanding what is covered? Please keep in mind this is not an exhaustive list, but rather aims at covering the aspects common to the majority of businesses out there.
- Industry
- What industry does the business fall under
- What industry regulations are applicable to digital marketing
- How does one work within those regulations and still get the desired message out, as well as obtain the desired results
- What is acceptable behaviour within this particular industry
- Where are the opportunities to differentiate oneself
- Structural
- What is the business’ current form
- How did the business come about over time to its current form
- What opportunities are presented as a result
- What resultant risks are there
- What is the intended path in this regard moving forward
- How are the Four C’s applicable – Capabilities, Capacity, Constraints and Culture
- Business Vision
- What is the vision for the next 3 months, 6 months, 1, 3 and 5 years, and longer
- What are the different aspects and resultant considerations of that vision
- What role does digital marketing have within this context
- Offering
- What is the service and/or product offering that is taken to market
- What is the extent of the range/offering
- Who are the direct competitors
- Who are the indirect competitors
- What disruptive technologies and/or other developments could alter who competitors are moving forward
- Where are the gaps in understanding or perspective between the organization and its target customer as to who the competitors are
- How is the offering benchmarked and what is the outcome thereof
- What are the differentiators (both for and against)
- How does digital marketing serve the business’ purposes as a result
- Marketing
- How has this taken place historically and how effective was it
- Has anything changed in the business, and/or industry, and/or target market base, and/or society at large that impacts this
- And if so, then what and how
- Has anything changed in the business, and/or industry, and/or target market base, and/or society at large that impacts this
- Worth repeating here, what are the differentiators (both for and against)
- How are the Four C’s applicable to digital marketing – Capabilities, Capacity, Constraints and Culture
- How has this taken place historically and how effective was it
Composite marketing assessment (internal & external)
Now that a good understanding of the organization is in place, it is time to undertake the marketing assessment portion.
Again, there are specifics to particular industries as well as to individual organizations that can come into play, however, the common base is what is being looked at here.
At a high level it should incorporate
- Existing customer audit
- Social Media Audit
- Website Audit
With regards to the existing customer audit
- Interview a statistically significant, representative collection of customers from your customer base, that fairly reflects and encompasses the diverse nature of your typical clients
- The interview should help create the marketing personas for future initiatives
- Various aspects of product and/or service consumption should be addressed
- Various aspects of dealing with your organization should be addressed
- Customer pain points should be identified
- Customer problems and ideal outcomes should be identified
- Why customers’ perceive solving this problem helps them
- Their current digital media consumption needs to be ascertained
The social media audit should address
- Which platforms are your organizations’ target audience present and engaging on
- Current platforms your organization are present on
- Current and past levels of your organizations activity, engagement, and the effectiveness and measurement thereof
- Consistency and commonality of communication across the platforms
- Competitors social media profiles, activity, platforms present on, and traction
- Qualifying in, or out, current as well as alternative platforms
The website audit should address
- Overall performance in terms of
- Accessibility
- Experience
- Marketing
- Technical / Technology
- Accessibility
- How accessible the website is to mobile and disabled users.
- Taking the following into account:
- Headings, how they are used relative to amount, volume and nature of content
- Internal linking of the site and its resources
- Page titles
- Responsive design
- URL format
- Experience
- How satisfying the website and website experience is likely to be for users.
- Taking the following into account:
- Amount, nature and relevance of content
- Freshness of the website
- Image usage and implementation
- Internal links
- Popularity measurement (of the website)
- Printability (yes, there are times and considerations when printability of your website is important)
- Responsive design (adaptable to access device including, but not limited to mobile friendliness)
- Server behaviour in serving the website
- Social media integration and interactivity
- URL format
- Marketing
- How well marketed and popular the website is.
- Taking the following into account:
- Amount, nature and relevance of content
- Analytics, correct measurement, reporting and analysis for further implementation
- Cross platform marketing
- Freshness
- Headings
- Incoming links
- Internal links
- Meta tagging
- Page titles relevant to search
- Popularity of the website
- SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
- SMM (Social Media Marketing)
- Technology
- How well designed and built the website is.
- Taking the following into account:
- Coding, configuration and how current the tech is
- Features and functionality that are relevant, useful and usable
- Headings
- Images
- Internal links
- Meta tags
- Mobile
- Printability
- Server behaviour
- UI and UX
- URL format
There is quite a bit here, that if done correctly, sets the platform for a lot of defined, intentional, effective, measurable and repeatable / scalable digital marketing success.
In terms of your organizations digital marketing:
- Q&A
- Is the above in place for your business success, as provided for internally and/or via an external supplier?
- If not, what are the risks to your business?
- If so, whether partially or in totality, what opportunities are there to sustain your business? And grow your business ?
- Is the above in place for your business success, as provided for internally and/or via an external supplier?
- Implementation partners are in place, but is there strategic direction?
- If not, how will the component parts collectively pursue and deliver on what is required by your business?
- If so, who owns and who manages the strategy? Where does the understanding sit?
We are honest and transparent as to why we have put out this article. Yes it should be an asset to the industry and customers of our industry, but we also need to do business for many of the same reasons you do. So here is our ask.
Seeking a digital marketing agency, a traditional marketing agency, a combined agency or a service provider that can co-ordinate multiple suppliers (in-house and/or outsourced)? Why you should consider 3G’s Branding Consulting Digital and Marketing Head Outsource
- All founders have been in marketing, branding, business management and digital online communication since the mid 1990’s
- Principals daily hands-on involvement
- Qualifications include
- BComm. Marketing
- Design Diplomas
- Program in eCommerce
- BTech Multimedia
- IT Specific Project Management (Levels 1 -3)
- Technology Qualifications
- Clients have included amongst others:
- B2B
- B2C
- Multi-Nationals
- JSE listed companies
- Government agencies
- National Lottery South Africa
- Gautrain
- Small Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMME)
- One-man operations
- Volunteer only operations
We As An Agency
- Are a specialist communication agency offering a complete consulting, design, implementation and management solution
- Have an experienced multi-faceted specialist team
- Leverage our organisational learnings to date
- Have substantial experience collaborating with third party vendors
- Have our proven processes and procedures
- Limit the risk of time, money, and client reputation
- Maximize synergies
- Leverage service and cost efficiencies
- Retain a high level of creativity, professionalism and quality outputs
- Have undertaken standalone projects as well as multifaceted projects that may or may not integrate to third party vendors offerings
- Have aided clients with operational improvements and increased productivity.
- Are grateful to our clients, some of whom are still with as from the very beginning
- Have working relationships with of our clients, within the context of what 3G’s and MHO provides, going back to 2002.
We received the following accolade from yet another satisfied client (Facebook post by Rushka Lee Pedro of Minor Impact reproduced with permission)
Excellent service, great attention to detail…!
Highly recommend!!
Focus on what’s important, and gets the job done!!
Access further testimonials
Well, that was Part 3. Access the balance of articles in this series as well as other series’ via our blog. You are welcome to access our other posts. Likewise you are welcome to reach out to us should you want to engage directly with us on this.
And…….. Expect more from your communication
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