If you have started a digital marketing agency and you don’t know how to do a digital marketing audit, then my friend you are headed for a loss. It is very important for you to have this skill otherwise you will not be able to judge what your clients’ digital strategy lacks and how to make it better. And this goes without saying that if you can’t make your clients digital strategy better, then by default, your digital marketing agency will be doomed.

That said, no one would start the digital marketing agency before even knowing the basics. But you could be a client and you need to know the basic understanding of the audit so as to be sure that your agency is not fooling you. So to be on the same page with your agency, here is a quick guide to understand how to do the audit.

There are a lot of aspects to cover when you start doing the audit but there are some aspects that are necessary, others can be optional. The necessary ones include, quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis, website crawl, channel breakdown, and accessibility.
We will spend some time on each.

If you hated math in school, tough luck, you will never be free of it. Quantitative analysis is deeply embedded in this digital audit. In fact, the best game is the game of numbers. So put up with some of number and you will be done with major part of it. I mean isn’t it just easier, some numbers can indicate your strategy is flawed while another number can tell you that it’s correct?

So these numbers appear in front of you in the shape of Google Analytics Data, Social media metrics, PPC ads reports, Historic SEO rank tracking data, E-commerce purchase funnel data, CRM data and reports etc.

The most effective researches from my undergraduate study time were those that combined qualitative data with the quantitative ones. Therefore, once you are done with the quantitative analysis, get experts to look at all your digital assets. After looking at the digital landscape they will have a clearer idea of where your website stands in terms of website design and consequently the user experience, the social media content, brand messaging, email design, and much more.

So what happens here is that an automated service crawls your website and highlights technical problems on it. Some agencies doing the audit for you are doing this only and give you the information gained from the crawl. But it is not to say that website crawls are somehow unimportant. It is always useful to know if your website has broken links, missing title tags, duplicated content or the site has just poor performance.

Don’t we just love it when people listen to us? Even when huddling with our group of friends and everyone is talking with each other, don’t you just love that one friend who gives you his full attention? Similarly, when you pay attention and listen to your customers, they love it too. Paying attention towards what they like and dislike, always hearing what they are saying; it is called social listening.

Now, I don’t mean that you start stalking your target group. But when you listen and you show that you are listening to them, that is when you relationship with them strengthens. And how you convey that? Through your marketing strategies of course.

So in this article we will discuss how social listening can be used for digital marketing. And it will be very useful for if until now, all your communications have been along the lines of talking at someone.

So first of all, monitor your own brand name!
How to do that? It’s simple. Instead of just knowing when you are tagged somewhere on social media, you set up a tool that notifies you even where you are just mentioned and not tagged. Sometimes what happens is that the consumers do not tag you when giving honest reviews. Keep an eye on those honest reviews and experiences.

For instance, you hear, by monitoring your brand, your current content does not stand for a certain social issue. IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO LEARN. If your target audience is someone who cares about this issue and if you see that it is something you should stand for, incorporate it in your future content.

And it does not have to be that big even. You don’t have to look for new social directions for your campaigns, look for technical things as well. So for example, see what your audience is searching or talking about, and cater your content to that. Use those keywords in your content, and make sure your headlines reflect that.

This might sound creepy but it really isn’t. Monitoring your competitors will allow you to get a grasp on what’s in. And you will know this stuff without doing experimentation on your own. So for example, you find out that something didn’t work for them, you won’t have to invest time and effort on a similar idea for your brand.

And monitoring them will also help you expand your own knowledge. Stick with me here. So what I am trying to say is that hypothetically speaking, you see something worked for your competitor. Now you know what works, what hits the consumers where you want it to.

However, you can’t use that exactly as it is. Because if you do, you will be accused of copying. Plagiarism is never endorsed by anyone. So you will have to brainstorm for ideas. You will have to brainstorm for methods to broadcast the same notion in a different packaging. And that is how your competitors teach you as well.

There is a lot more you can do here. But what you are really doing by social listening is, you are getting to ‘know’ your audience. And it all boils down to your audience. Are they happy with your content? Do they want something different? Who they want to follow? And by hearing them out, you will be better able to generate strategies that bring your consumers right to your website again and again.