If you haven\u2019t revisited your marketing strategy for a few years, or you\u2019re seeing some key metrics drop, it\u2019s time to roll up your sleeves and get to the bottom of it. That\u2019s what a marketing audit will help you with.<\/p>\n
In this piece, we’ll take a closer look at marketing audits, the best time to conduct one, and a few best practices to pull one off.<\/p>\n Table of Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n \n To get the best results, your marketing audit should be objective, systematic, and recurring.<\/p>\n Keep in mind that a marketing audit can encompass your entire operation or a subset of it \u2014 such as a specific campaign, process, or focus (e.g., social media marketing).<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n A comprehensive marketing audit may include one or more of the following elements:<\/p>\n A SWOT analysis<\/a> outlines the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of your marketing. Using this framework, you can take inventory of your marketing assets and roadblocks.<\/p>\n As the name suggests, a competitive analysis<\/a> takes stock of the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. It puts a magnifying glass on their products, prices, marketing strategies, campaigns, and target audience.<\/p>\n Even if you think you know your customers through and through, market research<\/a> can reveal even deeper insight into their needs, preferences, motivations, and behaviors. On top of that, you can tap into emerging trends and new opportunities in the marketplace, helping you stay ahead of the curve.<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n It\u2019s common for companies to outsource marketing audits to a third party. This is for a few reasons.<\/p>\n Firstly, it\u2019s time-consuming. If you don\u2019t have a large team that has the time to dedicate days, if not weeks, to market research and internal data analyses, working with an external partner might be the way to go.<\/p>\n Secondly, your audit needs to be as objective as possible. If your team has been responsible for a lot of the existing marketing strategy, it might be hard to examine it without bias.<\/p>\n Third-party firms also have more experience conducting audits, and that experience really matters. They’re often better equipped to identify best practices and opportunities for improvement and may have access to specialized tools, technologies, and research capabilities.<\/p>\n This doesn\u2019t, however, mean that you cannot do a marketing audit yourself. If you have time and resources (i.e., people) you can give it a go.<\/p>\n Alternatively, you could also decide on a mixed approach, as Jacob Barnes<\/a>, founder at FlowSavvy<\/a>, suggests.<\/p>\n \u201cOutsource your analysis from time to time. External audits can reiterate that your in-house team is on track and making the right moves. It also helps to reduce any biases in the assessments or conclusions,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n Pro tip: <\/strong>If you choose to conduct your audit internally, this market research kit<\/a> can provide a great starting point.<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n As I mentioned above, a marketing audit should be conducted on a regular basis. After all, the sooner you capitalize on what\u2018s working (and remedy what\u2019s not), the stronger your marketing plan will be.<\/p>\n The exact frequency of your audits depends on your organization’s industry, size, and goals.<\/p>\n Generally, it’s good practice to conduct an audit on an annual basis.<\/strong><\/p>\n Other factors may trigger the need for an audit, including:<\/p>\n Now, let’s cover the steps for conducting a marketing audit and a few best practices.<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n \n As I already mentioned, your marketing audit can cover your entire operation or target a specific campaign, process, or area. Ultimately, what you choose to audit is entirely up to you and will depend on your marketing priorities.<\/p>\n That said, your marketing is likely comprised of interrelated components, so it can be beneficial to look at your entire conversion funnel. That\u2019s what I heard from Arham Khan<\/a>, founder and CEO at Pixated<\/a>.<\/p>\n He said they did an audit for an ecommerce brand whose product pages were getting decent traffic, but conversions were down. The team knew immediately where the gap was: the product pages needed work.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter our CRO experts took a detailed look, we identified the problems. Their product descriptions read like bad novels, and the \u2018buy\u2019 buttons got lost in the clutter. We took things back to basics and simplified it. Punchy product descriptions replaced the waffle, we brought the product images into focus, and made those call-to-action buttons impossible to miss,\u201d said Khan.<\/p>\n The results spoke for themselves: product page views jumped 28%, and conversions climbed 32% in just a few weeks.<\/p>\n Want to know which of your social media campaigns are performing well? Or how your content strategy stacks up against your competitors? Or, maybe, you want to refresh your branding or customer personas.<\/p>\n Start by picking an objective that will serve as the \u201cNorth Star\u201d for your audit. Next, break down your object into measurable goals.<\/p>\n For example, suppose your main objective is determining which social media channels provide the best engagement. In that case, your goal might be, \u201cMeet a minimum quota of 200 new followers per month on TikTok.\u201d Then, your marketing audit would put this to the test.<\/p>\n Now that you have well-defined and measurable goals, the next step is gathering information. This can come from a number of sources \u2014 such as campaign metrics, website traffic, social media metrics, and marketing spend.<\/p>\n For instance, if you’re tracking the effectiveness of a specific campaign, HubSpot users can access a wealth of campaign data via the marketing analytics dashboard<\/a>. From here, they can direct their marketing budget toward their most successful efforts.<\/p>\n Source<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n You can also gather data from external sources like market research reports, industry benchmarks, and competitor analysis \u2014 but ensure the data is reliable and accurate.<\/p>\n Will Hatton, founder & CEO of The Broke Backpacker<\/a>, thinks that competitive analysis is a must.<\/p>\n \u201cThink of it as having your rival’s playbook. You can see their keywords, what type of content they are creating, and which social media platforms they are getting the most hits on,\u201d says Hatton.<\/p>\n He added that you might notice one of your competitors is crushing it on Instagram with their stunning display of travel photos. And that is a very big clue that you can take full advantage of.<\/p>\n Pro tip:<\/strong> Once you’ve gathered the data, organize it in a way that is easy to analyze and reference later. You may want to create charts and graphs, and consolidate data into a single document.<\/p>\n How you evaluate your data depends on the goals of the audit. For instance, you might perform a competitive analysis if you’re looking to evaluate your pricing strategy against your competitors.<\/p>\n Document the results or findings from this step so you can make effective recommendations down the line.<\/p>\n Lastly, make recommendations for improving your marketing strategy<\/a> \u2014 such as readjusting your messaging, marketing channels, or spending.<\/p>\n For example, if you discover your Facebook advertising strategy isn’t capturing enough leads, a recommendation might be to redirect that spend to another channel.<\/p>\n After you make these adjustments, monitor the results to determine their effectiveness. This involves tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) and making changes as needed.<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n Let\u2019s imagine I work at a SaaS company that sells a CRM.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the fictional setup: Despite investing significant resources into lead generation, we\u2019ve seen a drop in new customer signups over the past six months. Conversion rates from website traffic to trial signups have declined by 25%, and churn rates among new customers have increased.<\/p>\n My best guess is that the issue lies somewhere in the marketing strategy or its execution. My team and I decided to conduct a marketing audit to get to the root cause.<\/p>\n My objective is to improve my conversion rate and extend my new customers\u2019 lifetime value.<\/p>\n As you can imagine, there might be a lot of factors contributing to this state of things, so I need to decide which areas I\u2019m going to investigate.<\/p>\n I could decide to focus on the following:<\/p>\n This is going to be the scope of my audit.<\/p>\n The basis of any marketing audit is data. To analyze what\u2019s working and what isn\u2019t, I need to have the tools that will collect it for me.<\/p>\n So, as far as blog content and landing pages are concerned, I could turn to Google Search Console and Google Analytics. Among others, I could also check if the reason for a drop in signups is due to an overall traffic drop for my domain (for example, due to search rankings going down).<\/p>\n If I\u2019m going to dive into my on-site content analysis, I could also set up a session recording tool. This would help me see if people aren\u2019t scrolling down beyond the above-the-fold of a landing page.<\/p>\n Or, maybe, an article on \u201cThe best strategies for successfully implementing a CRM\u201d that used to be the number one in Google has dropped to the 12th position. Let\u2019s say after watching a dozen or so recordings, I notice that people no longer read past the introduction.<\/p>\n I verify that, in the meantime, my competitors wrote a lot of high-value content on the topic, including expert roundups, which have outranked you since they follow EEAT guidelines.<\/p>\n For social posts, I\u2019d look at likes, comments, and click rates in the platform\u2019s own reporting tools or a social media management platform.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, for email marketing, I\u2019d have to turn to my CRM\/marketing automation tool to verify open rates and click rates. Perhaps I\u2019ll see that people drop out at a specific stage of an email marketing sequence, or another illuminating behavior pattern.<\/p>\n In my audit, I could also ask customer support to send over answers to any customer churn surveys they\u2019ve run. With this information, I notice that many clients who had a short lifetime value mentioned that a feature they wanted to use was too complex. And so, they decided to leave my company\u2019s tool for a competing solution.<\/p>\n At this stage, I take my findings and cross-reference them with industry standards to get a sense of how well others are performing. I could also use a tool like KeySearch to get benchmarks for those who publish in the CRM space.<\/p>\n www.keysearch.co<\/a><\/p>\n Daniel Vasilevski<\/a>, director and owner at Bright Force Electrical<\/a>, told me that the practice that he always follows during every audit is benchmarking the marketing performance against competitors. \u201c<\/strong>Without that, there is no way to know if our efforts are working or if we are falling behind,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He told me that most marketers assume that a marketing strategy is working just because it brings in leads, but if a competitor is attracting twice as many with the same budget, that is a problem.<\/p>\n Benchmarking identifies where you are outperforming others and where you need to improve.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIf we see that competitors have stronger rankings in local search, higher engagement on social media, or better ad conversion rates, we know exactly what to work on. Without these comparisons, decisions are made blindly, and that may lead to wasted marketing spend,\u201d Vasilevski added.<\/p>\n Pro tip: <\/strong>Bear in mind that you need to define your competition correctly. If you\u2019re not an enterprise, defining Zendesk or HubSpot as your main competitors will only lead to frustration, as you don\u2019t have the market share or budget to win the fight for clients.<\/p>\n The next two points will help you define your most suitable competitors.<\/p>\n As I now have a lot of data on my business (both past and present) and these initial benchmarks, it\u2019s time to run a SWOT analysis. Here\u2019s a quick overview of what it could reveal.<\/p>\n As you wrap up your marketing audit, make sure to write an Executive Summary on top and a section on Key Audit Findings, along with recommended actions.<\/p>\n In my example, I have found the following issues:<\/p>\n Recommended actions:<\/p>\n![\"Download](\"https:\/\/no-cache.hubspot.com\/cta\/default\/53\/aacfe6c7-71e6-4f49-979f-76099062afa0.png\")
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Elements of a Marketing Audit<\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\n1. SWOT Analysis<\/h3>\n
2. Competitive Analysis<\/h3>\n
3. Market Research<\/h3>\n
Who does a marketing audit?<\/h2>\n
When should I do a marketing audit?<\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\n1. Choose what you want to audit.<\/h3>\n
2. Identify your goals and objectives.<\/h3>\n
3. Collect the right information.<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\n4. Surface any findings or insights from the data.<\/h3>\n
5. Make recommendations (and track them).<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nMarketing Audit Example<\/h2>\n
Step 1: Defining the goals and scope.<\/h3>\n
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Step 2: Collecting data and evaluate your marketing strategy<\/h3>\n
Step 4: Creating benchmarks for marketing performance.<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nStep 5. SWOT analysis<\/h3>\n
Strengths<\/h4>\n
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Weaknesses<\/h4>\n
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Opportunities<\/h4>\n
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Threats<\/h4>\n
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Step 6. Summarizing your key findings and recommendations<\/h3>\n
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