With so many digital marketing channels at your disposal — paid ads, organic search, email, blogs and social media, just to name a few — it's easy to lose track of what's working and where there's room for improvement. That's where a careful media audit can be of service. You can do an audit of your digital marketing to gather up and analyze all of your data coming from different sources, and then use that information to guide strategy and decision making.
Here's a quick guide to help you start your media audit off on the right foot.
Measuring Success
The overall goal of your campaign should be representative in the allocation of your budget. A good question to ask is, "If I had one more dollar, where should I spend it?" This forces you for examine closely which channel is most efficient at delivering your overall KPI, thus your measurement plan as mentioned above is of utmost imprtance to inform budget decisions. The value of your digital marketing strategy is relative to its budget, so spending has to be examined in any audit of your digital marketing. Based on the measured results of campaigns, does your spending allocation make sense? Are you maxing out your channel that is delivering the highest ROI, or are you spreading your budget too thin? In the case represented above, your digital display ad is performing strong with certain metrics, but likely could be delivering a low ROI. You might be better off reducing spend on that channel - at least until a better strategy is developed to improve its performance.
Market Presence
Your presence within your market is important, and the Internet makes this presence more accessible to other industrious businesses and their leaders. For example, a small local Atlanta business could determine that it needs to emphasize a growing presence in business and industry publications, or foster better connections with social influencers. The use of social media, content partnerships and engagement with relevant publications can help grow this presence in the digital realm.
A sample social media audit template on Harvard Business Review's website looks at what the business is doing on different social media channels, relative to how their audience reacts and what their competitor is doing. Then they decide whether each observation counts as a challenge or an opportunity. This kind of perspective can help you reevaluate and improve your strategy.
