A digital audit is a comprehensive review of a business or brand’s digital assets.
Typically this involves inspecting, examining, and analysing these assets to determine the effectiveness of each one and to identify where and how these can be improved.
A digital audit is a generalised term that describes different types of audits within the digital, online space.
The Benefits of a Digital Marketing Audit
There are various reasons why a digital audit is important to a business. Like any audit, as the word suggests, in the digital realm it is an inspection of a business’ online assets to determine the effectiveness of these and to identify where they can be improved.
- An audit identifies and examines all your digital assets
- It identifies potential problem areas but also opportunities for growth
- It offers perspective on your performance compared to competitors
- It gives one insight into how a brand is perceived by the world in the digital space
- An audit helps identify gaps in a marketing plan
- Enables ones to gather vital information for informed decision making of future digital marketing plans
Digital Assets that need auditing
There are various types of audits that can be done and they depend entirely on what outcome a brand is after. It is not always necessary to do a complete digital audit as the results can be overwhelming in terms of just how much work needs to be done.
Small to medium size businesses should ideally focus on sections of an audit at a time with an end goal to tie the different assets together for a focused online presence.
- Website Audit
Since a brand’s website is ultimately (but not exclusively) where many of its potential customers will end up, ensuring that the functionality, navigation, speed and user experience of your website is critically important.
- SEO Audit
This is often included in a website audit and is designed to determine how optimised a website is for search engines, hence the acronym which means ‘Search Engine Optimisation’.
- Social Media Audit
Identify a brand’s social media presence, footprint and effectiveness. Engagement and quality of content are two key components. After a website this is the second most likely platform where customers will find your brand.
- Communication Audit
Often grouped with the social media audit, a brand’s online communication may make or break a brand. Everybody has a voice online, so how a brand communicates with its customers and potential customers is critically important.
- Digital Advertising Audit
Paid media is a key component to most brands’ marketing mix these days and analysing existing strategies and budgets are necessary. Things to consider include targeting, content, creatives, budgets and optimisation and which services provide the best results for the campaign objective.
- Analytics
Digital properties gather an overwhelming amount of data. Auditing this data and translating it into practical application terms is important to identify the pros and cons of a brand’s digital assets and campaigns.
- Digital Strategy Audit
This is usually the final stage of auditing several of the above components to analyse the existing strategies and develop new ones and may also include addition things like a digital brand audit, design audit and technical audit.
Our next blog will look at practical ways to do a digital audit and some of the online tools that can be used for this.
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