When it comes to marketing, most companies don’t understand what’s working, what’s not working, and how to tell the difference — which leaves them feeling ill-equipped, uninformed on the team’s efforts, and unsure of how to strategize moving forward. Maya Angelou wisely said, “You can’t really know where you’re going until you know where you have been.” The value of the marketing audit is that it does just that — it shows you where you’ve been which is key in identifying the most beneficial path to take in order to reach your goals and gain progress.

Here are three ways to identify if your company is in need of conducting a marketing audit and what to do about it.

1. You’ve Never Done An Audit Most marketers can sell ice to Eskimos — but can you trust them? Numbers don’t lie. If you want to keep your marketing team accountable, conduct an audit. If your company has never done a marketing audit, there’s no time to start like the present. Audits are helpful in identifying the sharpest tools in your marketing tool belt as well as the areas that are broken and need repair ASAP. The knowledge and discoveries that come out of an audit are definitely worth the investment — especially during seasons of turnover in the department.
2. Your Marketing Team Can’t Explain Metrics What your marketing team is doing might appear to be working, but they could be missing out on crucial metrics and key indicators that a big problem might exist. Your team should be able to clearly articulate correlations between strategic growth campaigns vs. new leads generated and the role they played in the outcome. A marketing audit is a deep dive filled with hours upon hours of channel-specific research — it’s far more than your weekly or monthly metrics report — the audit doesn’t just take the numbers at face value but it dives deeper into the story the numbers are telling. Ask your team to share the story their marketing numbers are telling, as an indicator of whether it’s time to conduct a marketing audit.
3. Your Marketing Efforts Are Stagnant Or Minimal At Best Unfortunately, the engine that drives the marketing team does not have a “check engine” light to indicate when something is broken or no longer yielding the results the way it used to. The marketing audit is that “check engine” light indicating that there is a problem. For instance, a great social media strategy might be driving all of the current leads to your website, which will produce an impressive number on your landing page, however, a deeper look into the metrics will reveal that the website bounce rate is astronomically high, showing that social efforts are reaching the wrong demographic and who are bouncing as soon as they’ve arrived at your site. Yikes! This is 100% preventable but only if you’re aware of the problem in the first place.

When it comes to marketing, most companies don’t understand what’s working, what’s not working, and how to tell the difference. In summary, the marketing audit gives you a chance to look under the hood of your marketing team and investigate everything — anomalies, consistencies, inconsistencies, and opportunities. If you’ve never had a marketing audit done, it’s not too late! If your marketing team can’t explain metrics, the audit is a great tool to assist with that. And if your marketing efforts are stagnant or minimal at best, let us help you find out why. At digifora, we are proud to offer the marketing audit as a service of results-backed metrics that you’ll actually understand and use.

If you’re interested, we’d love to hear from you. Contact us today!