How To Do A Digital Marketing Audit In 7 Steps

The Digital Marketing audit is an important element if you want to design a digital marketing plan for your business, project and even your personal brand.

But do you really know how to do an audit in social networks or in any area of digital marketing?

In this article I will disclose how to do this digital marketing audit step by step, we go there, let’s go !

Table of Contents

What is a digital marketing audit?

A digital marketing audit is a procedure of investigation and survey of the plan of action and the digital marketing channels and methodologies that make it reasonable.

It may seem simple, but it is not, since we are going to try to answer questions such as:

What business model does the project have?
How do they get clients?
What lead capture strategy do you have?
Do you use email marketing to sell or for what purpose?
What are your most effective channels and why?
Is the content strategy integrated with the business model?
What advertising strategy are they using?

It is a little clearer right?

How to do a digital marketing audit?

To make the process of doing a digital marketing audit easier, what I’m going to do is divide it into parts so you can see step by step how you have to do it:

Step 1. Detection of the Business Model.

Step 2. Analysis of the most effective channels.

Step 3. Analysis of the content strategy.

Step 4. Analysis of social media channels.

Step 5. Analysis of the sale landing pages.

Step 6. Analysis of the email marketing strategy.

Step 7. Analysis of the advertising strategy.

Obviously, and depending on the project, these steps can change and adapt more to the project, for example, imagine if it is a personal brand project, because in this case we would have to analyze what actions you are taking to boost your personal brand and how these actions They are integrated with your digital strategy.

A most important and key part in this audit process, since we have to detect what the business model of the project is.

To do this you have to know and segment the business model according to this classification:

products
Consultancy.
Services.

Analyzing the business model of our company or project is simple, but analyzing the business model of a competitor is already another house.

How to analyze a competitor’s business model?

1- Analyze services and products.

The first step would be to go to their website and locate the services or products pages.

In simple to do, but remember that this is only part of your business model.

2- Subscribe to the page to analyze the email marketing strategy.

This review process can take us from 2 to 4 weeks, since we need to analyze if the company is using this channel for sale, and what kind of products or services it offers.

3- Analyze the ways of adapting your blog.

The objective is to see what adaption strategies they use in their blog, for example:

Affiliate Marketing
Sponsored articles.
Sponsored emails.
Info products
Advertising.

4 .- Analyze the advertising strategy.

Take a look at the advertising and detect services and / or products that you are promoting through advertising in Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, etc.

Step 2.- Analyze the most effective channels.

Once we have analyzed the business model of a competitor we have to see which are the most effective channels for that model to generate income. Remember that this is vital to make a good digital marketing audit.

So let’s get to the mess, and we’ll attempt to see how our opposition creates income.

Step 2.1 Analyzing the website and blog

Always start by analyzing your website and blog to see data such as:

Analyze if the landing pages are positioned.
See if the web generates qualified traffic.
Analyze the positioned keywords and if these keywords are integrated into the business model.

To begin we analyze the traffic and its evolution. A fantastic tool for example is Sistrix, with which we can see organic visibility and evolution.

Another tool that I really like to perform this analysis is Ahrefs

In the same way that with the previous tool we could analyze the keywords and filter them by the best positioned or the ones that give them the most traffic, to see what level of integration they have with the business model.

The key is not only to analyze but to interpret such data to make a good digital marketing audit.

Step 2.2 We analyze the advertising in Social Networks.

To analyze the advertising of a competitor in Social Networks follow these simple steps:

1.- Identify in which social networks the brand has a presence.

2.- Once we know what we will do is analyze the advertising, in the case that there was in social networks such as Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads or Instagram Ads, which for example are the most used.

Use the free plugin for Google Chrome Turbo Ad Finder , to remove organic Facebook posts from a competitor and leave only advertising ads.

We are keen on distinguishing what items or administrations they are selling on social networks, how they do it and particularly why.

Step 2.3 We analyze advertising in Google Ads

To analyze the advertising in Google Ads of a competitor we will use SEMrush , which, incidentally , is one of my favorite competitive analysis tools.

It’s as simple as adding the competitor’s url and clicking on advertising research. We can obtain data such as:

Number of ads
Investment in advertising.
Keywords positioned.
Ad information text.

Step 2.4 Analysis of the content strategy.

A content strategy may have different objectives, but the main one is integration with the business model, although there are many more such as:

1.- Create a reading community for example in the case of a blog.

2.- Create a list of qualified leads that we can then monetize.

3.- Contents to boost our personal brand.

4.- Contents to generate income through affiliation.

5.- Creation of content with the aim of capturing links.

6.- Contents to educate visitors and advance them in the conversion funnel.

We will analyze on the one hand the contents of the web page and on the other hand the contents of the blog, identifying what types of content are utilize to encourage the business model, and which ones have another objective as informative or another.

The next step will be to find the 4 or 5 blog articles that feed the business model , can you imagine finding the 4 pillars of content from your competitors? It isn’t a simple or basic task. It requires a great deal of investigation and search.

When we have found them, the next step will be to identify all the conversion objectives that each of these contents have, you have heard objectives well, since a single content can have more than one conversion objective.

It is what we could call strategic content, a type of content that I especially like to analyze to discover the different objectives of this.

How do we start the analysis?

Step 1. Analyze the URL and content.

We are going to analyze a little the type of content, to whom it is directed and what purposes it could have.

Step 2. Analyze the business model of the page. If we want to analyze the objectives that are related to the business model, you can understand how this works, so analyze the website a little more thoroughly.

Step 3. Analyze the best positioned keywords and analyze your search intention.

This part is important to see it thoroughly since the same content may have different search intentions and we must identify them.

We have to go one by one analyzing what your search intention is, for this we will analyze the first 10 results of Google for eac

It is interesting to make a good analysis and find the different objectives of a strategic content, isn’t it?

Step 4.- Analyze the different target audiences. The objective is to define the different target audiences that the content will have, this is easy to extract if you have performed the previous analysis of the search intentions, since from them you can generate the different target audience profiles.

Step 5.- Analyze the strategy of promotion or positioning of the content.

The last step is to analyze the promotion or positioning strategy that has allowed the content to have that presence and visibility on the network.

Analyzing the promotion plan that has been made in with content can help us to prepare our future plan for the promotion of similar content that we will carry out.

Remember that a content promotion plan is not to share it on social networks but all those actions that will help us reach the top positions in the different channels.

Step 4. Analysis of social media channels.

In this step what we are going to do a small social media audit of our competitors and our project.

The steps to perform the audit are:

Step 4.1 Target audience analysis.

We will analyze through Google Analytics and the different social ones which is our target audience, since these tools offer demographic data as data of interest of these users.

Step 4.2 Analysis of social channels and optimization of profiles.

The objective is to analyze the social presence, if in this case it is ideal depending on the type of business. We will also analyze the level of optimization of social profiles.

You can use Similar web to see the traffic your website and your competitors are carrying through social networks.

Step 4.3 Analysis of the conversion in social networks.

We will analyze in Google Analytics the conversion that our work in Social Networks is having for our business model.

If you have not defined these conversion objectives in Google Analytics, start defining them today so that you can track all the traffic your website receives.

Step 4.4 Analysis of the work in each channel and the competitors.

Now we will analyze the work we do with each of the social networks, for which we will need to use what I consider to be one of the best audit tools in Social Networks.

Step 4.5 Analysis of the editorial calendar of social networks.

A good work in social networks begins with a good planning, for this and since we have already analyzed the frequency and type of publication of our competitors we will establish an editorial calendar of publications in social networks more optimized.

Step 5. Analysis of the sale landing pages.

The objective of this analysis is to see if the landing pages of services and / or products are well optimized, as well as their positioning and visibility.

To make it easier, I make you a checklist of questions:

Does the landing page make sense?
Is a collective or individual landing page better?
Have you done a good on-page keyword study?
What keywords do you have positioned?
What are the different search intentions?
Is it well optimized for conversion?
What are the vanishing points?

My favorite tool to analyze the visibility and positioning of a landing page on Google is Ahrefs .

Step 6. Analysis of the email marketing strategy.

To carry out the analysis of the email marketing strategy, it is first to determine if it exists, since in many occasions the emails are reduced to the sending of a newsletter, but that is clearly not an email marketing strategy.

To analyze your competitors’ email marketing strategy, subscribe to the newsletter or download some free content to see the sequence of emails you will receive. Logically it can take you from 4 to 6 weeks to analyze a competitor’s email marketing strategy, as well as the type of funnel or sales sequence that you use through email.

Step 7. Analysis of the advertising strategy.

To carry out the audit of the advertising strategy we must determine and analyze in depth, in the event that there is, the advertising action:

Step 7.1 Advertising on Google Ads.

My favorite tool to analyze the advertising in Google Ads of a competitor is SEMrush . With it you can analyze the ads and the budget you are investing.

Step 7.2 Advertising in Social Networks.

The objective is to analyze social media advertising on channels such as Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, Twitter Ads or LnkedIn Ads.

There are browser extensions that can help you find your competitors ads.

Step 7.3. Advertising in other digital media.

It is the most complicated way to analyze and find, since finding where a competitor is being advertised is more complicated, you can analyze it with ahrefs and see where sponsored articles have been published by examples or find a promotional banner.

Step 7.4 Advertising in non-digital media.

If the previous one is complicated to analyze, I am not even telling you, it is complicated, but we must at least see if they have done something of promotion in traditional media such as press, radio or television.