How to Audit Your Marketing for Success in 2022

A marketing audit serves as a great baseline from which you can create your strategy. An audit helps you know exactly where you’ve come from, what’s working and what you can build on, as well as what’s not working,  and where you need to improve and enhance when it comes to showing up online. Marketing is never a set and forget tool, but should be continually evaluated and changed to fit your business needs and your ideal client’s pain points.

Making sure your marketing plan delivers the best possible results will save you time and money and help you succeed in your business. Reassessing your strategies regularly, say once a quarter or every six months, will help you identify which you need to improve and work on or in some cases even get rid of completely.

3 Guidelines to Audit your Marketing Strategy

When auditing your marketing, you need to consider a few things. At Marketing Leap, we have a discovery document to help us understand our clients ideal client (or target avatar), prepare their branding file, and have a coherent message they want to use across their social media or website content. Then, we have a checklist of each of the online marketing tactics, businesses need to be found online. This covers their website, SEO, local search, content, email marketing and social media platforms based on who their target audience is.

Having a system allows you to let go of the tactics and platform that may simply be wasting your time, so follow these three guidelines when auditing your marketing. 

Check on your Branding

The first area to audit is your branding. The goal of creating your brand is for your audience to recognise you and set you apart in the increasingly busy online space. Regardless of your business, competition is everywhere. You want to stand out from the rest through consistent branding.

When we talk about branding, the first that comes to mind is our logo. However, branding is so much more than that. Branding is an emotional mark – or, more precisely, an emotional experience, which is merged or weakened with each interaction with the business. Here’s a breakdown of how you can check your branding:

• Define the core of your brand. This includes your mission and vision statement as well as what you stand for … and against.
• Cultivate brand messaging that shows your voice, tone, and brand personality.
• Use your brand as your visual identities, such as your logo, colour, and imagery.

Maintaining brand recognition across all brand elements requires a consistent presence. It has to be across all customer touchpoints, online and offline, so your brand’s message, voice, tone, colour, and imagery should be consistent. In case you are not sure how you can set up your branding, you may refer to this video or read the blog for a more detailed explanation. I even have an online branding course that will step your through each of the different elements you will need for a consistent, coherent brand.

Clarity of Message

The next one is presenting a coherent message to your target audience. It is crucial to find a tagline (slogan) and Unique Selling Position that speaks directly to your target market. There has to be synchronicity across all the social media platforms you are on, and each should have a sound strategy in place. With the same profile picture (incorporating the logo), cover images and, the same tagline so regardless of whether you are found via your website, Facebook or YouTube your ideal client has no doubt who you are and how you can help them.

Your message about what you are offering needs to be clear for two reasons:

1. If you don’t have a simple, interesting message, you won’t connect with customers, investors, potential employees, and even the press. You will not get their attention, and they won’t love and share your product. In addition, if you do not influence how people think about your product, the market will make up its version that may not reflect your vision.
2. You shape a customer’s perception of your company with each touchpoint they have with your product. Your message must be consistent throughout all of those touchpoints. A clear branding message also ensures your team is fully aligned. In this way, everyone will agree, telling the same story and creating consistent customer touchpoints.

Consistency across your Content

The last one to consider in your marketing strategy is consistency. Are you consistent with your branding? Are you consistent with your brand message? Are you consistently showing up in front of your audience?

Consistency ensures brand recognition across all marketing channels and touchpoints. Today, digital marketing is all about consistency and clarity. In an online environment that is constantly changing, sticking to the basics will ensure that not only can you find your ideal clients, but that they know exactly how you can help them.

Brand consistency is crucial to nurturing lifelong customers. Consistency improves brand recognition, providing customers with a sense of reliability. It allows your customers to get to know your brand better.

Approximately 95% of the time, purchasing decisions are subconscious, showing that they are more emotional than practical. A good marketer often uses emotion-based marketing campaigns and sells a feeling rather than an actual product because people are emotional creatures.

These three guidelines work hand in hand to help your business to be successful in 2022. Remember that there’s no size fits all when it comes to marketing your business online. That is why you have to keep up with the trends and regularly audit your business marketing strategy to make sure that your approach is still aligned with your goals.

Whether you have any questions or simply want to chat, drop a comment below! We offer a full range of done for you realistic, practical marketing solutions for your business that deliver results and hit the spot with your customers. You can check out what we do here.

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If you want to learn how to implement different marketing elements in your own business, I have a series of Online Digital Success courses focusing on different marketing elements. These are self-paced courses, so you don’t miss out on the learning! You can learn all about those here.

Prefer structured mentoring? I also offer a 12 week 1to1 mentoring program designed to Give You Clarity, Generate leads & STOP DROWNING IN THE OVERWHELM! There are also 2 hours Strategy Sessions available. If it’s time to get a Clear Action Plan, Digital Strategy Map & Checklists, you can check out the details here!

Regardless of what you need when it comes to online marketing, take the Leap … we are your springboard to success!