Small business owners are always looking for ways to make more money with our online business. But there are so many strategies, tactics, tips and tricks that knowing where to focus your efforts can be overwhelming and very challenging. We offer all of our clients a marketing audit because it gives a holistic overview of your marketing efforts. This allows you to easily see what works, what doesn’t and can be improved, and where there are gaps in which opportunities sit! Today, let’s take a closer look at marketing audit and Whether you need one or not.
Content review
What is a marketing audit?
A marketing audit is an in-depth process our team takes to objectively examine your current business, marketing activities, strategies and how those marketing efforts are working for your business. Our goal is to evaluate your entire business and the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and locate missed opportunities.
Our marketing audit is multi-faceted and begins with a free consultation, followed by an in-depth absorption process where we gather all the information we need to get started, and an opening conversation to allow our team and client to ask any critical questions or receive clarifications, and determine what our overall goal is for the audit. Then we dig in and start evaluating every part of our business. Next, we identify your greatest strengths and weaknesses. Finally, we dig into the details to provide the best marketing strategy to help you reach your goals. We want to build a foundation for your business, so identifying the gaps, opportunities and areas for improvement is imperative.
And while we do a ton of marketing audits, we also offer audits for smaller subsets of your business. For example, if you need help with email marketing or funnels, we provide an audit for that. If social media isn’t working for your business, we provide an audit for that. We can audit your entire overall business, or we can audit a process, campaign or Specific targeting (e.g. email marketing)
When should I conduct a marketing audit?
A marketing audit is something you should do regularly. But you’ll want to consider doing a marketing audit if you’ve had a lack of results in your business, or you’re seeing results in some areas but not others, and you have a problem
What are the components of a successful marketing audit?
Our comprehensive marketing audit includes many elements, including:
1. SWOT analysis
A SWOT analysis Describe your marketing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, gaps and threats. Using this framework, we can take inventory of your marketing assets and describe your barriers.
2. Competitive analysis
We dive deep into your competitors and outline their strengths and weaknesses. We dig into their strategies, campaigns, ideal customer avatars, products, services and pricing.
3. market research
Even if you think you know who your ideal customer avatar is, we often find that our customer doesn’t. We dive deep into who your ideal customer avatar is, their pain points, behaviors, desires, and how it will move them to action. This helps us connect to market trends and gaps, so you’re always ahead of your competition.
resource: Ideal customer avatar template – Are you having trouble knowing your ICA inside and out? Do you have a clear vision of who your ICA is? This template will help you dig into the important details you need! Remember, you need to know your ICA before you can start marketing to them. Because if you market to everyone, you market to no one!
What does a marketing audit look like with Jenny Lyon Digital Marketing?
Marketing audits work so well when performed by an expert digital marketing team because we are objective and have the expertise that matters. We are equipped with the best strategies, practices, specialized tools and technologies to ensure that your audit is of the highest standard. Most reviews are 40-50 pages long and include valuable information. Once the review is complete, we set up a time to jump on the phone to go through the review with you. This allows you to ask questions and let our team learn which part of the review you want to implement first.
1. What to do a review?
As I mentioned, we can audit your entire business, a specific campaign, a focus area (eg, social media marketing, email marketing, funnel, etc.), or your processes.
2. Identifying goals and objectives
As we go through every part of your business, we keep your goals and objectives in mind. Which social media platforms are performing well for you? How does your content stack up against your competitors? Does your website, branding and messaging speak to your ideal customer? Where are the gaps in your funnel?
If we’re looking at your social media channels, we want to see which platforms your ideal customer hangs out on and which channels give you the best engagement. We then set goals for this platform, so if Instagram is where your audience is. We see tremendous engagement there; We will meet a minimum quota of 250 new followers each month from Instagram, and then recommend that we put together and implement a social media strategy for you to achieve these goals.
3. collecting information
Once we have the measurable goals, we gather a lot of information. We dig deep into your analyses, metrics, insights, website traffic, etc. This is also where we gather data from market research reports, industry benchmarks and competitor analysis.
4. We give recommendations and follow them
Finally, we offer all your recommendations to improve your overall business and marketing strategy. This could include adjusting your messaging, filling in gaps in your funnel (or creating one if you don’t already have one), switching to a social media channel that will get you more results, creating an email marketing strategy, etc.
How can I apply the results from a marketing audit?
Speaking of implementation? After the audit is complete and we have received a call to go through it, we will provide you with a detailed proposal on the areas of the audit that you wish to implement first. Since most of our customers are small to medium-sized businesses, we suggest implementing in stages. We will start by focusing on implementing the basic parts of the review (these are the basic parts of your business: your website / SEO, lead magnet / funnel, and the elements of your business, we will also bring a lot of traffic), then go to the promotion part of the review (your marketing), and then switch to rescaling for optimal results.
How to start?
If you’ve thrown a lot of stuff at the wall to see what sticks and you’re still trying to figure it out, a marketing audit might be just what you need. If you focus a lot of time, effort and money on certain parts of your business and you are not sure that they bring you a return on investment, a marketing audit is the right choice!
A great marketing strategy is like a GPS; You’d jump into your car with just your GPS (or even a paper map), so why would you run your business without a road map? This is different from where you want to drive your car aimlessly.
Common questions
FAQ 1: What will be the first step?
If you think a marketing audit might be the right move for you, please schedule a free consultation at jennielyon.com/chatwithjennie; We can spend time discussing your goals, what you’ve done so far, your results, and whether or not a marketing strategy will work for your business.
FAQ 2: How long does a marketing audit take?
Once we have your completed intake form, we’ve had our opening conversation together, and we have all of your login information, we can dig in. It usually takes us 1-2 weeks to complete your in-depth review and marketing strategy.
FAQ 3: How long does it take to implement a marketing strategy?
The timing for implementing a marketing strategy varies depending on your business. We have several companies that already have a solid foundation; We want to get it to the point where it’s solid so we can build your marketing on top of it. We have other customers that come in needing more than the moving parts. However, implementing an audit and marketing strategy can take anywhere from 30 days to 90 days, depending on what we have to work with from the start.
FAQ 4: How quickly will I see results?
Again this varies from client to client. Some customers come to us for the marketing review and then want to implement it themselves. This usually takes months and months because as small business owners, they don’t have the extra time to begin with. Moreover, they usually need more expertise to implement the strategy quickly. Other clients will come back to us and say that the review and strategy are excellent. Will you implement it for us? After doing this, we strongly recommend our clients to move to the second stage: marketing and promoting their business. Once we have a promotion strategy in place, we start bringing in instant traffic, which means we start seeing results right away.
FAQ 5: How much does a marketing and strategy audit cost?
It depends on whether we do a review and a complete marketing strategy. Or we audit a specific part of your business. If we do a full audit, they usually come in around $5,000 because we offer a very deep discount if the customer lets us review everything. If we do part of the business, we’re usually looking at about $2k.
This week’s action plan
1. Write your business summary. What is your company’s mission?
2. Write down your goals and objectives. what are they?
3. What does your business do well? Where are your weaknesses? What opportunities are there for your business? What threats are there?
4. Who is your target audience? Who is your ideal customer avatar? If you need help, grab our worksheet at jennielyon.com/ica
5. Who are your competitors? What products or services do they offer?
6. What budget do you have (during the year) to invest in your business development and marketing?
7. Which of your marketing channels is killing it for you? Where do you get your leads from?
8. What systems do you use? Do you have a CRM? An email marketing system? How do you automate your marketing?
9. Let’s talk if you’re ready to talk about marketing strategy. Please hop on over to jennielyon.com/chatwithjennie, and let’s go through these questions and get you on the road to tremendous success!
Remember, your marketing strategy is a living and breathing document. It gives you a holistic overview of your business and marketing efforts, and it’s something you need to keep your finger on at all times. It’s best to revisit your marketing audit regularly to make sure that what’s working is still working and that you’re not missing any new gaps in your marketing or opportunities for your business. A more optimal strategy for your business will make your life easier; You will make more money and influence more people. Now that’s victory, victory!
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