You know the saying: New year, new...need for an audit?
Okay, so maybe that’s not exactly how it goes. But you have to admit that there’s something the start of a new year, a new quarter, or a new season that makes it enticing to make new plans!
This year, have you thought about giving your own marketing efforts updated goals? Conducting an audit of your own work and strategy is a great way to give yourself a clean slate!
Why you need a marketing audit
You may think that you only need to conduct an audit on your work and go-to-market strategy when it’s tied to a big change up - a new hire, a new agency, a budget review. But in reality, audits are a great way to make sure that your marketing strategies are still sound and that you’re appropriately reacting to any new trends or tools that have appeared since you last sat down to create your guiding documents.
Who else here has created a kick-ass marketing strategy, only to realize that you haven’t checked back on it after the initial presentation? You may have the desired KPIs memorized, but what about all the other parts of your marketing strategy - the creative planning, the community management, the tools that you use - that may have modified. It’s important to make sure you have documentation of those updates.
A great time to conduct this “self-audit” is when you’re starting to plan for the next calendar year. However, you can really review at any time of the year, depending on what makes most sense of your marketing campaigns.
Especially in a field like social media or content marketing, there are so many changes, policy changes, and technology updates made every month on each platform so it’s important for your strategies to stay updated.
Social Media Self-Audit Example
To discuss my point, let’s focus on a social media strategy example.
In particular, I have worked with clients that, on the surface, have an exciting and popular social presence. They engage with their community, repost user generated content, and have a content production plan behind their posting. They also repeatedly meet their month over month goals. However, when we pry below the surface metrics, it’s clear that the process for creation and engagement is just that a process - a typically undocumented process!
One of the reasons I love the self-audit is that ability to update any documentation you may already have already created. It’s important to keep a record of the steps you may have set in place to create content or approve messages and without checking back, you may have not realized that you have not written it out.
As we dig below successful metrics, is also commonly becomes clear that many brands can fall into the pattern of “if it works, keep doing it.” While the initial strategy may of had “spunk,” after implementation, that strategy may have changed, or too many voices may have gotten muddled in the voice of the brand. Taking a moment to be honest with yourself and highlight opportunities where you can shift each of your social channels to be closer to the initial vision for each channel, or update the strategy to fit any new directional changes!
Marketing Self-Audit Steps
Here’s what you need to conduct a marketing self-audit for any of your marketing strategies:
Your original marketing (or social media or content or digital marketing… you get the idea) strategy documentation
Any campaign or monthly reporting tied to the specific strategy
Current industry benchmarks and trends
Notes about any changes in processes or tools since the original documentation
Audit template
SWOT Analysis
Update the documentation!
Step 1: Gather your original strategy documentation. This is pretty self-explanatory. If you don’t have any strategy documented, leverage this time as an opportunity to write one!
Step 2: Hopefully, you’ve reported on the outcome of your strategies and already documented trends, when you met goals, and any results. Here’s a good chance to review them all collectively from the past year.
Step 3: Take some time to research benchmarks, trends, and thought-provoking articles about your industry and the marketing space. Having this information fresh in your mind will be useful thinking any changes you need to implement.
Step 4: If you haven’t been documenting the changes you’ve made to your strategy (i.e. adding in a new digital channel, increasing your follower goal, etc.) now is the time to write it all down (notice a trend in documentation is key?!).
Step 5: Now you’ll want to actually start your audit! If you have a tried and true format, use it. If you have not conduct an audit before, here some templates to get you started (and modify as you see well): social media, content, Facebook ads, etc.
Step 6: SWOT Analysis time! A SWOT analysis is to check on your brand’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. I like this resource as a way to break down each section. I find SWOT a good way to be honest with yourself in any aspect of your marketing strategy.
Step 7: Taking your research, your findings from your audit, and your SWOT analysis, update your documentation and strategy with your findings! Once complete, be sure to socialize and share the updates with your team.
Now it’s Your Turn
With these steps, it’s easy to be proactive in updating your marketing strategy and not get caught with an outdated go-to-market plan.
What other audit tips do you think I should include?
