A marketing audit checklist

A regular marketing audit can do more for your small business than constantly adding new content or platforms.

Swap your normal content creation session with this marketing audit every quarter or six months and I can guarantee you’ll get more and better results from the platforms and content you’ve already invested so much time and energy into. Worth it!

Website

Your business website needs regular maintenance to operate as effectively as possible. In fact, you could do less of other types of marketing (social media, paid ads) if your website is working at full capacity. I hope you chose a good web developer in the first place, someone who offers a quarterly or monthly maintenance package and knows how to continually update these things for you, but if you’re DIYing as much of your marketing as possible, spending a half or whole day doing these updates every now and then will go a looonnnggggg way for your business.

• Check for informational accuracy. If it’s been a while since you took a good look at what your website says, chances are there’s some old info on there. A quick read through of every page is a quick and easy way to ensure you won’t have to apologize to leads for misleading info later. Plus, you may have a big update that isn’t on your website yet. Don’t go another day failing to let your visitors know about your latest, greatest offers!

• Check alllll the forms and contact links. Wherever there’s a submission button or form, fill it out to make sure the info is sent to the right place and nothing is broken. There’s nothing worse in your marketing journey than counting on a website for hot leads that aren’t getting to you. And let me tell you, I find this almost EVERY time I do a client audit. No good.

• Check the load time of each page. Slow loading is a major traffic killer. And by slow I mean anything more than three seconds. Yes, I know, we live in an attention deficit world. Google analytics will tell you what your average page load times are but you can also do a simple check yourself. Check all of your website pages on desktop and phone, and if you want a solid gauge, ask friends connected in different places to do the same since to see if anything changes on a different browser or IP address. If your home page is consistently taking more than three seconds to load, you need to stop everything and fix that. Hint: Large image and video files are often the cause.

SEO

If one of your marketing priorities is leaning on search engine optimization to get leads to your business or website organically, this is a necessity. It can be a bit technical though so it may be worthwhile to get some professional help here.

• Update all previous blogs. I didn’t say SEO maintenance is quick and easy, but doing this is monumental for your marketing. All of your blogs older than about three months should get:

  • A links check to make sure any links still work.

  • An images check to make sure the image file isn’t too large (we want kb, not mb file sizes!)

  • Image file names are updated with the post keyword/phrase.

  • A length check to make sure every blog is more than 500 words. The longer, the better.

  • A URL check to make sure any keywords are in that URL.

  • A keywords in the body check to make sure it’s keyword rich and consistent from title/URL all the way through. Not saturated, just a handful of the same keyword (the main one you want to be found in search for) is needed.

Welcome email

One of the first things I do for clients is set up a welcome email for each segmented email audience. As soon as someone is added to your list, you want an automatic email sent out welcoming them and introducing yourself, maybe including your service packages or an incentive. Even if you have nothing else automated email-wise, a single welcome email is the first and most critical element to add to your email marketing. Make sure its content is general enough that it won’t have to be constantly updated though.

If you already have this (oooh, look who’s a smarty marketer!), include a quick read-through and link check of this email in your audit. It’s amazing how quickly info can get old or inaccurate. If your open rates and click throughs on this email are not great (at least 15% open and 3% click through as minimums) then this email may need some updating to help with effectiveness.

Social bios

It’s amazing how much time can go by between updates – even on the platforms we frequent the most. Take a quick glance at your Facebook page or group, your Instagram bio, LinkedIn page, etc. Chances are you’ll see something that could use a refresh.

I know some items on this marketing audit checklist can feel really time consuming. But honestly, if you swap the normal new content creation with an audit like this every now and then, you’ll be able to stay on top of these renewals and it’ll get faster and easier every time. Wouldn’t you rather get more from what you’ve already set up anyway?

Of course, if most of these feel completely out of your element or you just don’t have the time, maybe it’s time to partner with a marketing pro. I know a great one 😉 Good luck and let me know how it goes by commenting below!