What is a Marketing Content Audit?
Dec 04, 2018
UPDATED: March 21, 2022
Definition of a marketing content audit
A Marketing Content Audit is a comprehensive analysis and evaluation of your business' marketing. This includes your goals, strategies, tactics, and the results of your marketing efforts. Evaluation is the first step towards creating a powerful marketing strategy - knowing your current situation.
Conducting a content audit is a powerful way to get more deeply in touch with your brand, products and services; and it helps to refocus your marketing strategy.
In this article, you'll learn more about the marketing audit, its components and how it is used.
How To Conduct a Content Audit...
1. Evaluate Your Current Marketing Plan
To begin your marketing content audit, evaluate your big-picture plans. Here are key questions to ask when doing such an evaluation
- What are your current goals or objectives for marketing?
- What marketing strategies are you employing?
- What is your marketing mix?
- Is your marketing team effectively implementing the marketing plan?
- Are the marketing objectives you set the appropriate ones for your business?
If you have never documented the big picture plans of your business before, then your first step is to do exactly that.
2. Analyze the Marketing Mix
This is a very measurable part of the audit where you can analyze the strategies implemented and whether they are effective.
What results have you achieved with your marketing strategy up to now? What is the reach and impact of your marketing efforts?
This is the data analysis step of the marketing audit process. Take time to go through all of your marketing channels and measure what's happening.
3. Data highlights to look for in your marketing content:
- What is the reach of this marketing channel? (i.e. Facebook Page Followers or Email List Subscribers)
- What is the typical engagement rate of your emails and social posts?
- What has been the best and worst efforts made over the past 6 months?
- How do you measure up to competitors? SWOT Analysis.
In many ways, a marketing audit clarifies opportunities and threats to your success. You should come away with a plan on how to improve. An audit is a smart and effective way of evaluating the plans you've made, decide whether things are working, and adjusting as necessary.
TIPS FOR A GOOD MARKETING CONTENT AUDIT
1. Data First. Try to focus on the data and the story it tells, rather than making any assumptions.
2. Independent Insights. If you are the marketing manager or owner of the business, consider bringing in an outside party or someone from a different department to do the audit so that you do not influence the recommendations.
3. Annual Audit. A good frequency for your marketing audit is annual or once every two years.
4. Beyond Tactics. Your marketing audit should look beyond marketing tactics. Look at internal factors such as the efficiency of the marketing team and the way company culture impacts their work.
5. Be Systematic. This is the biggest factor in a successful audit. A comprehensive and systematic marketing audit is focused on your customers and competition.
Want to take the next steps?
We've created a marketing audit template to guide you through the first steps of auditing your marketing. This includes setting goals and taking an inventory of your content
What's in the template? It's pretty simple, but highly effective. You'll get a spreadsheet that guides you through the steps of your marketing content audit.
