Do you wonder what you could do to make it work better?

The following few steps will enable you to look at your website, social media, and general marketing and hopefully see what you can improve…

First things first, a digital footprint is a term used by IT geeks about data trails online. This is not what we’re going to be talking about below… We just use the term ‘digital footprint’ because people know straight away what we mean when we say we’re going to review your website, social media channels, etc and then they know what to expect.

Before the audit, we discuss your goals, target audience and you get a chance to explain the business in your terms. So often we look at businesses who think they’re saying the right things and the website doesn’t say it or show those services/products. Then we review it and tell you what it actually says and then fills the gaps with the steps you need to take to appear this way OR how we think you should appear in order to be more attractive to potential customers.

Social Media:

For the social media audit, we review the channels like this image below. We rate them out of 10 for each criterion and provide a list of actionable points. The rating is a good signpost of things that need to be improved or the successes we find. For example, the actionable points could be: Post more tutorial videos or remember to use hashtags on your posts.

Website:

Similarly, we run audits on the website and not just a super slick automated ‘click here to get a report’ like you can get for free on many websites on the internet. I’m talking about a review of real-life user experience, look and feel, credibility factors, and also the important things like load speed, SEO, yes, of course, that’s included too but it’s not all we look at.

Offline:

For offline audits it really depends on the business, for example, if you’re a manufacturing business it would be silly if we didn’t look into the customer ordering processes through your various sales channels, the customer service experience, packaging, call handling, aftercare, etc etc. These are all parts of what makes your business/product/services attractive to new customers and getting repeat business.

Other factors we consider are your credibility – awards, accreditations, qualifications, feedback and reviews, and what your brand, content, and ‘image’ say about you.

Honestly, the list for offline could go on and on, and on…

Call To Action:

Your marketing should be speaking loud and clear and you should have ‘call to action pointers’ for different stages of the customer journey for the various segments of your target audience. In an audit we’ll be looking at how your marketing is being effective for this.

The majority of businesses should have both types of business:

1. New
2. Repeat

But, in between those two, we should see customers who are having a good experience and already planning to come back (new business turning into returning business) and telling all of their friends, family about the experience to encourage them to become new customers (returning or new customers helping to create more new customers). If you can get 1 customer to create 1+ new customers that is when you are winning wouldn’t you agree? Yes.

Competitors:

Just to throw another factor into the mix we look at your competitors too… See what they’re up to and how you can amend your marketing messaging to beat their offering either on price, value or quality.

This audit builds a picture of the business – a footprint.

These audits sound intense and they can be but its worth looking at. Often we’ll work with businesses who feel like they don’t want to shout about their good bits because they don’t want to look big-headed or smug. But, if you never tell anyone, then no one will know and that is missed business opportunities. If you have goals and you would like to achieve them then some action points could help you get there quicker.

If you do use any of the above and complete your own audit please feel free to get in touch and discuss your findings.

If you’d like to discuss having an audit done for your business please feel free to book a free session to discuss here