Mapping out a winning 2024 – a quick check on your digital marketing game

Dec 12

If your new year’s resolution is to supercharge your digital marketing strategy, a simple yet comprehensive two-step audit could help you do just that. It will dive into the ins and outs of tech, people and processes and help you figure out your digital toolkit and size-up your team’s skills. The result? You’ll uncover practical insights to take your digital marketing up a notch. In this blog, we’ll set out how you can get set for success.

It’s no surprise that digital marketing has proven to be a game changer for companies and their performance. But like any ever-changing field, it throws curveballs in the form of challenges across all areas: people, process and technology. Overcoming these gives you a serious edge, though - so it might be time for an audit of your digital marketing strategy, to see where you’re at now and where you could add some extra sparkle in the future.

Step 1: Explore the digital landscape – Uncover your tech playground

Start your digital marketing audit by mapping your tech. Follow your customers’ journey through awareness, engagement and conversion – and don’t get bogged down in what you can’t control; stick to the technologies and platforms that you already have or have access to. Additionally, check what tools are tracking this journey and make sure you’re squeezing all the juice out of them you can.

Now, let’s talk about engagement. Consider how customers experience your brand, especially through your website. Your website is key and is likely to incorporate multiple technologies. These will include your content management system (CMS) – which plays a key role in optimal customer experience (CX) delivery – and plug-ins that need to be carefully selected to achieve your digital marketing KPIs.

You also need to think beyond your website. Are you using a separate email platform? Do you have a mobile marketing tool? Consider any other third-party platforms that facilitate engagement with your prospects. To maximise conversions, pay attention to which customer relationship management (CRM) platform your sales team uses to keep track of your customers.

Last but not least, figure out which tools might be best to measure the results you care about. Common choices include Google Analytics, Google Search Console, as well as more specific platforms such as SemRush.

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To measure your maturity level, ask yourself: Do we really know how our prospects interact with our website and messages? Can we attribute our success to different channels, even if they were the first touchpoints?

Step 2: People and process – two sides of the same coin

Two key challenges of marketers in the UK are attracting and retaining awesome talent, and wrapping your head around internal digital capability. How you manage these challenges will reflect the maturity level of your digital marketing strategy and will impact the results you achieve.

Consider your team’s ability to drive performance across all four types of digital channels – paid, earned, shared and owned. These form the so-called PESO model, and your digital marketing strategy should make the most of all of them. For example, are you running a paid media campaign, such as with Google Ads or LinkedIn Ads? Do you have a digital PR programme to earn media coverage? Are you sharing your core messages on social media? And finally, are you making the most of the content you own, for instance by implementing SEO best practice across your website?

Now, peak into your processes – do they enhance or hinder your team’s performance? To assess this, you could conduct an anonymous survey to understand what improvements are needed.

To gauge your digital marketing prowess, ask yourself this – are we in control across digital channels, always analysing, testing, and innovating? Plus, how well do we use our data to support how each area supports the next.

Being aware of your digital marketing programme strengths and weaknesses can provide you with a roadmap for improvement and a plan to explore new opportunities.

The good news is, you don’t need to do it all by yourself. We can help you reach the next level of digital marketing maturity. With The Marketing Pod’s five centres of excellence working as one team, you’re sure to find the expertise you need to reach and engage your customers across all available channels.