Marketing your business in today's digital world can be tough. Understanding what to do and what not to do can vary quite a bit between industries, services or offerings.
There is so much information and misinformation out there it's hard to separate it all and be really confident that you're doing everything you can to maximize your exposure and effectiveness.
So how do you know where you stand?
Hopefully you're tracking your traffic, leads, customers and conversion percentages on a regular basis. Before digging into that detail and confusing yourself with 87 different performance metrics it's appropriate to take a high level look at where you stand. Determining where you stand with the basic combination of digital marketing tactics many consider essential is a great place to start. This article will help you analyze the status of your campaign across these elements with some easy to answer questions.
5 digital marketing elements you should evaluate
- Is Your Website Built To Produce Results?
- Do You Have An Effective SEO Strategy?
- Are You Creating Informative Content?
- How Well Are You Utilizing Email Marketing?
- Are You Using Social Media Channels Properly?
1 - Website Evaluation:
Start the process by asking yourself some questions. If your answers are 'no' or 'I don't know' you might need to do a full analysis with a web design company.
- Does your website respond to all 5 major viewing device sizes?
- Does your content speak directly to your buyer personas/target customers?
- Does your site feature free resources to help visitors educate themselves on your services?
- Do you have clear calls-to-actions with conversion paths in place?
- Have you added new pages of content in the last 3 months?
- Does your website have an active blog on it?
- Can you make changes to your website with the help of a developer?
2 - Search Engine Optimization Evaluation:
If you can't successfully answer this set of questions you likely don't know enough or don't have enough in place to successfully marketing your business on search engines.
- Do you have a list of focus keywords (3-10) that have good ranking opportunity, traffic, and relevance?
- Do you know what pages rank and focus on what keywords?
- Do you have any harmful inbound links left over from old-world SEO practices?
- Does your meta data match and support your focus keyword list?
- Do all of your pages have H1 and H2 text?
- Are all of your images labeled with keywords in the Alt Text?
- Do each of your blog articles focus on a specific keyword?
- Do your blog articles link to the right internal page you're trying to drive relevance to?
- Are your page titles too long or formatted incorrectly?
- Do your meta descriptions explain what each page is about and prompt readers to click through?
- Do you have a quality link-building campaign in place?
- Have you ever submitted a guest post to an influential industry blog?
3 - Content Marketing Evaluation:
This one might be a little simpler to evaluate, you're either building fresh content or you're not. If you're not, you need to be. If you are, ask yourself this.
- Do you have a valuable piece of content for each stage in the decision making process?
- Do you understand the difference between the awareness stage and the consideration stage and how to mold your offerings accordingly?
- Are you publishing at least 2 blog articles per week?
- Are your premium content pieces locked behind landing pages with forms to access?
- Do you have good graphical calls-to-action built and placed throughout your website?
- Do you have a complete marketing funnel setup for every buyer persona and service offering?
4 - Email Marketing Evaluation:
Most businesses are doing some form of email marketing but they may be missing out on opportunities to grow subscriptions, reduce churn, and increase conversions.
- Are you segmenting your email database with the intelligence you gained upon harvesting each contact?
- Are you educating your contacts with resources that help them understand your industry and offering?
- Do you have a clear offer or next step in every email that allows them to continue learning & convert as leads?
- Are you consistent with your campaign frequency?
- Do you know how many people are in your database?
- Do you have goals in place for Open Rates & Click-Through-Rates?
- Have you ever created a customer from your email campaign?
- Do you ask people to join your list and give them a compelling reason to do so?
5 - Social Media Marketing Evaluation:
Much like email marketing, many businesses believe they are executing a social media campaign. This segment has all the buzz and has grown tremendously over recent years, but are you really taking advantage or just participating?
- Have you identified the most successful mediums for the type of business and services your offer?
- Is your LinkedIn profile complete and optimized to market yourself and your business?
- Are you posting actively to all mediums your participate in?
- Are you posting compelling headlines that encourage your audience to click links?
- Do those links go to landing pages with compelling offers to download?
- Are you engaging with your community by sharing interesting content from others and answering questions?
- Are you tracking the traffic and leads generated by your social media activity?
- Do you have a goal for what percentage social media should contribute to traffic & leads?
Conclusion: Understanding where you stand helps you make a plan.
Now that you have a simple mechanism for evaluation it's time to get to work. Dig in and be honest with yourself. If you feel like you need to polish up on a couple of methods, do so. There is a ton of great information on our marketing blog to educate you on different topics with easy how-to articles to help you put together strategy and fill your gaps. The information is out there, all it takes is someone on your end motivated enough to dig in drive better results. If you don't like where you stand I encourage you to seek the answers and build the plans necessary to change your results.
For additional help, I suggest running your website URL through the HubSpot Marketing Grader.
