There’s no doubt that a contemporary digital marketing strategy is one of the key driving factors in a company’s success in today’s internet landscape. But simply committing to digital marketing isn’t enough. You have to be sure your efforts are paying off. And it’s for this reason that it’s smart to conduct a regular digital marketing health checkup.
What is a Digital Marketing Health Checkup?
When you go to an annual physical at your doctor’s office, the goal is to check your vitals, identify any serious issues, address concerns, and provide some helpful suggestions and areas for improvement. You don’t go because you’re sick or hurting – you schedule a physical so that you can measure or gauge where things stand in an effort to prevent small issues from ballooning into much larger problems.
A digital marketing health checkup is similar. It’s something you conduct on a semi-regular basis in order to understand where things stand, where you’re failing, and where you can improve. It provides an opportunity to measure and analyze.
When Should You Conduct a Digital Marketing Health Checkup?
Every business has a different definition of what a digital marketing health checkup is. For some, it’s a quick analysis that can be conducted in a couple of hours or less. For others, it’s an in-depth probe that takes days to complete. The extensiveness of your investigation will likely determine how often you conduct a check.
You should be conducting a digital marketing health checkup at least once per year (but this is the bare minimum). It’s much better to conduct a check every six months, or even once per quarter. This will empower you to make quick pivots and changes to maximize the efficacy of your digital marketing strategy and investments.
3 Things to Consider When Conducting a Digital Marketing Health Checkup
Armed with the what and when of digital marketing health checkups, let’s dig into the how. Every checkup will be uniquely tailored to the specific investments and objectives a business is making, but here are a few good steps/measurements that have universal application:
1. Google Your Biz
Conducting a Google search of your business is one of the simplest yet most effective things you can do. It’ll give you direct and immediate insights into where things stand for your brand.
“If you Google your business’s name, what shows up? Hopefully a few links to different pages of your website, your organization’s Facebook page, and an info card with more details about your business,” Shift suggests. “However, this isn’t always the case, especially with small and medium sized businesses.”
A Google search will reveal exactly what your customers encounter when they search for your business. If the results are good, it’s an indication that your strategy is working. If you don’t like the way your business appears in the search results, it’s a sign that something should change.
In addition to searching for your brand, you should also conduct quick searches for target keywords and search terms. Do you show up on page one? If you aren’t showing up, you’ll either need to increase your emphasis on these keywords or get more specific with less competitive long-tail keywords.
2. Use a Backlink Checker
Backlinks pointing to your website are vital for digital marketing success. Not only do they play a role in enhancing your search rankings, but they also indicate marketplace receptivity. (When other individuals, businesses, and blogs link back to your site, it’s a sign that they trust your brand and find your content valuable.)
Use a SEO backlink checker to determine how many backlinks you have, where they’re coming from, and where there are opportunities to scale up your linking efforts.
3. Review Website Analytics
Finally, now’s a great time to review your website analytics. Simply log into your Google Analytics account and gather the data points that are relevant to you. Some of the most important metrics and KPIs include: traffic, traffic distribution, interactions per visit, return visitor conversion, value per visit, bounce rate, exit pages, and average session duration.
Putting it All Together
Whether you do it every three, six, or 12 months, a digital marketing health checkup is something that every business needs to invest in on a semi-regular basis. It doesn’t have to be formal or extensive, but it should probe the important aspects of your strategy so that you can get a better feel for where things stand.
There’s never been a better time to conduct a health check than right now. So here’s a challenge for you: Using the four elements discussed in this article, conduct a digital marketing health checkup this week. And armed with the insights you uncover, make at least three practical changes to your strategy.
