How we help a business review its digital marketing activity

• You are a business owner and want to validate your digital marketing
• You have an over-reliance on a single channel and want to know how you can mitigate risk
• You are not sure where to start with your digital marketing strategy

A digital plan or strategy is about getting from situation A to situation B often without knowing where you're starting from or where you want to get to, and it is all too easy to get lost.

David Somerville, Digital Strategist

The first stop is business immersion. Operating in-person or online, we go through a series of fact-finding questions and exercises; the activity includes:

1. Personal introductions, discovering background information about the team, their personal experience and aspirations.
2. Getting to know the business, how it works, what it needs to achieve, the tools to do this etc. We need to know about goals, objectives and targets
3. Assessing the skill levels in the digital team, what the team currently does and how it functions
4. Reviewing the channels and other marketing activity previously tried and what the experience and performance levels have been to date?
5. Identifying the competition and understanding their level of digital activity
6. Reviewing the available customer data and how an organisation compares with the 10 stage customer journey

Working with the team, we set about understanding more about customers. We will want to know who the key audience groups are, general demographics and typical channels they may use. We look at the audience's needs and goals to better understand how the digital offering fits them and addresses them to provide a valuable and productive experience.

The go-to data source for many online businesses is Google Analytics. We take the time to review the set-up, how the team uses the information, and understand team confidence levels of using the tool. We will, by this time, have run the set-up through our Google Analytics troubleshooter tool to identify any immediate issues with data integrity.

We will also use search data to understand the types of queries that the audience uses to complete their goals and address their needs. We may also use competitive data to look at the platform and channel usage in the vertical to better understand the breadth of digital usage.

We will also lean on first-party performance data to better inform any plan - sales information, KPI targets, first-party audience data, etc.

Initially, our digital strategists will want to know information like:

1. Individual channel performance against KPIs
2. Digital performance against business objectives and targets
3. How digital stacks up in the marketing mix against other, non-digital channels
4. Understanding the CPA and profitability of the activity

The outcome depends on what the objectives are and the sector an organisation is active within. We will look through our specific sector playbooks to determine the relevance of channel activity. We have expert knowledge across multiple sectors, including eCommerce, charity (NFP), education and learning, B2B, and financial services and insurance.

We will assess activity across any channels that we have jointly determined to have the potential opportunity. These four channels and lines of optimisation are fundamental because they are foundational digital marketing channels. 

Our experience drives this. Across our team and various disciplines, we will always have many ideas. This is natural as our experts have worked in SEO, design, web development and digital for over 20 years. They have a wealth of knowledge to make the right decisions. We ensure we don't overwhelm a business by bringing all advice and actions back to what is required by building a prioritised plan to aid growth (for people, teams and businesses) and digital maturity.

We'll take stock of what we have learned, write up the findings, and make recommendations. We will produce a prioritised action plan that will make an immediate impact while having a long-term vision.

We have a very pragmatic approach to our consultancy. For our digital strategists to advise a line of activity, there must be substance and reason for undertaking tasks backed up by data.

Lines of work must demonstrate an opportunity to add value to an organisation's goals and objectives positively. We won't recommend lines of work that cannot be measured to deliver value against those criteria. This approach helps project stakeholders within the client organisation quickly rationalise the level and type of activity required to get them underway.