How to Know if Your Marketing Agency is Doing a Comprehensive Audit for Your Firm
When a marketing agency is first contracted to work with a firm, one of its first steps is to conduct a marketing audit.
What is a marketing audit?
It’s a thorough examination and evaluation of your firm’s marketing efforts. The marketing agency collects all the information it can to understand your marketing campaign’s strengths and areas for improvement.
Think of the auditor as a forensic investigator. You came to a marketing agency because your firm isn’t hitting the benchmarks you hoped it would. The auditor’s job is to assess the ‘crime scene’ and determine what is holding your firm back. This involves digging deep into the evidence – analyzing data and examining your website, social media platforms, online advertising, Law firm SEO service, marketing channels, and more.
This blog will discuss what a comprehensive marketing audit looks like and how your firm can get the most out of the audit as possible.
What is involved in a thorough marketing audit?
Audits vary from agency to agency, with some agencies performing a more comprehensive audit than others. Most marketing audits boil down to a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis. The aim is to survey the law firm’s current marketing approach and identify areas for improvement.
There are, however, a few steps every marketing agency should take to perform a successful audit:
- Have a clear goal: Prior to undertaking the audit, the marketing agency must sit down with the client and get a better understanding of their overall objectives. Some law firms might wish to place greater emphasis on developing a distinctive brand voice, whereas others might choose to focus on their social media presence. This objective should lead the marketing agency’s audit approach.
- Review the client’s website: Many aspects go into crafting a successful website, some of which you can learn about here. Considerations include the strength of existing content, website design, an evaluation of the website’s current optimization as well as more technical aspects like mobile-friendliness.
- Review the client’s online presence: This includes a survey of the client’s search engine ranking, social media accounts, as well as tangential websites that might have an impact on the law firm’s online success, like Avvo.
- Identify competitors: Review competitors’ assets and online presence. Is there a particular practice they do well that you can adopt too? What are the marketing norms in your practice region? Analyzing your competitors’ marketing approaches gives context to where an agency should begin with its own campaign.
- Budget based on findings: Based on the audit’s findings and your budget, the marketing agency can then outline a strategy to obtain your desired results.
How can you best support your marketing firm’s auditing efforts?
Communication, communication, communication.
If your marketing team asks you for information during the auditing process, it is important you provide it completely and expediently. Incomplete information means an incomplete audit and a weaker personalized marketing plan.
If you suspect your marketing company isn’t taking the above critical steps during your marketing audit, it’s important to sit down and have a conversation with them. Ultimately, your relationship with your marketing agency is a partnership and you should feel comfortable expressing your concerns.
At Consultwebs, we encourage having a minimum of one check-in every month. During the meeting, you should discuss recent benchmarks and how well the current results align with the success metrics set forth during your marketing audit. These check-ins both:
- Support overall transparency in the partnership
- Hold marketing agencies accountable for meeting your discussed goals
Takeaways
A comprehensive evaluation of your current marketing ecosystem is an important first step to constructing an effective long-term marketing campaign. You should familiarize yourself with the standard auditing procedures so you know the right questions to ask during those early conversations with your new marketing agency. By ensuring they’re taking a comprehensive approach to your marketing audit, you can feel more confident in your partnership moving forward.
If you’re interested in discussing the Consultwebs approach to conducting a marketing audit, reach out to one of our marketing team experts today.
