INTERNET MARKETING AUDIT

You may not know this, but internet marketing is on the up and up.  According to Forrester, interactive marketing spending in the United States will grow to $61.3 billion in 2012, from $18.4 billion in 2007.  As smart organizations continue to shift marketing dollars to the web, it becomes increasingly important for them to understand the strategies and tools involved in implementing an effective internet marketing plan.

The best way to ensure that your online marketing strategy is strong out of the gate is to seek internet marketing expertise. A lack of interactive marketing expertise can be debilitating, first manifesting itself in the planning stages, and then trickling down to impact individual tactics- and transitively, the lukewarm, or cold results.

Whether you are finding it a struggle to drive traffic to your site, or to satisfy, and convert your online audience, Terrakon can assist you with a comprehensive internet marketing audit.

The audit consists of an in-depth analysis of your website, and its supporting online marketing and promotional tactics to determine why you are not receiving the results you expected.  Along with receiving a report on what is working and what is not, we can provide you with custom recommendations to help you reap optimal internet marketing results. The following elements are included in Terrakon’s internet marketing audit:

Web Traffic Breakdown

Terrakon will undergo astute analysis of your web traffic and the data behind the visits. Statistics available are very detailed and reveal the navigation habits of your traffic and even in some cases the identity of the visitors with details on their search terms.

Link Analysis

The importance of inbound linking on your web site is not fully understood by many organizations but it is vital for priority organic search engine placement, particularly with Google. Links from other established and reputable websites have major implications on your ability to rank well as they position your site as something worth linking to.  Through link analysis, we will take a look at who is linking to you, explore your usage of lateral and vertical linking within your site, uncover who is linking to your  competitors and make recommendations on how to improve your linking strategy overall.

Customer Profiling

In order to best assist you with your internet marketing agendas, we must first understand to whom you are marketing. What follows is typical of our questioning:

1. Existing customer business: a look at sales in recent past, marketing of what products and services, how were leads generated, who was sold to
2. B2B versus B2C: key trades, industries and they reasons they engage with you
3. Your promotional mix
4. Repeat business
5. Destination or convenience visit
6. Customer segmentation: identifying who for what product / service, customer behavior on web and the role that the web site plays
7. Customer DNA:establishing a buyer profile, demographic makeup, regional influences and understanding the people who buy from you but also the people who don't
8. Where do you or your services fit into customers needs
9. Purchasing patterns
10. Loyalty

Market Evaluation

After we have reached an understanding of who your customers are, we must then understand the marketplace your company competes in.  By understanding who is out there and what they are doing to protect their market share [as well as what they are not doing], we are enabled to develop a unique, competitive internet marketing strategy.

Search Engine Ranking Benchmarking

It is important to benchmark your rankings with your competitors for key search terms to understand how you are fairing organically. Our expert knowledge of how search engines work enables us to dissect the structural requirements for a successful web presence.  We can also inform you about new Marketing 2.0 tools like real-time search, local search and personalized search and what they mean to you, and your search engine marketing success.

Keyword Analysis

Knowing your audience enables us to jointly identify the key phrases the desired visitor will search for. This is a joint process assisted by online benchmarking tools to measure the search frequency of favorite industry terms as well as their density on your site’s relevant pages.

Coding Audit

This is the technological audit that reveals how well your website has been developed. This is important particularly with search engines as key data needs to be examined by search engines so they know what and where to index you in their results. [The same goes for your human visitors.]  If your audiences can’t find you, or worse don’t understand what you do, then you will find it challenging to rank well for your desired keywords and phrases.  Also detrimental, some technologies and the way they are applied don’t even get read by search engines.

Content Review

Content is still king. There is nothing more important in the overall site's performance than well written compelling content that differentiates your products and services both to the human visitor as well as the search engines.  Content review and refurbishment can be a tenuous process, but necessary nonetheless if it was not written well to begin with.

Website Design & Functionality Analysis

Design and website functionality are other important factors in the internet marketing audit. We will analyze the user experience on your site as well as undergo user testing to hear, in real words, what your visitors feel about your site overall.  It may hurt your feelings, but may be the best gift you could give yourself.

Landing page review and analysis is also an audit component if applicable.

Online Advertising & Promotion Assessment

Are you using Twitter to promote your site?  Or Facebook?  Are you utilizing Google or Yahoo! pay per click advertising?  Or are you active on corporate blogs, or blog on your own?  These tools, among others, can be highly effective in driving traffic to your site.  Just because you built it does not mean that they will come, therefore a review of your traffic generation tactics is essential in understanding why your site is a bonafide ghost town.

To further discuss having Terrakon conduct an internet marketing audit for you or your company, and for audit pricing- contact us Toll Free: (800) 605. 4160.  Or fill out our friendly webform and we will gladly contact you.