Digital Marketing Analysis: Build Your Marketing Strategy With Data

A digital marketing analysis is like a forensics investigation into what works and what doesn’t for your business digital presence. Digital marketing analysis done the right way will inform you in which area of your digital marketing you’re getting ahead or falling behind your competitors. It informs you not only of the path forward and the new ones you can pave, but also of the missteps you can avoid in the future.

The average small-to-midsized business spends $2500 to $12,000 per month on digital marketing. That’s a significant investment, which is why many invest in a digital marketing analysis. With a digital marketing analysis, your company can power your marketing strategy with data instead of hunches, which can make a tremendous difference in your plan’s success and return on investment (ROI).

Keep reading to learn more about digital marketing analysis and get answers to questions like:

• What is a digital marketing analysis?
• What data does a digital marketing analysis focus on?
• Why should I invest in a digital marketing analysis?
• What should digital marketing analysis services include?
• And more!

If you’re looking for immediate help with analyzing your audience, building your online marketing strategy, or improving your digital marketing results, WebFX can help. Contact us online or call us at 888-601-5359 to see how our Internet marketing services can help you.

What is a digital marketing analysis?

A digital marketing analysis researches and evaluates your business, audience, and competitors to build a custom, data-driven digital marketing plan for your company. Using an online marketing analysis, your company can deliver an Internet marketing strategy that speaks to your audience — and converts them.

What data does a digital marketing analysis focus on?

It focuses on data tied to your business digital marketing goals. If you are focused on improving your digital presence, then the data will include metrics such as website visits, sessions, users, referring channels, and user journeys.

If you’re more focused on increasing revenue for your ecommerce digital storefront, that will include metrics such as items viewed, added to cart, purchased, and abandoned.

It uncovers where your business digitally stands currently, your wins, losses, and opportunities to improve on.

What does a digital marketing analysis include?

In most cases, a digital marketing analysis will include the following steps:

• Reviewing your company’s current marketing strategy, goals, and audience personas
• Investigating your competitors’ marketing strategy and target audience
• Researching your target audience’s online behavior, wants, and language
• Rebuilding your marketing strategy based on your findings

Every analysis is different, though.

A company that underwent a recent merger, for example, may invest in a more thorough digital marketing analysis than a business that’s managed its online marketing campaigns proactively. How in-depth your review becomes will depend on your organization’s status, goals, strategy, and audience.

What do digital marketing analysis services include?

If you’re thinking about investing in digital marketing analysis services, great! A professional analysis can give your business a helpful second opinion, which can result in a stronger strategy that generates the leads and revenue you want.

Before partnering with a provider, research what digital marketing analysis services should include.

The top digital marketing analysis agencies will offer turn-key services, which make your life easier. With turn-key service, you receive a complete analysis and list of recommendations for your marketing strategy, plus the option for the agency to lead and manage those suggested strategies.

Even if your agency doesn’t offer turn-key services, their digital marketing analysis services should include:

• Review of your business and its goals
• Analysis of your offline and online competitors
• Research and update of your target persona and audience
• Generation of your marketing channel and strategy recommendations

Keep reading to learn more about these deliverables:

Business review

Every online marketing analysis should include an in-depth evaluation of your business.

For example, your service provider should ask questions about your company like:

• What are your company’s goals?
• What are your top-selling products or services?
• What are your company’s unique selling points?
• What do you expect from this analysis?

They should also ask questions about your marketing approach, like:

• What are your goals for marketing?
• Which marketing channels or strategies do you use?
• How do your marketing goals support your company’s overall goals?
• Which services or products do you want to push with online marketing?
• What is (and isn’t) working with your marketing strategy?

Finally, potential agencies should ask questions (like the following) about your target market:

• Who is your target market?
• How does your target audience usually find your business?
• What are some challenges or pain points for your audience, and how do you solve them?

A top-notch digital marketing analysis agency will ask these questions — before you hire them.

If they don’t, look at other options. Partnering with a company that asks the right questions and demonstrates an interest in your business will set you up for success when it comes to your online marketing analysis.

Competitor analysis

A competitor analysis is essential for a digital marketing analysis.

With a competitor analysis, your agency looks at your company’s top online and offline competitors. For example, if your business operates locally (say as an insurance company), you may compete with the insurance firm in the next city, as well as big-name insurance companies online.

Investigating your top competitors helps your service provider:

• Assess your strategy, compared to your competition
• Find weaknesses in competitor strategies
• Discover opportunities for your online marketing strategy
• Uncover your competitors’ target audiences
• Determine your competitors’ preferred channels, like social or search

Without a competitor analysis, your agency can’t provide informed and actionable recommendations for your online marketing strategy. That’s why it’s essential to focus on service providers that include a competitor analysis in their digital marketing analysis services.

Target persona research

Researching your target persona is one of the most critical parts of digital marketing analysis.

Your target buyer plays the most fundamental role in your online marketing strategy. If you focus on the wrong people, your company won’t generate leads, sales, or revenue, which means disaster for your bottom line. That’s why researching your target buyer is crucial.

In most cases, your service provider will start by reviewing your existing target persona.

Depending on your business, you may have an in-depth or bare-minimum persona for your target audience. That’s okay! Your digital marketing analysis agency will help update and expand your target persona to make it as useful as possible for your marketing strategy.

Generally, target personas will include information like:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Role (for business-to-business companies)
• Challenges or pain points
• Wants or needs

Some target personas will also answer questions like:

• What are the target buyer’s values?
• What are the target buyer’s fears?
• What marketing messages or selling points work well for this target buyer?
• Which channels does the target buyer use to research solutions to their problem?

Again, target personas can become extremely thorough, but an in-depth one is not the standard.

Your digital marketing analysis service provider will use the target persona you’ve generated and maintained as the foundation for their research. As a part of their service, they want to review and refresh your persona to make it as useful as possible to your online marketing strategy.

Updating your target buyer persona

Digital marketing analysis services should also include revising your target persona.

That’s because your agency will research your target audience in-depth and look for takeaways that they can apply to your target persona and digital marketing strategy. For instance, your service provider may discover a new pain point for your audience that your business can solve.

A few examples of some details that your agency may discover about your target buyer include:

• How your target buyer describes or searches for their problems online
• Where your target buyer goes, like a forum or social network, for advice and updates
• What your target buyer wants in a product or service, as well as the brand providing it
• How your target buyer moves from awareness to purchase in the buyer journey

While it’s optional to update your target persona with this information, you should. These details can help your digital marketing strategy long-term by providing your team with the data to maintain a strategy that speaks (and converts) your target market.

Determining your most valuable marketing strategies

Most digital marketing analysis services should include recommendations for your plan.

Based on your agency’s research, they should compile a list of the most valuable online marketing strategies for your business. And if you’re working with a full-service marketing agency like WebFX, they should offer a range of services to compliment your marketing analysis, like SEO services, content marketing services, or social media advertising services.

For example, if you operate as a local insurance company and your agency discovers that most customers find you through search and social media, it makes sense for your agency to recommend social media marketing, social media advertising, and local SEO.

In most cases, your agency will also rank their recommended strategies.

Having your strategies ranked from most to least impactful can help your company plan its approach. If you can only focus on one strategy, for instance, having your options listed can make your decision easy and quick.

When suggesting strategies or channels, your digital marketing analysis company should provide data to support their recommendations. If your agency doesn’t use anything to back their assessment, that should serve as a red flag.

Building your digital marketing plan

Finally, digital marketing analysis services can also include a complete online marketing plan.

With this deliverable, your business receives a blueprint for marketing your company online. In most cases, agencies that provide a complete digital marketing plan will also offer the services necessary to launch, manage, and maintain this strategy.

What does a finished plan look like, though? An online marketing plan can contain details like:

• Strategies
• Recommended ad spend (if applicable)
• Immediate action items, like fixing a broken site link
• Monthly, quarterly, and yearly goals
• Monthly action plan
• And more

Every digital marketing analysis services provider is different.

The above deliverables, however, outline the crucial components of an online marketing analysis. For the best results with hiring and working with a web marketing analysis agency, ask beforehand what digital marketing services are included.

That way, you’ll know exactly what you’re investing in for your business.

Why invest in digital marketing analysis?

Whether you analyze your online marketing in-house or with the help of an agency, it’s an investment to perform a digital marketing analysis. Why should you set aside the time (and money) to audit your strategy?

For a few compelling reasons, including:

Build a strategy with data, not hunches

Anyone can create a digital marketing strategy, but that doesn’t mean it will work.

Whether someone freestyles a strategy, copies a competitor, or follows a hunch, developing a digital marketing strategy without data makes it weak. Guessing about an approach or assuming it will work leaves you blind to what will work.

With a digital marketing analysis, your business builds an informed and data-driven strategy.

Using research and industry-specific data, you can create an online marketing strategy tailored to your company, goals, and audience. That extra bit of effort can make an incredible difference when it comes to generating and nurturing leads.

For perspective, look at how our agency used data to help Reynolds Building Solutions.

This building solutions provider was looking to earn more from its website.

Based on our team’s research and analysis, we provided and executed a digital marketing strategy for the company that generated impressive results, like a 71% year-over-year increase in organic contact form submissions.

With a digital marketing analysis, you can start building a competitive, results-driving strategy too.

Get actionable insight into your audience

Understanding audiences is a massive challenge for companies.

While you may know the core facts, like your target audience’s age, gender, and location, understanding their buying motives and decisions is difficult. A digital marketing analysis, however, helps improve your understanding of your audience’s thoughts and behavior.

For example, with an online marketing analysis, you can learn:

• How your audience searches for solutions
• How your audience describes problems related to your products or services
• What your audience wants or expects from a company, product, or service
• Where your audience goes for purchase advice, news, and more
• What your audience prefers when contacting a company or purchasing a product

All this information can help your business build a better online experience, as well as customer experience. If you learn, for instance, that people prefer to contact a company like yours online (versus calling), then you can spend time designing and optimizing your contact forms.

For many small-to-midsized businesses, it’s also challenging to set aside the time to research and update audience details. Investing in professional digital marketing analysis services, however, can help your company take advantage of this benefit and improve your online marketing strategy.

Earn a better ROI from digital marketing

No matter your industry or audience, you want to improve your digital marketing ROI.

Building a better strategy through an online marketing analysis can help accomplish that goal. Think about it. You’re learning more about your audience, competitors, and current plan, and using that information to enhance your approach.

It makes sense that with an improved digital marketing strategy your ROI would increase.

A few ways that an analysis can better your strategy and ROI include:

• Transitioning your approach to more profitable channels
• Increasing your understanding of audience motivations, values, and pain points
• Targeting your competitor’s weaknesses with your strategy

Generating a better return from online marketing can help your business in other ways. With a better ROI, your company earns more leads, sales, and revenue, which can translate to hiring another team member, opening a new location, or investing new resources for your business.

Outsourced digital marketing analysis vs. in-house digital marketing analysis

When it comes to a digital marketing analysis, you have two choices:

• Do it in-house
• Hire an agency

Which one is the best option for your business, though?

In most cases, small-to-midsized businesses benefit the most from outsourcing their digital marketing analysis. As a smaller company, you have fewer team members and time, which means it’s challenging to conduct an evaluation.

Hiring an agency gives your business instant access to a team of marketers. Plus, you get to offload the responsibility of analyzing your strategy, researching your audience, and assessing your competitors. While your newfound marketing team focuses on your analysis, you focus on running your business.

Even when you consider the cost savings of an in-house digital marketing analysis, it often gets outweighed by the time it would take. You’d have to spend hours evaluating your strategy and finding improvements.

If you don’t have a marketing background, this task turns into an even more challenging undertaking.

An outsourced analysis also provides you with a fresh perspective on your marketing strategy.

You have someone new to your business, but with online marketing experience that can evaluate your approach and offer actionable, data-backed advice. For many companies, it’s worth the cost to get that level of guidance and expertise — especially when you consider the ROI of a digital marketing analysis.

How to choose a digital marketing analysis service provider

For example, think about the following questions:

• Do you want to work with a local agency?
• How much do you want to spend on a digital marketing analysis?
• Do you want to work with a turn-key agency?
• What deliverables must an agency offer with their services?

Answering these questions will help your business create a list of requirements. These requirements will make it easy for your company to add agencies to your list of candidates, which will save you time and hassle.

Ask for recommendations

Depending on your connections, you may know professionals that use third-party marketing services.

For example, they may work with a social media agency to manage their presence on Facebook and LinkedIn. Or, they may collaborate with a search engine optimization agency to improve their visibility on Google.

Either way, talk to these professionals.

Based on their experiences, they may have several recommendations when it comes to finding a digital marketing analysis agency. In most cases, they’ll probably recommend a digital marketing company, which should provide this service.

Using their suggestions, you can build a short-list of potential online marketing agencies.

Read reviews, testimonials, and case studies

Once you know what you want from a digital marketing analysis agency, you can begin your research.

Focus on reading a company’s reviews, testimonials, and case studies.

Agencies with a decent number of reviews (think 50 or more) can give you the confidence that this company has worked with plenty of clients. A sizeable number of reviews also provides you with multiple perspectives and experiences.

When reading reviews, think about the following:

• What did the client like?
• What didn’t the client like?
• How did the agency help the client?
• Would the client recommend the agency?

Ask those same questions when reading testimonials.

While testimonials generally share a positive experience, they can correlate with reviews. For example, you may notice reviews and testimonials both mention the company’s response time to emails and phone calls.

As you browse testimonials and reviews, watch for case studies too.

A case study provides you with an in-depth look at the client experience, as well as the agency’s approach, capabilities, and results. They’re an excellent resource for learning about a company and their abilities.

Set up a meeting

After you compile a list of potential digital marketing analytics agencies, you can contact them.

Depending on your location, you may visit the company’s office, or they may visit yours. In some cases, agencies will conduct conference calls to chat with you and learn about your business and goals for online marketing.

A meeting, whether online or face-to-face, is an excellent opportunity to learn about an agency. You can see how the agency interacts with your team. Plus, you can gauge their interest in your business and service needs.

Whatever you do, don’t skip this step when hiring an agency.

Ask the right questions

When meeting with potential digital marketing analysis companies, ask questions.

Asking questions (like the following) helps you narrow your list of contenders:

• What does your digital marketing analysis include?
• Are there any additional fees included with these services?
• How long does a digital marketing analysis take?
• What happens if your recommendations don’t work?
• Who (and how many people) will I work with on this project?
• What would you need from me for the analysis?

Talk with your team to brainstorm more questions to ask.

If you forget to ask these questions when meeting with a potential agency, email or call them. Skipping these questions and moving forward with a signed contract can result in your company partnering with an agency that doesn’t meet your needs or expectations.

Using the above tips, you can find a top-notch digital marketing analysis service provider.

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Get a professional digital marketing analysis today

A professional digital marketing analysis helps your business build a data-driven marketing strategy. With a plan powered by data, versus copy-and-paste approaches, your company can grow by earning more leads, sales, and revenue.

Are you ready to get started with analyzing your online marketing strategy? Contact WebFX!

With more than $10 billion generated in revenue for our clients in the past five years, plus a client retention rate of 91%, we’re a trusted choice for small-to-midsized businesses looking to create a stronger, more profitable digital marketing strategy.

Give us a ring at 888-601-5359 or contact us online today to learn more!