But taking your strategy to the next level isn’t always easy and can involve a lot of trial and error when you’re not sure where to start. This blog will do some of the hard work for you, pointing you and your team in the right direction so that you can reach your business goals.

How to supercharge your digital marketing strategy

Whether you’re working with an in-house team, agency, or by yourself, these tips can guide you towards a more fruitful marketing plan

Develop a deeper understanding of your audience

Having a static conceptualisation of your ideal customer is not enough to drive conversions on a long-term basis. This basic understanding of potential clients will only get you so far, and while it might have been enough to lift your business off the ground, it’s time to delve into the details.

To discover who your customers really are, make sure you’re using an analytics tool to collect data on all your account holders and transactions. Some tools that can help you to do this include Google Analytics and Adwords, Hootsuite, Salesforce, and Agile CRM. Other methods of gathering customer data include conducting surveys and keeping an eye on feedback and customer service threads.

Get serious about data

It’s not just customer data that will help you to optimise your digital marketing strategy, but performance data too. When changing parts of your strategy or adding new channels into the mix, such as social media or an e-mail newsletter, you’ll need to monitor the success of each component individually. This means that metrics will vary across the board, because while engagement might be useful for assessing the performance of your new blog, conversion rates will be a much worthier indicator of success in relation to special offers and discount codes.

If you’re working with a marketing agency, you might find it difficult to get an accurate picture of your strategy’s performance. Businesses usually pay agencies to take care of their marketing from start to finish, but what happens when the results aren’t quite what you imagined?

An agency audit can get you the data you need to determine whether your current professional partnership is really working for you.

Try an SEO bootcamp

Your digital marketing strategy should never neglect SEO, but if you’re at a loss when it comes to things like keywords and internal links, then an SEO bootcamp could be the answer. Familiarising yourself with some basic concepts and investing in the right tools, such as SEMrush or Moz, can put you in a good position to maximise your organic traffic. You’ll need to make sure the content on your website is optimised for both readers and search engines to drive conversions as well as improving your rankings.

SEO is also an important deciding factor when it comes to business acquisitions. If you’re thinking about buying a website, domain, or eCommerce store to add to your portfolio, it’s worth conducting a deeper analysis of its existing SEO performance while assessing future risks. Even if the website appears to rank highly on search engines, there’s no way to tell if its SEO will hold up further down the line without a thorough audit.

Rethink your digital strategy

When your marketing is delivering disappointing results, it often indicates that your strategy needs an overhaul in more than one way. By using a combination of performance data, customer profiling, paid advertising and competitor analysis, you can transform your strategy to work for your needs.

If you’ve been in the driver’s seat since your business was founded, it could be time to call in a professional. But choosing the right agency for the job isn’t as easy as it seems and, with your business’ success hanging on the line, you can’t afford to make mistakes. Even if an agency seems to have a great track record and experience in your industry, there’s no guarantee that there isn’t more than meets the eye behind the scenes. Don’t be afraid to call in a third party or specialist marketing consultant to support your decision-making.

How to find a marketing consultant

Finding a marketing consultant can feel just as daunting as searching for an agency, but it doesn’t have to. One of the best ways to find the right consultant for the job is through networking, so reach out to your contacts for recommendations before turning to Google.

Once you’ve found a marketing consultant, talk to them about the types of projects they’ve worked on before and the kind of results you can expect. Will they assess not only the traffic you’re currently receiving but the number of sales and conversions as well? Does your consultant have the knowledge to critically analyse your current agency’s methods? Ask lots of questions in your initial sales call and make your situation as clear as possible. This way, you have a better chance of agreeing upon a scope of work you’re happy with.

How much to pay a marketing consultant

Marketing consultant rates can vary and often depend on the type of work they’re going to be carrying out for you. You always have the option of asking for a more or less thorough service depending on your budget and the project at hand. The best way to determine how much a project will cost is by reaching out to a consultant and asking for a quote before committing to a contract.

Get in touch today

If you need help selecting a new agency or assessing the performance of your current partnership, get in touch to learn more.

Without a strong understanding of who you’re targeting, you’ll find it challenging to develop a strong, results-driven digital marketing strategy, which means you’ll not only struggle to drive traffic to your site but getting those site visitors to convert will be a constant uphill battle. Asking yourself how you define your target audience is the first step towards a thorough and effective strategy that gets your content in front of the right people, converts them successfully and drives your business success forward.

How to Determine Your Target Audience

How do you define your target audience? The right approach means a stronger insight into the search terms and keywords you need to optimise, the ability to create engaging content that matches the interests of your target audience – effectively enhancing their experience. And increasing the likelihood of sales, and driving more traffic to your site, creating more conversions in both organic and paid search strategies.

Tactics To Help You Define Your Target Audience

Shaping your SEO strategy begins with defining your target audience. This can be done in multiple ways, including:

• Analysing Your Current Customer Base/Demographics
• Utilising Your Social Media Data
• Analysing SERPs
• Getting to Know Your Competitors
• Researching What Questions Your Customers Are Asking and Searching For

Remember, understanding your target audience will allow you to use this data to your advantage, and develop a strong and intensive SEO strategy that drives conversions and growth.

Using Keyword Research to Optimise Your Website

If you’re wondering – how optimised is my website? Then starting with strong keyword research, uncovering the phrases, queries and search terms being used by your target audience and applying them to your strategy is the best place to begin enhancing your pages. When you know what your audience is looking for and the questions that they’re asking, you’ll have a stronger foundation for your SEO strategy and be able to cater to your prospective leads more accurately, developing the right kind of content to optimise your website effectively.

Finding what your target audience is searching for online, means using keyword data to develop highly successful campaigns with a website optimisation focus. When someone enters a search term relevant to your business, you want to be able to solve that query and encourage users to click through to your site which is fully optimised with rich and relevant content that is targeted at them. But how do you know what they’re searching for?

When choosing your keywords to cater for your audience, the following factors should be considered:

• Relevancy
• Authority
• Volume

By creating a list of general keywords that are relevant to your business, services and products, you can then use a keyword research tool to delve a little deeper into the metrics of these keywords, highlighting their search volume, authority and relevancy, it’s this information that will guide you to make better choices over which ones you want to rank for. It’s here you’ll also discover variations of these keywords, other search terms that are popular with your target audience and ones you may not have ever thought of.

While the competition for your most common keywords may be fierce and achieving success may seem overwhelming, when businesses choose to target highly specific, lower search volume keywords instead, they can draw visitors to their site who have the right intent and answer their query directly, which in turn means a higher level of conversion. This is as opposed to ambiguous search terms used by searchers whose intent your content won’t be able to satisfy.

Lacing your site content with low-search volume, long-tail keywords gives you a competitive edge. These terms often convert better because of their specificity and the intent that is driving the search. Someone who is searching for a “black dress” is probably only browsing for ideas, however, someone searching for a “low price size 12 black prom dress” is ready to make a purchase and these are the users you want.

While the search volumes of these terms can seem disheartening, don’t be afraid to target search terms that have a lower search volume. By tactically prioritising keywords that have both high and low search volumes, you can strategically optimise the pages throughout your site, giving you a calculated edge over your competitors.

Don’t Forget to Examine Your Competitors

Another way to answer – how optimised is my website? Is to take a look at your competitors. Assessing the keywords used by your closest competitors can put you at an advantage. Not only will this practice highlight which high ranking keywords your competitors have missed by presenting you with a strategic opportunity to boost your SEO, but you’ll also know which keywords to compete for and tackle them head-on.

Pinpointing which keywords your competitors have overlooked, gives you the opportunity to cater to your audience and target them effectively, leaving your closest competition struggling to keep up as your pages move higher up the SERPs.

Making the User Journey Seamless Through Web Design

Understanding what your audience is searching for and the intent behind their search can help you tailor your site to target them specifically and enhance your site rankings simultaneously. User engagement on your site is also a strong indication of the success of your SEO strategy, however even if you drive high volumes of traffic to your website, this will mean very little if their site experience is poor.

Site engagement is vital in terms of conversions and growth as well as keeping your bounce rate low – something which can also impact the ranking of your site. Therefore focusing on the user journey through good, high-quality web design should play a fundamental role in your conversion strategy and help you answer the question – how optimised is my website.

Here are some of the best ways you can effectively communicate and connect with your site visitors.

Choose the Right Tone of Voice

Choosing the right voice for your brand will determine how your users interact with your content. This is often defined by your target audience and the type of products or services you’re offering. Developing the right tone of voice can also differentiate you from your competitors, building trust and also enhancing brand recognition. When users land on your site, the right tone of voice can enhance their experience.

Simplify Site Navigation

Simple site navigation could mean the difference between high user engagement and a sky-high bounce rate. A logical navigational structure with simple categorisations will help your target audience find what they need quickly, without heading to your competitor’s site instead.

Add a Search Feature

Users want to find what they need quickly. Therefore incorporating a search box on your site can help them navigate your site easily, and reduce your bounce rate. The quicker and more convenient your site is, the more likely your target audience is to convert.

Keep Your Site Consistent

From the colours to your tone of voice, fonts and buttons, keeping your site design consistent across all devices will enhance the user experience and reduce confusion and questions over your authenticity.

Utilise Your Website as a Communication Tool

Still, wondering – how optimised is my website? When your site is structurally tailored to the needs of your target audience and your SEO strategy, it’s time to consider the importance of communicating with your audience to effectively drive conversions. Once you’ve established your target audience, you’ll know what you want to communicate to them and what steps you want them to take next. Communicating effectively via your site comes in many forms, including:

Developing a Strong Brand and Tone of Voice

Developing a strong brand identity will help you communicate your business message and ethics. Applying these to every component of your site, from your colour scheme to your fonts, tone of voice and content types can help establish your credibility as a genuine brand and increase trust and conversions.

A Company Blog

Your company blog is the perfect opportunity to utilise keywords and search terms used by your target audience. Helping you attract new visitors to your site and to build a following. Here you can answer the questions your audience is asking, tailoring your message effectively. You can also share important information about your business and even build a community around your brand.

Multiple Resources

In addition to your blog, sharing multiple resources on your sites such as fact sheets, downloadable content, guides and studies can help assert your authority and set you apart as a knowledgeable resource within your industry. Driving more targeted visitors to your website and increasing conversion rates.

FAQ pages

Creating an FAQ page is the perfect way to answer the rising number of queries you’ll receive as your business grows. This page alone can help increase conversions as site visitors won’t need to reach out to you directly if they can find what they need on your site instantly. In addition, FAQ pages are the perfect place to answer those search queries determined in your keyword research, driving relevant traffic to your pages and catering your website to your target audience.

Consider a Site Restructure

If you’re concerned about the performance of your website, and you want to cater your website to your target audience more effectively and increase your search engine visibility, then you may want to consider a site restructure approach.

What does restructuring a website mean? Website restructuring is a process where websites undergo structural changes as opposed to web design feature updates like those listed above. These changes can impact the platform, structure, location or fundamental design of your website. There are multiple reasons why you may want to consider this change for your website. Some of the most common reasons include:

• Website Design: Reworking website design to improve audience engagement and experience. This could help increase conversions and site engagement, respectively.
• Platform Update: Updating your platform can open up multiple platform opportunities that can enhance the experience of your target audience and increase conversions on your site.
  Updating your site platform could mean access to better forms of navigation, personalisation, better usability and even customer service features such as online chat features on your website, catering to your target audience’s needs, effortlessly.
• Mobile Optimisation: Integrating mobile optimisation into your site design is another reason to consider site migration. By analysing the needs and requirements of your target audience, you can provide them with a fully mobile experience that enhances their site experience and your rankings.
• Switching to a Better Server: If you believe your current server isn’t meeting the needs of your site visitors, then migrating to a new host may benefit you. Faster performance, enhanced security, and responsiveness can help you convert more site visitors.

However, in order to complete this successfully, and without negatively impacting your rankings, careful planning and testing of these changes are paramount. It’s also a good idea to inform your users that you’re making changes and update your site in stages.

Now It’s Your Turn

Creating a seamless user experience and adapting your website to target your audience, starts with understanding your target audience accurately. Applying these strategies to your digital marketing campaigns can increase relevant traffic to your site, increase conversions and enhance loyalty to your brand.

Once you understand your target audience, you can work on strategies to reach your target audience.

Chances are your competitors have already thought about their digital strategy carefully, but how can you hope to join them if you aren’t even sure what a digital strategy is? No matter what stage of your business journey you’re at, this guide will help you to understand how you can get started and why you should.

What is a digital strategy?

Because there are many types of digital strategy, the term means something slightly different to every business. But it’s important to understand that a digital strategy is not the same as having a digital presence. While having a website or social media profile is better than nothing, they often won’t be effective at driving sales if there’s no analytical thinking behind them.

A digital strategy essentially involves using technology as part of a plan to achieve certain business goals. These could be increasing traffic, encouraging conversions, or simply driving sales. The best digital strategies will always be backed up by data and will continue to develop over time to suit the changing needs of your audience. It will help you to redesign processes that aren’t working and can be applied to just about any part of your business.

Different types of digital strategy

If you are looking to delve into developing a digital strategy, here are some different approaches you can consider:

Website marketing strategy:

Often involving a combination of SEO, PPC, CRO, UX and mobile design, content creation, and web development, this strategy works to ensure your business’s website is user-friendly and easy to find through search engines. It’s one of the most common and comprehensive ways of ensuring you are making the most of your online presence by prioritising value and relevance.

What is an SEO strategy?: SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is a big part of enhancing your website for both Google and your customers. It helps you to drive more organic traffic to your website by making pages rank higher and thus easier to find. While keywords are integral to any SEO strategy, you should also think about optimising the backend of your website and implementing a backlink strategy as well.

Backlink strategy: A fundamental part of SEO, a backlink strategy helps you to secure more relevant, high-quality links to your pages from other websites. This could involve reaching out to directories and journalists or collaborating with other businesses.

Domain name marketing strategy: Your domain name is how customers will recognise your business, but a domain name marketing strategy is more than just choosing a memorable word. It involves protecting your business’s identity by creating multiple domain names (e.g. business.com, business.co.uk and business.org) as well as opening microsites for specific campaigns.

Marketing investment strategy: Digital content strategies can be tailored to suit specific industries as well, such as finance and investment. This might involve producing press releases to boost reputation, filming informational videos and creating in-depth guides or newsletters.
But your business doesn’t have to focus on all of this all at once. It’s all about identifying exactly what works best for your company’s needs and building on this over time. Digital strategies aren’t quick fixes, they’re long-term plans that need to be constantly improved and adjusted.

Tracking the results of your digital strategy

To see how successful your digital strategy is, you need to start out knowing what you want it to achieve. These measurable targets are effective ways to monitor whether your plan is working or not.

Keyword Rankings

As part of your SEO strategy, you’ll be targeting specific keywords to drive organic traffic to your website. The goal here is for pages to rank as highly as possible in Google search results, meaning you can monitor your success by tracking keyword rankings over time. It’s easy to do this using the performance tab on Google Search Console, which will show you the average position of your page.

For more in-depth analysis, consider using paid tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs or Moz. These will allow you to really streamline your SEO strategy, offering you more insight into how your content is performing. You’ll need to keep monitoring this data to make sure your pages are still ranking as high as you want them to.

Traffic

Increasing traffic is often the first step in any digital strategy, because if your audience isn’t even visiting your website, then your chance of making sales or generating leads is going to be very low. However, it’s important to bear in mind that traffic alone isn’t the best indicator that your digital strategy is a success. While a high number of visitors looks impressive, if they aren’t engaging with your website, your business won’t be able to grow. Seeing an increase in traffic and not in sales/leads may prompt you to adjust the audience you’re targeting or develop other areas of your website.

Conversions

Once you have a steady stream of traffic, it’s time to encourage those visitors to convert. Tracking conversions doesn’t just mean tracking sales; it can also mean looking at how many visitors filled in a form, subscribed to your newsletter, or created an account. Once you start seeing conversions increase, it’s a good sign that your digital strategy is right on track. Conversions indicate that you’re targeting the right audience in the right stage of the buying cycle.

Engagement

You always want your website visitors to be engaged with your content and, while this can overlap with conversions, it also includes actions like email open rates, click through rates, sharing content, commenting on blogs, and the time your audience spends on a page. Traffic that spends very little time on your website could indicate your pages aren’t relevant, making engagement an important metric to consider.

Return on investment (ROI)

Any digital marketing strategy is going to involve an investment of both time and money, so you need to make sure it was all worth it in the end. Whether you’re working with an agency, consultant or freelancer, calculating ROI can help you decide if the partnership is working for you. It can take a while to see results, no matter how effective your strategy is, but at the end of the day you need to be seeing an increase in sales to make any marketing costs worth your while.

Benefits of having a digital strategy

Now you know what a digital strategy is and how to make sure it’s delivering results, it’s time to really understand why having one is so important. While the right digital strategy can help you to drive traffic and sales, it will also:

Offer direction

A digital strategy helps you move from simply having a web presence to having a purpose. It pushes you to set goals, identify measurable targets and really get to grips with what your content can achieve.

Help you understand your audience

You might think you already know who your audience is, but tracking the success of your website strategy will give you a lot of valuable data about the consumers you should actually be targeting. After a few months or even a year, your understanding of your ideal consumer might have changed completely.

Allow you to gain an advantage over competitors

Whether your competitors have a strategy in place or not, digital marketing can help you stand out from the crowd. Make sure you look at what other businesses are and aren’t doing to deliver the best offering you can.

More efficient use of time and money

When you have a website optimisation strategy in place, you’ll be able to make changes to your online presence according to your plan. This means you’ll be able to put both your time and money into reaching your goals more efficiently rather than guessing what part of your website needs updating next. With a strategy in place, you’ll be more likely to see results and get the most out of your investment.

Refine your digital strategy today

If your digital strategy needs optimising, there’s no better time to start than the present. Whether you’re looking to improve upon an existing website or for advice on a new plan of action, get in touch for a consultation.

From employee training and efficient customer communications to highly effective marketing strategies and the ability to develop new and innovative approaches, the bond between business and technology accentuates commercial success and profitability. But is everything as rosy as it seems? Scratch beneath the surface and you’ll find that this seemingly harmonious relationship is anything but perfect.

It appears that the growth and our subsequent reliance on technology within business comes at a price. The working relationship between commerce and technology is a double-edged sword, as with aggressively implementing new technologies comes a variety of digital transformation risks. And businesses of all sizes are inadvertently exposing themselves to more digital risks than ever before.

As a business hoping to maintain a positive relationship with technology in the hope of driving more growth, it’s important that your organisation quickly identifies and manages these digital risks before your profitability is interrupted. And this is where digital risk management comes in. Digital risk management has to be included in your due diligence for digital assets.

What is Digital Risk Management?

Digital risk management is the implementation of specific processes designed to monitor digital risk channels effectively and ensure that your enterprise is risk-ready, not just for today but for the future. The adoption of these new processes or technologies means you’re taking the steps necessary to reduce digital risk within your enterprise. And as these risks can impact everything from your financial growth to your operations and even your business reputation, it’s vital that you’re committed to a regular digital risk assessment and that this process is carefully managed within your organisation.

What Types of Digital Risks Are Businesses Facing?

When scrutinizing these business dangers, we must recognise the different classifications of digital risk that may be highlighted during a digital risk assessment. It’s worth noting, that all industries from financial and business services to manufacturing and retail are all exposed to some or all of these digital risks. Let’s explore some of these here.

Cyber Security Risks

Regrettably, all businesses with an online presence are exposed to multiple cybersecurity risks. Essentially, hackers and cybercriminals are looking for valuable information and sensitive data that they can use for their own means and benefit. If a cybersecurity risk were to be identified in a digital risk assessment, then your enterprise is at risk of a serious security breach. Something which could not only impact the everyday operations of your business but also permanently damage your reputation.

Compliance Risk

Every business must uphold the laws, regulations and organisational standards expected of them within their chosen industry. To maintain compliance across all these factors, businesses must adhere to all the relevant governing requirements to avert compliance risks within employee behaviour, health and safety, data management and others areas. When businesses are keen to implement new technologies, they could be at risk of failing to comply with these regulatory standards, endangering their reputation and conformity with significant digital transformation risks.

Automation Risk

The introduction of automated practices within daily operations gives businesses the chance to streamline entire departments, or multiple tasks within one role, freeing up more time to focus on other areas and in turn, benefit from economic growth. When identified within digital risk management, automation risk has the potential to create issues with obsolete technology and social disruptions within your business.

Workforce Risk

High employee turnover, skill shortages, employee safety and other issues could all pose a risk to your business growth once digital technologies take hold of your business. A digital risk assessment will highlight these potential problems and give you the insight you need to evaluate and monitor these damaging scenarios.

Third-Party Risk

As businesses begin to grow, their dependence on technology isn’t the only area they need to manage risk. Relying on third parties to complete outsourced tasks such as digital marketing, software development or even accounting and HR services could leave your business vulnerable to sensitive data breaches including employee and customer data, financial accounts and the daily operations of your enterprise.

How Is The Severity of These Risks Assessed?

Now that we recognise and understand the potential digital risks of running a business operation, we must acknowledge the gravity of these risks and turn our attention to assessing their severity. By performing a digital risk assessment and using the results to uphold stringent digital risk management practices, your organisation won’t only survive within a digitised world, it will also have the opportunity to thrive.

Understanding your day-to-day operations and breaking down your business into areas associated with digital risk e.g., third party, cybersecurity, compliance, financial etc, will pinpoint the individual weaknesses of each department giving you the information you need to participate in effective digital risk management solutions. Performing an assessment will highlight the potential impact of these risks on your reputation, your growth and operations, allowing you to determine which of the most severe risks need to be dealt with cautiously and promptly.

Digital Risk Management Solutions

Managing your digital risk means preparing your business for the future and protecting your growth. Developing digital risk strategies will help you stay one step ahead and ensure that your most valuable assets are protected.

Centring your digital management efforts around your business’s most crucial and fundamental operations and participating in an internal audit is a good place to start. Let’s examine some additional digital risk management solutions here.

Implement a GRC Solution

The implementation of a GRC strategy (governance, risk and compliance) is a simple yet effective way to manage the complicity of your business. Investing in a GRC software solution is a positive step towards digital risk management, as businesses can meet all their business objectives whilst consistently measuring how well they are performing within governance, risk and compliance obligations.

Be Wary Of Unwanted Exposure

When your precious business assets such as your customer data, financial information, employee data and business operations are vulnerable, it’s important that you’re monitoring other sources where your business assets could be receiving unwanted exposure as part of your digital risk management solutions.Consider the following sources:

• File sharing sites
• Dark web pages
• Criminal Forums
• Paste sites
• Git repositories
• Social media

Consider a Tactical Approach

Blocking actions such as firewalls, email security, behavioural analytics, anti-malware and data loss prevention allow businesses to place physical barriers around their network to significantly decrease the threat of digital risks.
You could also identify the weak points within your system by taking on a White Hat Hacker approach and having them test the security capabilities of your digitised business.

Consider an Operational Approach

Implementing domain monitoring to ensure your brand and your trademark rights are protected. It’s a simple yet highly effective way to reduce digital risk and maintain a stringent management strategy.

If your business experiences a digital incident, investigate the risk, review your initial approach and contain and manage the risk effectively. This approach will improve your understanding of the risk and ensure you’re developing a well-informed and up-to-date strategy.

Consider a Strategic Approach

Digital risk management should be approached strategically, therefore ensure that digital risk assessment is an integral part of your operations. This tactic gives you a better understanding of the areas of your business that are most at risk, giving you a clearer digital picture and the opportunity to act quickly.

In Conclusion

Now that you’re more familiar with the threat of digital risk, you’ll now be able to develop your own digital risk management strategy and implement it with confidence.

Paying for ads that are ultimately, never seen is a waste of valuable resources and a drain on your precious marketing assets. Thankfully, performance marketing eliminates this frustrating and expensive misspend and allows business owners to have their ads strategically placed across numerous channels, only paying for these ads when they get the desired consumer reaction, such as clicks, impressions, engagements, leads and sales.

When your attractive and eye-catching content is delivered across multiple platforms, consistently assessing performance of marketing channels is a crucial step toward crafting a persistent rich, consumer experience that targets the right viewers who want to know more about your products and services.
But how do we successfully evaluate the functioning of these marketing channels? Let’s explore the key approaches, here.

How Do I Know How Well A Marketing Channel Is Performing?

Knowing how well your marketing channels are performing will highlight their contributions to your revenue. To begin assessing performance of marketing channels start by focusing on the right metrics to analyse how well your channels are performing, and centring on the right KPIs to ensure you’re capturing the right data and receiving a full overview of your marketing channel performance.

Your KPIs

By measuring your success against your chosen KPIs you’ll have a clearer understanding of whether your marketing channels are performing as they should be. Some of the Key Performance Indicators you may want to consider for your assessments include:

• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)
• Conversion Rates

Tracking Your Marketing Channels

Assessing performance of marketing channels means having the right digital tools at your disposal. If you’re assessing multiple campaigns over numerous channels, then crucial data can quickly become skewed and even overlooked. Examining your channel performance with the following tools can ensure there is no confusion over how well a marketing channel is performing.

• Google Analytics
• YouTube Analytics
• Facebook Page Insights
• Email Marketing Tools
• Hootsuite

Once you have determined your data, the overall performance of your marketing channels will ultimately, be seen within your ROI. This could mean an increase in search traffic, sales, and ad engagement.

What Should I Do If a Marketing Channel Underperforms?

If the assessing performance of marketing channels has highlighted failings and poor performance metrics across your multiple campaigns, or within one of your marketing channels, then now is the time to identify these flaws and reevaluate your approach.

Steps to Enhance Your Marketing Channel Performance

Consider these steps to enhance a disappointing marketing channel performance.

• Reconsider Your Choice of Ad Agency: If you’re utilising an Ad agency, the wrong performance marketing group can stifle your company voice and drain your resources with little return. Revaluate your choice of ad agency and focus on building stronger and better relationships that will be reflected in your data.
• Find Your Most Effective Marketing Channel: Are you using the right marketing channel? If your chosen channels don’t reach your target audience or allow you to effectively communicate your company message, then you’re essentially trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Understanding your customers and target market, your budget, and the reach you need are all factors you should consider when sourcing the most effective performance marketing channel.
• Keep Measuring: Failing to recognise the importance of assessing performance on marketing channels is a common mistake that many businesses owners neglect. Not all marketing channels are created equal, therefore consistent measuring of the effectiveness of your chosen channels and your ROI is essential to ensure any underperforming channel, is quickly evaluated.

How Can I Improve A Channel That Is Already Performing Well?

When a channel is already performing well, it’s easy to wonder how to improve upon perfection. However, to continue this positive performance, and to continue to push for results, you must keep your finger on the channel pulse with a proactive and perceptive approach.

Steps to Continue and Enhance Positive Channel Performance

Consider these steps to continue and enhance a channel that is already performing well.

• Focus on Channel Management: Maintain and devote resources to your successful channels to ensure revenue continues to grow.
• Regularly Review Its Performance: Just because your current channel is performing well, doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. While it’s tempting to roll the same marketing strategies out every year, review what you need to replace, diversify or improve upon to continue meeting your KPIs.
• Actively Enhance your Content: Enhancing the visual element of your chosen channels with images and video can increase engagement figures from your target audience.

In Conclusion…

Positive channel performance isn’t static, it’s constantly changing and you’re required to keep one step ahead of its trajectory. Engaging with a consistent, improvement mindset that prioritises testing, ROI scenarios, communication with its partners and formulates successful marketing implementations thanks to highly scrutinised analytics, will help you actively assess the performance of your marketing channels.

Still struggling? Get in touch – our first chat is free! Want to read more? Check out my article on the importance of digital due diligence.

Many enterprises outsource for a variety of reasons whether it’s your preference to have industry experts work on a carefully developed strategy, to improve your ROI and save yourself time or to scale your current marketing strategies. However, one of the most pressing justifications is that managing a business Ad account not only requires an in-depth level of knowledge, but it also becomes incredibly overwhelming for business owners who are juggling other persistent responsibilities. Whether it’s trying to understand the analytics, evaluate the numbers, run reports, or make sense of your latest campaign results, it doesn’t take much for our digital confidence to take a hit.

Handing over these responsibilities to a reputable and reliable Ads agency simply makes sense. But how can you be sure that you, your marketing strategies, and your business are in safe hands? As a business owner, you’ll want total peace of mind, so, let’s explore some straightforward indicators that your Ads agency is doing a good job.

You Can See Changes Are Being Made Every Day in Your Account History

While many business owners turn to outsourcing their Ad accounts to streamline their expenses, having an external agency take care of your marketing is still a significant expenditure that needs to be justified with functional results. Therefore, if your account managers are seemingly sitting on their hands and making very few changes to your dashboard and active campaigns, then alarm bells may start to ring.

Of course, if your current campaigns are getting results, there may not be a lot of account history or activity to explore, however, if you’re seeing minimal activity without positive outcomes, then you may want to raise a few questions. Ideally, your Ad account dashboard will show patterns of optimisation behaviours and actions, such as new ads being created, turned off and on again all within the last 30 days. This testing activity illustrates that your Ads agency is consistently reviewing your campaigns and adjusting them where necessary, all in the hope of getting you the results you need.

Remember, if you’re seeing positive results, less action on your account history is normal, however poor results should highlight more changes and testing action on your dashboard.

You Can Check Your Results at Any Time

Knowing that your Ads are updated regularly and are frequently adjusted for optimisation goals is certainly reassuring for anyone who’s relying on an Ad agency to scale their current marketing strategies. But now, you need to know that your finely tuned ads are getting you the results you need with regular, uninhibited access to your dashboard.

When you have a strong relationship with your Ad agency, access to your historical performance data, visibility of the metrics of your ads and the option to change and tweak your ads are positive signs of a transparent partnership between your business and your chosen Ad agency. Full access to your dashboard and the ability to check results at any time means you’re always in the loop, and you’re able to question the data that is being gathered freely and without resistance.

Any Ad agency that is uncomfortable about sharing your metrics with you, or giving you full access to your ad accounts, is a sign that things might not be going as well as you’d hope.

You Can See Tests Are Being Done in the Account

As we’ve mentioned above, active testing is a strong indication that your Ads agency is doing a good job of managing your Ad account. When testing is being actively carried out, it not only demonstrates that your Ads agency understands the importance of a strong testing strategy, but also that they’re vigorously pushing your business forward and trying to maintain that lead on your competitors.

Failing to run regular tests, means that your Ads agency won’t be able to develop the winning combination for your ad strategy. Gathering feedback from consumer responses, their feedback and their subsequent behaviours gives your Ad agency the data they need to reach your Ad goals, whether you’re highlighting a new product, driving more traffic to your site, pushing an existing product, or building on your brand awareness. So, if they’re not testing, you’re less likely to see the results you want.

A simple check of your campaigns will let you know whether your Ad agency is taking testing seriously and running regular tests within your account. If the testing data is in a code, you’re not familiar with – speak with your agency for clarification.
Remember, if there is no evidence of testing, then alarm bells should ring.

Communication Is Clear & They’re Proactive

Handing over your Ads account to an external agency, doesn’t mean you should lose control of your marketing. Using an Ads agency is more of a collaboration between your enterprise and their experienced teams, which means that strong levels of communication, clarity and contact should come as standard.

If you’re unhappy with the way a campaign is moving, you’ve seen copy and edits to ads that you’re not happy with, then speak up to discuss what could be changed or what their plans for optimisation are. The more information you have the better you’ll understand your own ROI and their specific approach. A productive and successful Ads agency should be more than happy to schedule calls, supply updates and keep you involved (or as much as you wish to be) within your account. Communication should be clear and the levels of productivity on your account should be easy to see.
However, it’s worth remembering that communication goes both ways.

And if you’re making changes to your goals, tweaking your campaigns, or changing your targets, then this should be communicated clearly and as early as possible. Otherwise, your Ads agency is only going to miss the mark.

You Can See the Difference In Results

So, you understand the importance of testing and can see that your Ads agency is incredibly communicative and proactive. However, the best way to know if your Ads agency is doing a good job of managing your Ad account is within the results.

Have you experienced an increase in traffic to your website and a boost in sales? Are the purchase numbers on those specific products rising? These simple signals suggest whether your Ads agency is bringing in the results you need and will highlight the efficacy of your chosen agency.

While the results speak for themselves, and a positive outcome as early as week one is exciting, it’s worth remembering that successful Ad management – including testing and ad edits – can take between 1-3 months to become fully effective. At this time, you should be proactive and explore your Ad dashboard so you can see an accurate representation of how things are progressing. A stronger understanding of your sales numbers, site traffic and your budgets will enhance communication between yourself and your Ad agency, ensuring stronger results and a better relationship.

Now It’s Your Turn…

Recognising the signs of a competent Ad agency, who is successfully managing your Ad account, can prevent you from wasting time with the wrong agency and potentially damaging your brand and success. If you have already outsourced to an Ad agency, consider these points to ensure they’re handling your account effectively.

Need me to take a deeper dive into your account performance? Check out my service for this here. You can also click and read more about how to evaluate a digital marketing agency

From a growth and development perspective, this instinctive approach to budget-cutting has the potential to hinder your development and effectively squander the progress you’ve made as a small business. And cutting away at your marketing budget as a knee-jerk reaction to save costs, could have dire consequences for the future of your enterprise.
As a valuable resource within your business arsenal, failing to budget your marketing strategy appropriately could impact your market share, create difficulty in attracting new customers and place current customer relationships and their loyalty to your brand in jeopardy.

But what if making changes to your budget approach didn’t have to impact your business growth? What if the right approach, did in fact help your business to thrive and improve your overall cost efficiency? It might sound too good to be true, but more businesses than ever are discovering a pragmatic approach to their marketing budget, and instead of cutting away at their finely tuned figures, are searching for ways to optimise it instead.

To ensure that your enterprise continues to tell its story, draw in new clients, and retains a strong following, marketing budget optimisation is the only solution. Let’s explore some channels for optimisation here.

Focus On Marketing to Your Current Customer Needs

When those purse strings need tightening, it’s all too easy to turn your focus onto driving up your customer numbers in the desperate hope of increasing your revenue. Frustratingly, many businesses fail to understand that this approach means neglecting your current client base, which in turn jeopardises loyalty to your brand and could also be a significant blow to your financial survival.

Retaining the clients, you already have is significantly more cost-effective than trying to attract new ones, therefore in terms of marketing budget optimisation, it makes sense to shift your focus onto marketing to your current customer’s needs. Centring your optimised budget onto improving customer satisfaction and a results-driven upselling strategy, will not only keep your revenue up, but it also means those precious clients are less likely to look elsewhere.

Strategies to Examine to Improve Cost Efficiency

With the right training and insight, you’ll be able to increase the AOV (average order value) of your existing client base and prevent them from turning to other companies. In addition, marketing to your current customers’ needs may increase your clientele, thanks to word of mouth recommendations and additional sales revenue. Consider the following strategies to market to your current customers’ needs with a marketing budget optimisation approach.

• Customer follow-ups after sales will continue to build and maintain relationships with current customers and increase your upsell potential. Consider continuing the dialogue around new products and offers
• Keep it personal with personalised customer service and one on one support where needed
• Strip away items that aren’t selling and update your products and services by offering more choice within specifically successful product lines
• Create a loyalty program

Utilise the Data You Have

While it’s tempting to quickly cut away at your marketing approach and rapidly release funds by removing the components that aren’t performing as well as you’d like, scrutinising the valuable data at your fingertips before you make a change to your marketing budget is crucial. A marketing budget optimisation approach means examining the analytical data gathered from your current marketing plans with a fine toothcomb, and using this precious data to understand which areas are meeting your requirements and which are simply, deadweight.

Strategies to Examine to Improve Cost Efficiency

First, explore data provided by your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), including:

• Customer acquisition cost
• Digital Marketing ROI
• Landing Page Conversion Rates
• Social Media Traffic Conversions
• Mobile Traffic Conversions

You’ll also be able to gather valuable data from other sources such as Google Analytics tools, where you’ll get a detailed insight into session durations, pages per session, bounce rate and where your traffic is coming from. Creating an extensive mix of invaluable data that will not only make your marketing potential crystal clear but also highlight the areas that are a drain on your current, limited resources.

The evaluations garnered from this data, can be used to help business owners develop a refreshed marketing approach, retarget campaigns and underline areas of the customer journey that can be improved, giving them the conversion rates, they need to drive their company forward.

Shine a Light on Digital Marketing

We’re living in an increasingly digitised world, and when you refocus your marketing budget with optimisation in mind, your business will be able to thrive within it. Shifting your tired, expensive, and unsuccessful marketing strategies to a digital marketing approach will optimise your budget and increase your ROI, all without jeopardising your business success. Choosing to shine a light on digital marketing is a cost-effective approach to marketing budget optimisation, ensuring you’re making the most of your financial position and utilising your resources proficiently.

Strategies to Examine to Improve Cost Efficiency

An optimised digital marketing approach, ensures more leads, helps to build your brand value, increase your ROI, and is incredibly cost-effective for enterprises looking to increase their revenue whilst maintaining control of the costs associated with marketing. Consider these strategies to improve your cost efficiency and optimise your marketing budget.

• Social media marketing
• Content marketing e.g., blogs, video content, infographics, listicles
• Email marketing
• PPC
• SEO
• Influencer marketing

Analysing your KPIs and data can help determine which approach is best for your enterprise.

Repurpose and Reuse Your Content

Sourcing content and making it as fresh as possible should be an integral part of your marketing budget optimisation strategy. Of course, if companies don’t have the budget to fund a continuous cycle of new content, then it’s not uncommon for small businesses to find their marketing attempts become stagnant and ultimately, fruitless. Optimising your budget doesn’t necessarily mean stripping back on your new content requirements, it means a fresh approach that not only saves you money but also maximises your ROI.

Strategies to Examine to Improve Cost Efficiency

Instead of creating an expensive and time-consuming cycle of creativity, multiple approaches can improve the cost efficiency of your current content.

• Recycle your content and share it across (new) multiple platforms and applications
• Revisit your existing content and update it with the latest information to keep it relevant and engaging for your audience
• Repurpose your blog posts into eye-catching infographics
• If you’ve hosted webinars in the past, upload this event to YouTube, so new customers can enjoy it and current clients can return to it if needed
• Turn old blog posts into helpful guides or FAQ pages

Consider Smart Outsourcing

As a business striving for growth, your goal is to achieve the best ROI possible on your marketing budget. This explains why outsourcing your marketing efforts is now considered a primary element of marketing budget optimisation. In simple terms, hosting an in-house marketing team and all the financial obligations that come with it is considerably more expensive than outsourcing to an agency. While some initial costs are attributed to outsourcing, the benefits to your budget and your marketing strategies are clear.

The benefits of outsourcing are clear

• Businesses will have the experience of industry professionals at their disposal, increasing your competitive edge
• Fully tailored collaborations to match your current marketing and financial requirements with the option to grow
• Increased turnover and production times
• ROI offsets the initial costs of outsourcing
• Project focus means a higher quality outcome of campaigns

Now It’s Your Turn

Marketing budget optimisation allows businesses to maximise their ROI and push the limits of their success, without compromising on their limited finances. Consider your current data, and marketing approach to get started.

Or – if all this seems slightly overwhelming, get in touch. Your initial consultation is free so what do we have to lose from a chat – other than 30 minutes.

That 30 minutes could transform your business… What are you waiting for, get in touch with me today.

This procedure – known as due diligence – guides business owners through the mergers and acquisitions process, bringing clarity to the proceedings with an accurate and informative valuation of the prospective company’s’ assets, its business capabilities and its overall financial performance.
Conducting successful and thorough due diligence (DD) means investigating many different channels, including:

• Digital Due Diligence: An assessment of the digital infrastructure of a business. Notably, systems and data handling, digital compliance, security websites, privacy policies, social media assets & more.
• Administrative Due Diligence: Confirmation of the business structure, such as the number of facilities, occupancy rates, business locations, property leases/ownership, number of employees & more.
• Human Resources Due Diligence: Assessment of total employees including all positions, vacancies, assessment of salaries and bonuses, HR policies regarding annual leave/sick leave, pending legal cases, information regarding employee contracts & more.
• Tax Due Diligence: Tax liabilities will also be assessed. Including copies of all tax-related documents, past or pending tax audits.
• Legal Due Diligence: An assessment of any potential legal risks within the company and analysing these risks so a deal or conclusion can be met.

Only with a detailed and comprehensive due diligence approach, can businesses ascertain the true value of a potential acquisition and have the relevant information they need to advance within the M&A process. However, as these kinds of business endeavours are done with ROI in mind, a full Competitor Analysis must be also drawn and evaluated as part of due diligence practice.

Establishing a thorough and investigative analysis of the competition within the market or your prospective acquisition will uncover multiple findings that are crucial to the overall digital footprint of the business you’re hoping to obtain. And critically, highlight the potential hazards of this complicated and potentially high-risk acquisition. Let’s take a closer look and competitor analysis and due diligence.

Why Is Competitor Analysis an Important Part of Due Diligence?

While it’s important for businesses to undertake competitive analysis routinely, in terms of the M&A process, competitive analysis gives buyers a unique and unabashed view into the current market position of the business in question. Highlighting potential market saturation, the best practices within the industry and any potential gaps in the market that haven’t yet been exploited. Understanding what competition, you’ll be facing and how hard it will be to make an impact gives potential buyers an edge, as they’ll have a unique, impartial perspective of where the company is excelling and where there is room for improvement.
It’s clear that a strong understanding of your competitors is crucial to the due diligence process – especially in terms of your specific acquisition, however, competitor analysis can also give potential buyers a better understanding of the market dynamics of their prospective industry.

What Are the Benefits of a Competitor Analysis Within the Due Diligence Process?

The due diligence process is all about gathering as much information about a prospective business as possible, so you can make an informed decision before going forward. Competitor analysis, is an important cog within this intricate moving machine, providing additional knowledge and insight into how the business is viewed by customers and its target market. Other benefits include:

Revealing Who the Competition Is

A detailed and comprehensive competitor analysis will highlight your potential Direct and Indirect competitors. Your Direct competitors will be offering identical online-based services, while Indirect competition may share the same online traffic as you, which is what you’ll be competing for. You’ll also have a closer look at the digital marketing approach of your competitors and what they offer.

Discover If You’re at A Disadvantage

If sales and revenue are struggling due to a lack of market share, then a detailed competitor analysis could give you the answers you need to ensure a better ROI.

Highlight Areas That Need Improvements

Being stuck at a competitive disadvantage means struggling to keep up with your business rivals. Competitor analysis will emphasize areas that are struggling as well as the changes that need to be implemented to drive future success and growth.

Emphasize Your Edge

Interestingly, your potential acquisition could already have a competitive edge, and a strong analysis will only help you to underpin and strengthen the untapped potential within your prospective market. Giving you the insight, you need to enhance products and services and consequently increase your revenues.

What Features Are Considered to be Essential in a Competitor Analysis?

Collecting thorough and inclusive data on your prospective competitors as part of the due diligence process will create an accurate picture of where your potential acquisition sits within its current market. Understanding where the business in question compares can be done by examining specific features within a competitor analysis. Let’s explore them here.

Their Market Share

Recognising the market share of your competitors will give potential business owners a strong indication of how competitive their prospective market truly is. You’ll be able to see who your strongest competitors really are and even gain an insight into potential trends or declines within the industry.

Their Pricing Policies

Understanding how your competitors are making a profit and analysing how much they’re charging for products and services can give you a strong insight into their entire pricing strategy. Which, moving forward can give your prospective acquisition a competitive edge.

Their Marketing Strategy

The success of any enterprise is often determined by the strength and the influence of a robust marketing strategy. Therefore, analysing the marketing approach of competitors within your future market will highlight the current success of their digital and traditional marketing tactics, including their SEO strength, current campaigns, and the success of other forms of marketing such as print, paid search, social media, display and even broadcasting.

Their Specific Strengths and Weaknesses

A strong competitor analysis will highlight exactly what is making your competitors so successful and why they’re (currently) enjoying such a generous share of the market. Whether they’re particularly effective at raising brand awareness through engaging campaigns and stellar customer service, or they a specific product that customers enjoy, establishing the strengths of your competitors can pinpoint where you need to implement focus and energy.

Likewise, establishing their weaknesses could give the business in question, a chance to make waves within the market and potentially turn the heads of consumers who aren’t having their requirements met. Whether it’s website issues, poor customer service or inadequate products, identifying these vulnerabilities gives your potential business acquisition competitive strength.

Company Culture

It’s easy to think that a competitor analysis would only focus on the numbers and the levels of customer satisfaction. However, in terms of due diligence and inclusivity, a closer look at the company culture of a potential competitor can highlight more than just the type of biscuits they have in the break room.

A competitor with a strong and positive company culture will have no problem attracting a wide range of incredibly talented and driven candidates, making it easier for them to drive their business forward. Gaining an understanding of employee retention rates is also a strong indicator of a business that is employee-focused or one that is struggling to fill its positions.

In Conclusion…

The due diligence process is an essential part of the acquisition process; however, competitor analysis can provide you with a stronger insight into the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and even the prospective threats of your potential business investment.

If all this seems a bit much or you would like to gain a deeper understand on any of the elements discussed, get in touch and let’s arrange an initial chat.

For this reason, best-practice methodologies will emerge and develop organically in relation to each new and unique opportunity to evaluate risk. If you require assistance with business growth opportunities, digital due diligence can help at every stage.

Understanding Digital Due Diligence for Business Growth

Before continuing with an in-depth look at how due diligence can assist in business growth, perhaps a refresher on due diligence is in order.

Here is a short FAQ on digital due diligence:

What is digital due diligence?

Digital due diligence the methodical analysis of business risk. The purpose of digital due diligence is to mitigate risk factors relating to mergers, acquisitions, and internal growth.

What does due diligence involve?

Digital due diligence involves a complete audit of a company’s numbers and business processes. The data is viewed both in the context of time and competitor performance.

Can I perform due diligence using surface-level public information?

Yes. However, professional due diligence involves drilling down on less obvious but highly relevant data, providing more reliable benchmarks in mitigating risk.

Will the same due diligence strategy work for all business growth opportunities?

No. While common areas of due diligence exist (e.g., in-house practices, revenue, profit), industry-specific concerns – and insights – can alter over time with different opportunities.

Do I need “hard” or “soft” due diligence when finding growth opportunities?

You need both. Here’s why:

• “Hard” due diligence takes numbers and data into account, including financial statements, subcontractor relationships, and revenue projections.
• “Soft” due diligence focuses on the human element, including culture, working practices (staff training and performance), and buyer personas (market data).

How Digital Due Diligence Can Find Business Growth Opportunities

You may have come across the phrase “digital native” in relation to your audience. The phrase is used to describe individuals that are familiar with modern technology, including the internet, social media, and mobile devices. Any failure to appreciate the expectations of your digitally native audience can result in disruption during growth.

Digital due diligence is your opportunity to evaluate any proposed expansion plans in terms of factors such as your market readiness and your audience’s likely acceptance of new ventures. Some of the common ways in which strategic digital due diligence can help find business growth opportunities are outlined below.

Market Mapping (what are the data-backed differences between opportunities?)

The systematic analysis of risk will differ significantly between various business growth opportunities. Because types of business growth may include mergers, acquisitions, expanding your current services or extending your product lines, due diligence has been set up in very specific ways to help optimise your modelled conversion backed by data.

Depending on your growth preferences, mapping the market may include exploring elements of due diligence such as geolocation, pricing, staffing availability, engagement projections, the usefulness of emerging technologies, and efficiencies within your current setup. Market mapping tracks the market, and how your brand can minimise risk when expanding.

Brand Equity (& projections for your reputation)

Your brand equity is your current public perception. When exploring new business growth opportunities, how the public perceives your brand can be critical to the effects on your reputation going forward. A statistical analysis of web and social media engagement metrics can reveal how shifts in public perception could help or hinder any growth opportunities.

For example, when Coca-Cola changed the recipe in 1985, the backlash was severe and the company’s reputation was damaged, affecting sales. How does your brand perform on the local, national, and global stage? How can your portfolio expand into mutually supportive areas that will feel like the right fit to your consumer base? Public perception is key.

Marketing Strategies (setup and effectiveness)

Before you make any moves into business growth, a marketing health check should be carried out as part of proper and complete digital due diligence. From mergers and acquisitions to internal expansion options, a similar group of key performance indicators (KPIs) in relation to marketing strategy emerges.

For example, KPIs in relation to marketing strategies may range from a careful analysis of the sales funnel (and overall customer journey), to cost per action, cost per lead, competitor numbers, and ROI. Marketing strategies directly tie in with revenue, which can drive decisions over the true value behind various growth opportunities.

Competitor Analysis (factoring-in any potential disruption)

From specific branding considerations relating to an individual product or service, to a wider appreciation for market trends and competitor movements, tangible returns on your growth investment can be affected by the actions of outside forces. Put simply, the lesson here is never to expand into rocky territory without good reason.

For example, a clothing brand may choose to announce the launch of a new range of ski apparel. Due diligence into competitor analysis could uncover factors such as eagerly anticipated lines from leading competitors or a recent market slump in the popularity of certain shapes or colours of ski masks (in this particular scenario, due diligence could even show whether seasonal conditions for winter sports are expected to be short-lived, helping to drive data-backed decisions to hold-off for a season).

Digital Due Diligence – Your Toolkit for Business Growth Success

Low-quality data results in low-quality decision making. Of course, you might guess your way to sustainable business growth in the short term, but replicable results come from actionable insights gleaned from accurate interpretations of the most relevant data. If you don’t have the confidence you need in making the right business growth decisions, get in touch today.

Your initial consultation is FREE. Find out whether the business growth opportunities you have in mind are the right fit for both your company and your audience. Open to business growth suggestions? Find out how I can help you to target the most suitable – and profitable – expansion ideas. Get in touch today.

Due diligence has necessarily gone through changes to adapt to the challenges of the new global marketplace. As one quick example, there is perhaps now a greater emphasis on providing a deeper and more insightful analysis of how to successfully navigate M&A without folding one company’s operations entirely into the working practices of the other. The aim of M&A is to develop all existing revenue streams – not to merely eliminate a competitor and expand the workforce.

The Pillars of M&A (in Relation to Due Diligence)

Digital due diligence is an essential part of M&A. Here’s why. Many companies undertake either a merger or acquisition in the belief – and hope – that the outcome will naturally include an increase in online visibility, growth in lead generation, and a wider market share.

However, where digital due diligence is not carried out in full, the outcome of your M&A efforts is likely to be far from expected. The reason comes down to a lack of planning around data-driven insights, resulting in not being able to hit the ground running (counterintuitively, your merger or acquisition could end up costing you more time and money where a need to react and develop unforeseen but essential business practices becomes unavoidable).

That is why we must consider the basic pillars of M&A and look at how digital due diligence is changing with the times.

Past Performance

Analysing and reporting on the past performance of a company is a critical step in digital due diligence prior to any merger or acquisition.

In the post-pandemic business world, the usual means of assessing a company’s output, readiness, and adaptability are no longer as valid as they used to be.

Instead, we now need to focus on the decisions and outcomes that helped the company to remain viable when shifting operations to a predominantly digital setup.

• Did the company merely survive the pandemic?
• Are the decisions that helped now slowly unravelling?
• Or is there a robust plan? And how can it tie in with your brand?

Current Business Model & Leadership

Business leaders are best placed to understand all developing issues facing the vendors and consumers that populate a digital ecosystem.

Digital due diligence can provide a deep dive into the current practices of leaders and project how a leader’s value can add to your business.

Conversely, due diligence at this stage could also reveal data on business leaders and their current models that could go against reasoned strategies.

Due diligence tools can also ascertain public perceptions of the target, helping to drive insights over PR requirements (and projected cost-effectiveness of PR).

Is the Acquirer Ready to Become a Corporate Parent?

As a result of pandemic lockdown measures, the business world has moved even more significantly towards online operations than ever before.

That is why digital due diligence now looks ever more critically at the readiness of the acquirer to become a corporate parent.

For example,

• How does your brand rank in digital literacy?
• Could you lead another brand?
• Are the relevant structures in place?
• What would need to change?

If you do not make the necessary preparations, M&A may result in more work for both companies as your practices struggle to accommodate the change.

Readiness to Scale

M&A rarely takes place without the desire to exploit shared resources and scale the resulting joint enterprise in ways that would not have otherwise been possible.

Preparing to scale a brand requires careful analysis of relevant metrics and a thorough understanding of how existing hierarchies must adapt to the challenge.

Acquire or Merge (would a reverse takeover approach work)?

Digital due diligence has evolved to include new ways to ascertain whether your company stands to benefit from a merger with a target brand versus attempting an acquisition.

The process may begin with basic investigations, including:

• Web-traffic analysis & reporting
• Competitor performance over time
• Social engagement (range of metrics)
• Geographic coverage (brand engagement)
• Your capacity to absorb or support the target’s workforce

From the results of these investigations, your brand is better placed to make data-driven decisions over whether a merger or acquisition is more suitable in the current digital climate.

For example, consider the reverse takeover approach. If the results of due diligence reveal that your company is equipped with the capability to allow continued complete autonomy (with support) on behalf of the target business, you may be suited to an acquisition. However, if due diligence were to uncover that your internal readiness is lacking in such a capacity, a merger may be more beneficial for both entities.

Digital Due Diligence in the Modern Era

Due diligence has grown to incorporate all considerations over how mergers and acquisitions can adopt best-practice strategies in the post-pandemic digital workspace.

For more information on whether your brand is ready for M&A, and to begin to understand how data-driven cost-effective preparations can help plug any gaps before moving forwards, get in touch today.

Your initial consultation is FREE – it costs nothing to discover how digital due diligence can help map and nurture your merger or acquisition. Get in touch today.