How to Complete a 2023 Audit
2024 is officially here! Many of us are just getting back to the office after a little time off with friends and family. As we get back into the groove of things and begin to set goals for 2024, it’s important to reflect on what happened in 2023. Reviewing performance in 2023 can help start the new year off right.
Knowing what works and doesn’t work is essential to continue on a path to success. The best way to do this is by putting together a complete audit of all marketing activities in 2023. Read on to learn what should be included and what metrics to look out for.
What to Review
Organic Content
The first thing to review is content. When thinking about content, be sure to consider all your platforms. Do you have social media channels? What about a website? Marketing collateral? Something else? Any and every platform should be considered. For now, only consider organic channels, we’ll talk about paid in the next section.
Once you have all your platforms organized, consider what types of content you put out on each platform. For example, on our LinkedIn page, we leveraged a variety of content types, such as short-from video, carousels, static posts, and text-based posts. We also have a variety of post-types on Instagram and put out case studies and blogs on our website. Knowing what kind of content was put out in 2023 will help us to analyze when we get to the next part of the audit process.
Paid Campaigns
In addition to organic content, it’s also important to look at any paid campaigns you ran in 2023. Whether you ran paid social campaigns, digital display ads, print ads or something else, be sure you include all types of paid campaigns.
This past year, we ran paid LinkedIn ads for our Marketing VIP Day and Social Media VIP Day. Each of these campaigns had different ad types (video, carousel, and static). Therefore, it’s important that when we do our 2023 audit, we consider each of these ad types and how the format affected the campaign. We also tracked important metrics such as CPC, CPM, spend, and more. We’ll go into more detail about what metrics to look at in the next section.
Activities
Consider other activities you did in 2023. Did you host any team parties? What about client events? Did you attend any conferences? All of these should be considered when putting together your 2023 audit.
At RCM, we had a couple of team events and attended a couple of conferences in 2023. So, you may be wondering, how does someone audit the performance of these types of activities? Well, it isn’t quite as simple as looking at metrics in LinkedIn Campaign Manager. In our case, for these types of events, we tried to get as detailed feedback as possible, since these types of activities are harder to track quantitatively than content and campaigns. We’ll go into more detail on how to measure performance for these types of activities in the next section.
How to Review
Organic Content Performance
When putting together your 2023 organic content audit, it’s important to consider the following for each channel (for social media, consider each platform individually):
Audience analytics throughout the year - this includes the age, gender, and any other demographic or psychographic information the social media platform, website analytics, etc. will give you. Audience analytics can help to make broad conclusions about your audience that can help tailor future content. For example, if your audience is primarily women in their 20’s, your content may look a little different than if your audience is primarily men in their 60’s.
Changes in followers, reach, and profile visits throughout the year - these metrics help to determine how many eyes are on your organic content throughout the year. These metrics can also be useful to determine how engaged your audience was in your content throughout the year. For example, if you gained 200 followers in April but only 70 in May, it can be an indication that something was really resonating in April, or had less of an impact in May. To take a deeper look at this, it’s important to look at other metrics as well (mentioned below).
Type of post performance throughout the year - remember when we said to keep track of the type of content posted throughout the year? Now it’s time to consider how each of these content types performed throughout the year. Did videos get more impressions than static posts? Did carousels have higher engagement than videos? Did this remain the same throughout the year? What about blogs on your website versus other website content? These are all questions to consider when putting together this part of your audit, since it will help determine the types of content to prioritize in 2024.
Changes in engagement metrics throughout the year - although metrics such as reach and impressions are very important, engagement metrics can offer better insight into how your content is actually being received. For this part of the audit, it’s important to look at metrics such as saves, comments, likes, and more. How did these metrics change throughout the year? In terms of comments, it's important not to just look at the number of comments on each post, but also the content of the comment. Is it positive or negative? Is it a statement or a question? Did a conversion start in the comment section in one of your posts? These are all important considerations to determine which types of posts encouraged the most positive engagement.
Top-performing posts of the year - for this part of the audit, pick 3-5 of the top-performing posts of the year. To determine which posts to include, consider engagement and reach metrics. Then, consider why these posts did so well. Did it feature team members? Was there a particular tone that was different from other posts? Whatever it is, keep this in mind for 2024.
Top-performing hashtags of the year - consider the hashtags you used in social media communications throughout the year, were there a few that seemed to help boost post visibility? Did you jump on any trending hashtags? Consider which hashtags elevated your performance in 2023 and make note of them for use in 2024.
Ad Campaign Performance
Depending on the types of paid campaigns you ran in 2023, the audit could look very different from the one we’ve outlined below. For the purposes of this blog, we will focus on social media ads. However, if your team wants more insights regarding audits for other types of campaigns, book a call with a member of our team and we’ll happily walk through the process that’s right for your situation.
For social media ads, the template for your social audit should look similar to the organic social media audit mentioned above. However, there are a fewother very important pieces to consider:
Spend throughout the year - how much did you spend on your paid ads? Did that spend fluctuate throughout the year? It’s important to track spending patterns in order to determine appropriate budgets for 2024.
Targeting - another difference between organic and paid content is that you have more control over who sees your content when you pay for it. Who did you target this year? Did your targeting change throughout the year? If so, it’s important to look at the metrics mentioned in the organic section (as well as the ones mentioned in this section) in order to determine the optimal target audience for your paid ads.
Other relevant metrics in line with your goal - what was the goal of your paid social campaign? Was it leads? Website visits? Something else? Whatever it was, it’s important that you consider metrics that will help you determine campaign performance in relation to your goal. For example, if your goal was leads or sales, consider how many leads and/or sales you received throughout the year and how that fluctuated with changes in spend. On the other hand, if your goal was website visits (which was our goal for the LinkedIn ads we mentioned earlier), it’s more important to consider metrics like CPC (cost-per-click) and CPM (cost per 1000 impressions).
Other Activities Performance
Activities such as team events and conferences aren’t always as obvious to audit. However, even though these analytics may not be as cut and dry as the others, it doesn’t mean they are any less valuable.
So, how do you audit? A great first step is to get as much feedback as possible. For example, if you host a team event, ask team members for feedback on the event. If you’re worried about feedback being honest, try an anonymous form. Use this qualitative feedback to determine the best way to connect with team members in 2024.
For conferences on the other hand, there is a little bit more structure. First and foremost, it’s important to consider what your goals were for each conference. Was it to get a certain number of leads? A certain number of booth attendees? Something else? Keep these goals in mind when doing your evaluation. Let’s say your goal was to get a certain number of leads. It’s also important to consider the quality of each lead. Is this person or company nearly ready to make a purchase? Or are they just interested in keeping in touch? Evaluating the quality of each lead will be hugely important in determining the success of the conference. It’s also important to get feedback from multiple sources. For example, if you had a booth at a conference and you want to know how well received it was by attendees, you could ask attendees to fill out a short survey (usually you’ll have to give them something small in return), but it also may be worth asking other sponsors or event staff. You can also try posting your set-up to social media and add a poll to see what followers think!
Take the Next Step
Now that you’ve analyzed your 2023 performance, don’t just stop there! Consider what these analytics mean. This will help your team determine the best way to optimize performance in 2024. Goals for this coming year should be based, at least in part, on 2023’s performance. Keep doing what works and build on it if you can. If you add a blog to your website every month and your followers love it, keep doing that. Maybe even up the frequency if your capacity allows.
Completing an audit is so much easier with a template! We’d be happy to share ours, just sign up here. Of course, if you need a little more assistance with your audit and optimizing for the future, our team is always here to help. Book a call with a member of our team to get started.
Source:
https://www.linkedin.com/advice/1/how-do-you-measure-analyze-your-conference