If I took over your digital marketing tomorrow, these are the first 5 things I’d check.

If I took over your digital marketing tomorrow these are the first 5 things I’d check, and perhaps oddly I wouldn’t start by suggesting you do any more marketing.

In fact I wouldn’t immediately recommend a new website, increase your Google Ads budget or telling you to start posting new content every day. I’d work out what you’ve already got, what’s working and where you might be wasting money.

First out the gates is can the people who want your products or services actually find you? I’d search Google for the things a genuine customer might type in, look at who appears above you and see how visible you are across search, Maps and increasingly AI. There’s not much point having the best website, brand or messaging in your industry if the right people never see it.

Then I’d look at what happens when somebody does find you. The big question here is do they trust you? By default we like to think customers carefully compare experience, accreditations and specifications. In reality, as customers we make remarkably quick judgements. Your website, reviews, photographs, case studies and even how recently things have been updated all send tiny little micro signals about the business behind them.

I’d try to become a customer. I’d pick up my phone, land on your website and see how easy you’ve made it to take the next step. Can I immediately understand what you do? Is the phone number obvious? Does the enquiry form ask for my shoe size and pets name before I’m allowed to speak to someone? do you even have a phone number visible or are you trying to push everyone into a 'you can only use the contact form' shaped hole. Businesses spend thousands getting people onto websites and I'm constantly surprised how they then make it surprisingly difficult for them to become customers.

Only now I'd look at the numbers. Nothing fancy. I’d simply want to know where your last 10/25/50/100 enquiries came from, how your best customers are gained and roughly what you’re paying to acquire them. Before you spend another pound, I’d want to know what the pounds you’re already spending are doing.

Finally, I’d look for leaks. Maybe you’re paying Google for traffic via ads but sending it to a poor page. Maybe your only a handful of clicks aways from configuring your ads campaigns properly. Perhaps your content ranks brilliantly but nobody actually enquires. Maybe good leads come in but then it takes three days for them to get a response. And maybe, just maybe, the exact thing you want your visitors to do on your home page is the exact thing you're missing.

Across all of this the natural question is usually, “What else should we be doing?” but I think a far better question is, “Where can we improve, what can we optimise and where are we already losing money?”

Sometimes (actually most of the time) you don’t actually need 'more' marketing. You just need to review, improve and optimise what you’ve already got to work properly.

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Ollie