285. Your Mid-Year Marketing Audit Explained

You're listening to the Stop Scrolling, Start Scaling podcast, a show for founders who want the results-driven digital marketing strategies that only the experts know. I'm Emma Tesler, founder of 95 Media, a woman-owned and operated agency trusted by founders across the country to turn content into conversions. If you're ready to grow a loyal audience, attract more of the right clients, and make your content work harder, you are in the right place. Let's dive in.

We are more than halfway through the year and there is no better time than right now to begin auditing your marketing. You probably started the year with some grand plans, some big ideas, and started implementing them but may have never really checked how they have been performing for you along the way. So today we are going to answer three really simple questions about your marketing. These are the exact questions that we actually go through every single quarter with our social media management clients so that we can really see how you're progressing in the year and ensure that the rest of the year is off to flying colors for you.

This is so incredibly necessary to ensure that you are entering the second half of the year strong and know where you need to focus your energy, your time, your resources in order to see the best numbers you can before the end of the year rolls around. So let's go ahead and get into the very first question. As we go through these, I'm also going to share why these questions are so important because questions are great. Diving into the data is great.

But if you don't see the impact and understand the why behind diving into these numbers, it's likely that you never will. If you are someone who has never really taken the time to look at your data, to deep dive into your analytics, my hope is that this episode changes that for you because your numbers are incredibly important. Remember, your data drives decisions and good decisions make more dollars. So you really have to start with the data in order to get your revenue up and progressing over the rest of the year.

The first question to ask yourself in this little mid-year audit is which results were you actually trying to create? Now, in the 95 media method, it's a four-part process. It's very cyclical. So we're always going to go back, start over, go through the end.

Let me walk you through what that is because it's going to make this question make a lot more sense. The 95 media method has four parts. And the very first part is your goals. This is the process that we apply to everything that we do at 95.

So trust me when I say it is extremely valuable. You have to start everything with a deep understanding of where you want to go. I picture it as if you're going to buy a plane ticket, but you don't know where you're going, that would be a little silly. You know where you're going when you have the plane ticket.

Or when you get in the car, what's your destination? You have to know the end game before you put your foot on the gas, right? You can't execute before you know where you want to go. So you have to have understanding of your goals.

Then based on your goals, step number two of the 95-meaning method is your strategy. Your strategy is how you're going to get there. Are you going to get on an airplane? Are you going to drive your car?

Are you going to book an Uber? Are you going to walk? The how is your strategy. And then finally, step number three is execution.

This is where you start to actually start the drive. You buckle your seatbelt on the plane. You put some gas in the car, right? This is you're executing, you're starting the journey, and you're bringing it to life.

And then last step of the 95 Media Method is your data. Your data is going to tell you how successful your execution has been. With the data in mind, you then go back to your strategy and you adjust accordingly. You adjust the strategy to align with what the numbers are saying to you so that you can then execute again and see how you're improving along the way.

Why am I telling you all of this? First of all, the 95 Media Method is great for you to know. You can apply it to anything that you do. But I'm also telling it to you because, as I mentioned, the very first question to ask yourself in this audit is, which results were you actually trying to create?

Meaning, what were your goals? We're going back to step number one of the 95 Media Method. What were your goals? because it's so easy as the year goes on, as you get distracted, as things happen, that you forget where you were actually headed.

You might think oh my engagement is down or I feel like no one seeing my content But really what was your goal here Did you want more leads Did you want better brand awareness Did you want more website traffic You can determine if something is working if you've never defined success. So if you didn't set goals to begin with, this audit, any audit, is going to be extremely hard to gauge. But there's no time like the present. So we're going to start right here today.

If you did set goals, you need to make sure that you have the metrics that you were aiming for accessible to you. Pull up your CRM data, your website analytics, your foot traffic numbers, the data from Instagram. You will need that data to confidently say whether or not you reached your goal. Marketing can be successful.

It's possible that you hit your goal even if a vanity metric like your followers or your like count is down. It's also possible that your goal was unsuccessful even if your engagement was really high or your website traffic was really high. Say your goal at the beginning of this year was to get more inquiries on your website. Well, the metric that you'd be looking for on Instagram is how many people, how many website taps did you generate from your Instagram?

Because those are people who are going over to your website, landing on your contact page, and filling out your inquiry form. However, your website taps on Instagram could look really high, and then your inquiry form submissions could be really low on your website. That means that there's likely a disconnect between the experience people are having on Instagram with you and the experience that they're having on your inquiry page. That means that it's something to address on your website.

But you would never know this information. You would never have clarity on this issue if you don't look at your numbers or you don't look at all your numbers. Because you could be looking at your Instagram data and your website taps are really high and be like, oh, great, we're right on track. But then you look at your inquiry numbers and they're rather low.

That's why having all the data in front of you is so important. But remember, you have to start with what results were you trying to create? the last step in this first question what results were was i actually trying to create here is to make sure that your goal is still your goal that sounds so simple but it's so true okay let me back up in the 95 media method i mentioned it's a very cyclical process and i also talked about how utilizing the data you go back and you adjust your strategy which then impacts how you execute.

But I didn't talk about how your goals are also cyclical. Your goals as a company are hopefully going to change over time. Your goals as a human are going to change the way that your company grows, what your offers are. All these things are always in flux in business.

So your goals with regards to your marketing should likely change throughout the year. This is a great time to re-evaluate if the goal that you set in January is still your goal now. This is applicable any time of the year. But think about it.

Are our offers still the same? Are the target audience groups that we're trying to reach still the same? Is the metric that we're most clearly tracking still the same? These are all questions because if your goal is not the same, that's the very first thing to update in your marketing strategy and really understand about your audit because it's going to impact everything else.

So make sure that your goal is accurate and that you are clearly accomplishing said goal. Did you know that 76% of consumers have purchased something they saw on social media in the past year? Well, there may be a way that your brand can benefit from this massive shift in consumer behavior. Over the past few years, having a social media presence for your brand has gone from nice to have to absolutely necessary.

In fact, a recent study shows that while 81% of consumers visited a traditional search engine in the last month, 94% used social media to search for what they needed. Finally, posting consistent content on social media will make you more visible online. Beautiful, high-quality content is like a mouth-watering dish in a restaurant window. People can't help but order.

Picture this. I can see you now. You open your inbox, and instead of your typical spam emails, you see three inquiries from dream clients. In their emails, they all mention how obsessed they are with your Instagram content and immediately knew that you were the brand they needed to hire.

At 95 Media, that is what we do best. If you're ready to get more visible, generate new leads from your content, and enjoy social media again, we are the team for you. Our social media management services will take you from worn out to winning without adding any more work to your plate To get this kind of white glove support and inquire about working with our team at 95 Media fill out the application in the show notes and we will be in touch. We can't wait to work with you.

Now, the second question to ask yourself in this audit is one that you might not expect. It really is. It's one you might not expect. And that is what is not working?

What is not working? This is going to call for some really big honesty with ourselves. This is just as, if not more, if not more important than knowing what is working. It's really easy to know what is working because they're like your standout metrics.

They'll show up at the top. They're going to get you're really excited, your team is going to talk about them. But what is not working sometimes is the thing that no one wants to talk about and you maybe don't even want to acknowledge. So some questions to ask here.

I have three questions that you can go through to dig into what is just not working. And when I say this also, just to be clear, it's not always what's the content that flopped. It's a lot bigger than that. First question, what have you invested significant time into with little return?

What has been like a time suck for you? Number two, what channels are draining energy and resources and not giving you that ROI? And number three, what marketing activities feel busy but haven't really created momentum for you? When you answer these questions and you dig into honesty around these topics, what you're going to find is that you'll be really clear on which platforms you may be looking to deprioritize for the rest of the year.

For example, if you're posting on Pinterest, but Pinterest is just not actually sending, your pins are not actually sending people to your website, that may be a platform to deprioritize. You'll also be clear on strategies that you'll need to refine. If something is requiring a lot of time, but not getting in front of the right people to drive the results you're looking for, you need a new strategy. You need to figure out what kind of support you need to make your time reduce and the impact increase.

And then you're also going to really know what activities that you'll want to eliminate entirely. Sometimes it is a piece of the pie that you never really considered before because you weren't clear on what's not working. You were just really focused on what is working. But sometimes the very best growth comes from stopping things, not adding more.

This is such a great time to adjust your course of action if something isn't panning out the way that you thought it would. There is no shame, no shame in knowing what's not working. In fact, you will be 10 steps ahead of your competition when they realize what's not working a year from now. It is so much better to know what's not working now and adjust it quickly.

Now, the very last question to ask yourself in this audit is what needs more investment? What needs more investment? Instead of asking, what should I try next? Think about asking yourself, what already works that deserves more resources?

So the second question is, what is not working? The third question is, what is working that I can invest more in? I'm a really big fan of not continuing to add more to your plate, but to go deeper. So you're going deeper, not wider.

When you think about how a plant grows, oftentimes they're not spreading out width-wise. They're growing deeper roots. And that's exactly what you need to be doing with your marketing as well. You need to deepen your roots, strengthen your roots in what is working well and go deeper rather than spread yourself so thin wide.

Plants don't go wide because their roots would be so shallow. They need deep roots to continue growing really tall and big up top, right? This is something I love because when you add something new, you're spreading yourself thin. But why would you do that when you have a machine in front of you that's already working?

In my opinion, go harder in the thing that is already working and just put your blinders on. Put efforts into making what is already working bigger rather than spreading your resources thin on new initiatives. We're all really strapped for resources when you look at it from the big picture. So a few things that you can look at.

If referrals are working for you and you getting a lot of referral business think about we creating a referral strategy These are really great incentives for current clients to create a win situation for both them and you Never be afraid to reward your current clients or customers for sending people who trust them your way. In fact, just this morning, I sent out a referral bonus to a current client of ours who referred a new client who's starting with us next week. And it's the joy of my life to pay our clients to send new clients to us.

And our referral system is the reason or part of the reason that this is happening. It's not the reason that they're sending people that they know and love and trust our way. They're doing that because they've seen great results and they've had a great experience. But it's just an added bonus for them.

When I email our clients about the referral program that we have, it keeps it top of mind for them. And they're always thinking, who else can I send? Because I love working with 95 Media and I want to make sure that my friends who also need the service are getting the best of the best by working with them as well. Another example of going deeper in what's already working is if your email marketing is converting, consider how can you grow that list faster?

I would recommend you utilize your social media so you create or you use better calls to actions and links in your Instagram stories at least two to three times per week. This is such a great way to transfer your social media audience to your email list. Because again, remember when you think about it, your email list is the only list that you own. You do not own your social media.

You want to build your social media audience ultimately to get them off of the platform. So consider how can you grow your email list. Another example is if Instagram is driving leads for you. You're getting leads, you're getting inquiries, amazing.

Invest in better content. Go deeper in the content that you're already creating. The way this could look like for you is you could work with someone in person who can help you plan, film, and edit really great content. If, for example, we do this at 95 Media and it just makes our clients' lives so much easier.

They know what's working, they know how to create great content, and they have a support system. They're not doing it on their own, they're not second-guessing themselves and they can batch it out really quickly. The absolute fastest path to growth is often just doubling down on your proven wins. So to recap all of this, firstly, you want to make sure that your goals are still your goals and that you know what has been achieved so far.

Secondly, you want to know what is not working. And lastly, what is working so that you can go even deeper on those fronts. This goal of a mid-year audit is really to not judge yourself, not to look at what's gone wrong. It really is to make better decisions for the second half of the year.

You don't have to be doing the most with your marketing to grow the fastest. Honestly, just paying attention to the data and knowing your numbers well will do so much more for you in the long run. That is the number one thing that I hope you take away from this audit today. Audits are truly one of my favorite things.

And in fact, we do them for every single social media management client we work with during onboarding, quarterly, monthly, all of the things. Now, I'm actually able to offer this to you as well in our marketing growth blueprint. This is one of the very few ways that we can work together and ensure that you're not only getting an insanely deep audit on your marketing, your website, and your entire customer journey, because we go deep, but also laying out a roadmap in front of you so that you know the exact strategy that you need to follow in order to see results today.

The Marketing Growth Blueprint is an absolute game changer, especially this time of year, mid-year, to know what path you need to follow for the rest of the year. Chef's kiss. It is the perfect next step from our chat here today, and I cannot wait for you to grab one for yourself. So the link to get a Marketing Growth Blueprint is in the show notes below.

Again, this is the Marketing Growth Blueprint and it is the perfect step for you after today's episode. With that, I will see you on the next one, but make sure to grab your Marketing Growth Blueprint in the show notes below. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you found this episode helpful, it would mean the world if you would leave a rave review on Apple Podcasts.

And while you're at it, don't forget to hit the subscribe button so you never miss an episode again. Finally, if you're interested in working with us, please visit 95media.co or send us a DM on Instagram.