Unleash Your B2B SaaS Marketing Power with a Brilliant Marketing Audit

Are you struggling to drive demand generation and boost your B2B SaaS marketing performance? A comprehensive marketing audit might be the secret weapon you need. In this blog post, we’ll walk you through the importance of marketing audits, key strategies, and best practices for optimising your digital marketing efforts. Discover how to crush the competition with top-notch digital marketing audit tools, tailor your marketing audit strategy for maximum ROI, and transform your audit findings into winning campaigns. Dive into marketing productivity audits to supercharge your demand generation and SaaS marketing efforts.

Demystifying Marketing Audits: What They Are and Why They Matter

 

Marketing audits empower brands to pinpoint their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and any hurdles within their current marketing programme. Equipped with this valuable insight, they can adjust accordingly and accelerate marketing performance for the long haul. Unsure what content will strike a chord with your target audience? Marketing audits can help you crack that code. Puzzled about tweaking your website and SEO strategy to climb higher on search engine rankings? A marketing audit can lend a hand with that too.

Hubspot’s 2019 State of Inbound Report revealed that “40% of brands consider proving Return on Investment (ROI) of their marketing spends as their top marketing challenge.” Brands consistently strive to ensure that marketing ROI is accomplished. One of the most straightforward ways to expedite this is through a marketing audit.

Bruce Clark, author of The Marketing Audit and Organisational Performance, defined a marketing audit as a “comprehensive, periodic, systematic, and independent examination of a brand’s marketing efforts.”

There are numerous benefits of marketing audits that can apply to your B2B SaaS business:

• Identify areas for improvement – Marketing audits allow brands to measure current performance against targets across all marketing activities. This process swiftly highlights high performing (and under-utilised) initiatives, as well as those that aren’t delivering results.
• Uncover inefficiencies in the marketing strategy – Discover inefficiencies across data, tools, and processes throughout all marketing activities. By meticulously examining the operational approach to marketing efforts, a brand can pinpoint opportunities to streamline and optimise team performance.
• Identify areas where brands can excel and build their strategy – A marketing audit aids brands in realigning their marketing activities with those yielding the highest results, enabling them to achieve targets more effortlessly.
• Set a list of actionable items that can propel a brand’s marketing efforts forward – Often one of the overlooked benefits of marketing audits! The ultimate goal of a marketing audit is to create a roadmap detailing and scheduling how the marketing team will optimise their current marketing mix, tools, and operations. This is crucial to transform insights into action.

These advantages of marketing audits are frequently underestimated. Marketing audit strategies should evaluate every customer touchpoint by examining how elements like calls-to-action, wording, or logo shape can impact conversions. The more you learn from your audits, the more successful your B2B SaaS marketing and demand generation efforts can become.

 

Supercharge Your Marketing Performance with a Strategic Marketing Audit

 

A marketing audit is divided into three key segments. Conducting a comprehensive analysis and evaluation across these areas can genuinely boost your B2B SaaS marketing performance:

Internal audit of marketing functions examples

An internal audit of marketing functions often involves:

Marketing organisation audit – Brands should assess the structure of their marketing team and the division of various responsibilities. The structure should also be checked against best practice to align with the business’s operating model.

Marketing function audit – This focuses on reviewing the core content and messaging of a brand. Marketing function audits analyse and evaluate the product or service, the brand, promotions, and pricing strategy. This analysis also assesses the product’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP) against the competitor set (competitor analysis is also performed as part of this).

Marketing channels audit – A thorough internal audit of marketing functions necessitates evaluating the performance of a brand’s marketing channels. It’s vital to analyse where the business is engaging with potential and existing customers. A marketing channel audit also measures how these channels are performing against competitors and against the brand’s internal goals and KPIs. Examples of channels typically audited include social media, landing pages, blogs, and newsletters, but (depending on the business) they can include offline channels as well.

External marketing environment

Once internal factors are reviewed, brands should also examine external factors influencing their marketing performance.

Task environment audit – A brand should review the current state of the market depending on its industry. Understanding shifts in attitude, outlook, and the needs of their target customers is crucial to maintain relevancy (and avoid disruption).

Macro-environment audit – By evaluating changes in the macro-market, a brand can factor in changes in regulation, geopolitics, economics, demographics, and cultural aspects, which may impact the brand’s marketing performance.

Current marketing strategy

Current marketing strategy is the third pillar of a marketing audit. A brand should evaluate its marketing strategy and productivity to determine which campaigns, processes, and tactics are working. This includes marketing strategy and marketing productivity audits:

Marketing strategy audit – Brands should view the business from a macro perspective. Are they selling to the right audience? Is the product at the right price point? Do their promotions deliver a favourable return on investment? Does the competition offer something comparable yet cheaper?

Marketing productivity audit – Reviews the effectiveness of every channel and campaign by evaluating the cost of each piece of marketing collateral. This allows the brand to gauge how (financial and staff) resources can be adjusted to maximise productivity and return on investment in their demand generation and SAAS marketing efforts.

Digital Marketing Audits: Your Secret Weapon for B2B SaaS Success

 

Now that we have covered the overarching marketing audit, we’ll delve into a more digital-centric approach to performing a marketing audit. A digital marketing audit focuses on the brand’s digital competencies and the effectiveness of its digital presence. A digital audit can help ensure that, even from the start, a brand makes the right decisions in its digital investments and strategy. In a digital marketing audit, there are four main areas that should be analysed:

Online benchmarking and competitor set analysis

By benchmarking its performance against its competitors, a B2B brand can identify areas of under-performance and detect weaknesses in their competitor’s strategy. A brand should benchmark all of its digital KPIs against the competitor set. From the benchmark results, brands can identify opportunities to strengthen their existing approach, ensuring their long-term B2B SaaS marketing success.

Digital Channel audit

Auditing each individual digital channel can help brands identify their ‘lowest hanging fruit’ (and those channels which are taking a disproportionate share of the overall budget as per their performance). Digital channel audits should ideally go deep into platform specifics and analyse best practice against the current approach. Is the brand using the right hashtags and sharing stories on Instagram? Is it tagging blog posts to get featured on Google’s search results as a search snippet?

Audit Digital Content

Auditing the brand’s digital content is about more than just the quality of video or copy. Performing a deep dive across content topics, channel formats, and distribution strategy can enable a brand to optimise their current approach and drive significant improvements in content performance for demand generation. Does the content provide value to the target customer? Is it configured in the right format for a Facebook page? How is content distributed? Does the content align with the brand’s values and aesthetic? Is the content mix diverse (video, photo, social posts, infographics, emails)?

Tooling audit

A tooling audit is the evaluation of a brand’s current marketing technology stack combined with the approach that the team is currently taking with the tech. Based on the brand’s market, target customers, and marketing strategy, the current tools (and the approach) are evaluated. From here, a roadmap is built to optimise the current marketing tech stack and streamline how tools are used to increase marketing performance in B2B SaaS marketing.

Ace Your Digital Marketing Audit: Pro Tips and Best Practices

 

A robust digital marketing audit should include a variety of analysis methodologies and approaches. A few of these are outlined below:

• Quantitative analysis – This is the core of any digital marketing audit. Through the performance metrics available from marketing analytics, a brand should be able to identify what is working and what is not. Some examples of marketing analytics that brands should analyse include Google Analytics data, PPC ads reports, social media metrics, and CRM data reports for improved B2B marketing performance.
• Qualitative analysis – Performing a qualitative analysis involves evaluating the quality of a brand’s current digital marketing initiatives. This might include assessing a site’s layout, imagery, calls to action, video content, user experience, brand messaging, email design, and more. By evaluating and scoring these against best practice (and competitors), a brand can gain a solid understanding of how they can optimise and improve their digital marketing performance.
• Website crawl – A website crawl helps identify any part of the website that is not working. Some things to look out for are missing title tags, poor site load time, broken links, duplicate content, technical errors, missing H1 and page title tags, amongst other things.
• Competitive analysis – By developing competitor intelligence about the strengths and weaknesses of a competitor’s digital strategy, a brand can develop a highly competitive marketing strategy that wins in the market and enhances demand generation.
• Channel-specific tactics – The current tactics should be evaluated against the latest features and functionality available on each platform to ensure that the brand is maximising the potential of each of its channels. A set of recommended tactics should ideally accompany a digital marketing audit to ensure that the brand is using the most up-to-date tactics.
• Recommendations and strategy – A full set of recommendations should accompany a digital marketing audit. These should outline a strategy and a roadmap that turns those recommendations into a project which empowers the marketing team to optimise its current approach for SAAS marketing success.
• Roadmap for the next 24 months – A high-level, strategic timeline should be prepared to help brands plan where they want to be in the next two years. The timeline should identify when and where brands should make crucial investments, such as paid media or website redesign.
• Key Performance Indicators (KPI) – An audit must include a review of the brand’s KPIs, as well as a roadmap for the brand to achieve its KPIs, ensuring continuous improvement in marketing productivity.

Top-notch Digital Marketing Audit Tools to Crush the Competition and Boost Demand Generation

 

In the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, staying ahead of the competition is crucial for achieving success in B2B marketing and SAAS marketing. There are numerous tools and frameworks available for performing digital audits to optimise your marketing strategy. Here are some key tools that we recommend for conducting a comprehensive digital marketing audit:

1. SEMrush – SEMrush is a versatile and powerful tool that can help uncover insights about search performance. It allows brands to evaluate their performance, their competitor’s performance, and identify the right keywords that will drive their target customers to their website. By conducting a thorough marketing audit strategy, businesses can optimise their keyword selection to improve organic search results and enhance demand generation.
2. Google Analytics – Google Analytics provides a wealth of metrics that can help brands understand their digital marketing program’s performance. Some of the information it can yield includes bounce rate, user flow, device category, demographics, referral traffic, content drill-down, and the most popular topics of the week. With this data, businesses can make informed decisions on how to improve their marketing productivity audit and enhance overall marketing performance.
3. Social Media Networks – Social networking platforms like Facebook Page Insights, Twitter Analytics, and LinkedIn Analytics can help a brand understand who is engaging with a company’s page and what content resonates best with the audience. By analysing social media metrics, businesses can fine-tune their content strategy to better align with their target audience and improve overall engagement.
4. Ahrefs – Ahrefs is a powerful SEO tool that enables brands to analyse their backlink profile, monitor keyword rankings, and uncover content gaps. This information can be invaluable for brands looking to improve their search engine visibility and create a more effective content strategy.
5. SpyFu – SpyFu is a competitive intelligence tool that allows brands to gain insights into their competitors’ most profitable keywords and ads for both paid and organic search. This information can help businesses uncover new opportunities and refine their marketing audit strategy to outperform the competition.
6. Moz – Moz offers a suite of SEO tools that can help brands improve their search engine rankings, analyse their backlink profile, and optimise their on-page SEO. By leveraging Moz’s tools, businesses can gain a competitive edge in the digital marketing landscape and boost their marketing performance.
7. Hotjar – Hotjar is a user experience and behaviour analytics tool that helps brands understand how visitors interact with their website. By using heatmaps, session recordings, and conversion funnel analysis, businesses can identify areas for improvement and optimise their website for better user experience and increased conversions.
8. Mailchimp – Mailchimp is an email marketing platform that allows brands to track the performance of their email campaigns, segment their audience, and personalise their messaging. By leveraging Mailchimp’s analytics and reporting features, businesses can optimise their email marketing efforts for better open rates, click-through rates, and conversions.
9. Ubersuggest – Ubersuggest is a keyword research tool that helps brands discover new keyword ideas, analyse search volume and competition, and identify content opportunities. By incorporating Ubersuggest into their digital marketing audit, businesses can improve their organic search strategy and generate more targeted traffic to their website.
10. HubSpot – HubSpot is an all-in-one inbound marketing, sales, and customer service platform that provides brands with the tools and insights they need to optimise their digital marketing efforts. By utilising HubSpot’s comprehensive suite of tools, businesses can streamline their marketing processes, boost demand generation, and improve overall marketing performance.

Maximising ROI: Tailoring Your Marketing Audit Strategy for B2B Company Success

 

Achieving maximum ROI in B2B SaaS marketing requires a tailored marketing audit strategy that specifically addresses the unique challenges and opportunities in the industry. By customising your approach, you can drive demand generation and optimise your marketing investments.

1. Focus on the customer journey: A recent Gartner study revealed that B2B buyers spend only 17% of their time meeting with potential suppliers, with the majority of their research done independently online. Therefore, a digital marketing audit should evaluate the effectiveness of your online content and touchpoints to ensure they are aligned with your target audience’s needs and preferences.
2. Emphasise the importance of lead nurturing: According to a Forrester Research report, companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost. Your marketing audit strategy should assess your lead nurturing efforts, including email campaigns, content marketing, and remarketing initiatives, to identify areas for improvement and opportunities to drive more conversions.
3. Track and optimise your key performance indicators (KPIs) for customer acquisition cost (CAC) and customer lifetime value (CLTV): A Pacific Crest Securities survey found that a healthy B2B SaaS CLTV:CAC ratio should be at least 3:1. By monitoring these KPIs and adjusting your marketing strategy accordingly, you can ensure the long-term success of your B2B SaaS marketing efforts.

From Insight to Action: Transforming Your Digital Marketing Audit Findings into Winning Campaigns

Turning insights from your digital marketing audit into successful B2B SaaS campaigns requires a strategic approach that leverages data-driven decision-making and continuous improvement. Here are four steps to transform your audit findings into winning campaigns:

1. Prioritise actionable insights: Begin by identifying the most significant opportunities for improvement discovered during your marketing audit. Focus on areas with the highest potential for ROI, such as underperforming channels, content gaps, or untapped markets. According to a McKinsey study, B2B companies that use data-driven decision-making achieve a 6% higher profit margin than their competitors.
2. Develop a data-backed strategy: Use your audit findings to create a comprehensive marketing strategy that addresses your target audience’s needs and preferences. Incorporate industry best practices and leverage data from reputable sources like Forrester Research or Gartner to inform your campaign tactics and messaging.
3. Test and optimise: Launch your campaigns with a testing mindset, using A/B or multivariate testing to identify the most effective elements. According to a study by Harvard Business Review, companies that adopt a test-and-learn approach experience a 27% increase in marketing ROI.
4. Monitor progress and iterate: Continuously track your campaign performance against your KPIs and adjust your strategy accordingly. According to a report by Adobe, companies that are “data-driven” are 131% more likely to achieve their revenue goals. Regularly conduct marketing audits to identify new opportunities for improvement and ensure your campaigns remain aligned with your target audience and market trends.

Marketing Productivity Audits: Supercharging Your B2B Demand Generation and SaaS Marketing Efforts

 

A marketing productivity audit is a specialised approach that focuses on streamlining and optimising B2B SaaS marketing processes to drive demand generation and improve overall performance. Here’s how a marketing productivity audit can empower your organisation:

• Identify inefficiencies and bottlenecks: Assess your current marketing workflows and pinpoint areas where resources may be underutilised or wasted. A report from The Aberdeen Group reveals that top-performing companies are 36% more likely to optimise their marketing processes.
• Evaluate marketing technology stack: Review your marketing tools and platforms to ensure they’re integrated and effectively supporting your marketing efforts. According to Gartner, marketing leaders who successfully manage their technology stack can achieve a 25% increase in marketing efficiency.
• Implement automation and data-driven strategies: Introduce automation to streamline repetitive tasks, and adopt data-driven strategies for more informed decision-making. A study by McKinsey indicates that companies that automate their marketing processes can see a 15% increase in marketing productivity.

B2B SaaS Examples of Winning Marketing Audit Strategies

 

Freshworks’ Stellar Digital Marketing Audit Success
Freshworks, a leading SaaS customer engagement platform, conducted a comprehensive digital marketing audit that identified opportunities for improvement in their content strategy. By optimizing SEO for high-traffic keywords and revamping their blog, Freshworks achieved a 60% increase in organic traffic and significantly boosted demand generation.

Intercom’s Impressive Marketing Audit Turnaround
Intercom, the popular business messaging platform, implemented a marketing audit strategy that emphasized B2B marketing and audience targeting. By analyzing user behavior and refining their messaging, Intercom achieved a 35% increase in user engagement and drove substantial growth in their customer base.

Trello’s Marketing Productivity Audit Triumph
Trello, the renowned project management SaaS, leveraged a marketing productivity audit to streamline their marketing efforts. They identified gaps in their marketing campaigns and optimized their demand generation strategies. As a result, Trello increased their lead generation by 45% and significantly improved their marketing ROI.