Auditing your digital marketing platforms

The digital space is fiercely competitive, and the membership sector is no exception, which is why the Association Plus digital marketing team have put together this checklist for performing regular audits on your digital marketing platforms, to maximise your chances of making meaningful connections online.

What are my owned assets?

• Your owned assets will be the main way that your members (current or potential) see or interact with your organisation. These will include:
• Your website, blog and any mobile apps
• Your social media profiles and Business pages on search engines and directories
• Your marketing collateral, promotional material, content, creative, ads and videos.

Your website and blog

Your website/blog (and possibly your mobile app) are likely to be the main touchpoints with your customers, and for many businesses this will be the biggest source of online leads and sales. Therefore, it is essential that you invest in the quality and performance of these digital assets; as this is likely to improve your visibility in the search engines and will help you achieve higher levels of digital engagement and conversions from your visitors.

Improving your existing website/blog

a) You will need to check and improve the design, navigation, content and functionality of your website; as this can help improve visibility in the search engines, user experience (UX), trust, credibility and user engagement. In fact, if your website does not work effectively and help you to achieve your objectives, then you are best to fix it, before spending money (and time), in driving users to a site that doesn’t work.
b) Your website needs to be secure, fast, mobile and SEO friendly. These factors will impact the user experience and are used by Google (and other search engines) to determine your rankings in the search results. You should review various technical aspects of your site, including technical SEO, speed (page load speeds), html errors, on-page/ meta tags, schema, API generated content, native apps, creation of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) etc.

Social media platforms

Each of your membership segments are likely to use different social media platforms; so, you might need to improve or create profiles on the platforms preferred by your audience. This will involve:

Set-up your business account and profile
Create and verify your business page(s)
Ensure that your imagery is consistent across your profiles

Once you have all your social media building blocks in place; you will be able to use various techniques to build your audiences (fans and followers) and distribute content to them. This could be content from your website, as well as posts and ads that you can distribute on the individual platforms. This ongoing communication should encourage user engagement and actions at different stages of the membership journey. If successful you should be able to build a community of fans that will also act as brand ambassadors and advocators on your behalf.

Explore new media

Streaming services and webinar facilities may not be a new concept to some, but many associations and membership organisations will be using this time to launch new means of connecting with their members online. For more information and tips about how to run a successful webinar head here

Podcasts are another rising phenomenon popular across multiple verticals, owing to the added value they potentially give to members through quality and accessibility of content.

You could also take this time to discover new channels and methods of distributing content online. Why not team up with some members and guest blog on their channels to improve your reach? Or conduct a research exercise to discover what your competitors are doing and how your members are behaving online?

Quite simply

Now is not the time to be sitting back and waiting for members to come to you. Take this opportunity to review, assess and improved your digital offering in order to maintain and extend your visibility so you can continue to grow despite the current restrictions on face-to-face interaction, events and conferences.