The Power of the Social Media Audit

In today’s blog, we ask a very relevant question: Why do so many social strategies repeat the process of trying the same (or at least very similar) creative, copy and audience targeting and expect their results to dramatically change or improve? We will delve a bit deeper to answer this question, revealing why we undergo a thorough audit of all social channels and results with all new and existing clients before any activity is started.   

The process of a social media audit can be lengthy, but extremely valuable; we pick up on aspects of your previous campaigns that you may not have noticed before. Like with anything, taking a step back to assess activity is one of the most important things to do. If possible (and this is where we pride ourselves) having a third party with a fresh pair of eyes can prove invaluable.

Recently we were approached by a top ten Premier League football team to do just this. They found that they had an abundance of content but weren't sure how to use it to maximise conversions and secure important sales on their e-commerce site. Attempts in the past had yielded ok(ish) results but other digital marketing channels such as Search were performing better - therefore social was always given the backseat. (This is a recurring issue within digital marketing, read our recent blog about how they can work together to improve ROI for more information). They were positive more could be done with their social strategy so they tasked us with an extensive social media audit, using our years of paid social experience to find the cracks in the armour and start the process of making their content work harder for them.

The Audit Process

We started by taking a deep dive into their Ads Management programmes to build up an in-depth picture of the best and worst performers, themes and messaging, audience targeting, creative formats and objectives.

We then used our award winning experience and technology to find opportunities for improvement in these ads. We used the data we gained to quickly analyse what made a successful conversion paid social ad in their sector and identified key characteristics of the creative and copy. All of this activity enabled us to make strategic changes to business as usual assets to make them stand out.

As with any strategic change, testing and learning is essential. We believe that Test & Learn is the social strategy. Consumers change, algorithms change and therefore ads and social content must change alongside them.

The Audit Results

Because of our understanding of what makes a successful conversion campaign, and the analysis from previous campaigns, we were able to launch two new campaigns to test our theories - the results were incredible.

In our first test:

• Our ads generated a 57%  lower cost per retail purchase than best performing BAU ads.

• The optimised creative drove a 95% higher ROAS. 

• Despite spending 47% less than BAU activity, we generated just 3 fewer retail purchases. 

• Our data indicated thousands of dollars in missed revenue due to lack of optimisation on BAU activity

In our second test, a similar campaign we drove: 

• 71% lower cost per purchase and; 

• 183% higher ROI

These results were achieved by subtle changes to copy, creative and targeting. The client wasn’t doing anything wrong, however the content needed to work a little bit harder. We discovered that the content was not optimised for social advertising because, as we mentioned above, historically it had always been in the shadow of other digital marketing channels. The vicious cycle would have continued had the audit not happened. 

As we said, conducting this level of audit can be time consuming and complicated, particularly when it comes to understanding and interpreting the data. This is where our six week UP! programme comes in.

Our experts will work with you to see just how far your social results can go, scaling UP! as we go along.

Together with our unique ad technology, which identifies your most profitable audiences and personalised experience across paid, owned and earned channels, our paid social media experts will identify ad optimisation opportunities to push results further. 

The results speak for themselves so why not schedule an audit with one of our experts today?