12 Reasons Why It’s Time for a Digital Marketing Audit

If you’ve been thinking about giving your company’s digital marketing operations a closer look -- to save money, boost performance, be more competitive, or ensure dollars are being invested wisely -- here are some reasons why a #MarketingAudit is probably a good idea.

1. Brands now spend more on digital advertising than they do on TV. This shift has resulted in wholesale changes in the way both ad agencies and marketing departments do business.
2. The options are overwhelming. According to one study, there are more than 5,000 companies competing in the marketing technology category -- everyone from Amazon, Oracle and IBM to literally thousands of mid-sized companies and startups. Navigating this terrain is a challenge for even dedicated industry analysts, nevermind marketing professionals with myriad responsibilities.
3. Media fragmentation is a huge challenge for advertisers. According to McKinsey analysis, “many companies don’t have a clear view of where their dollars are going and what impact they are having”. This is problematic for obvious reasons, and there doesn’t exist a straightforward, easy fix. Rigorous analysis and ongoing scrutiny is the only answer.
4. The FBI is investigating media trading practices. Ouch. Enough said.
5. Digital strategy is hard. In a recent Harvard Business Review article titled “Why Digital Transformations Fail”, the authors cite nearly a dozen companies that have struggled with digital adoption -- including blue-chip concerns such as GE, Nike and Walmart -- and explain that “digital is not just a thing that you can you can buy and plug into the organization”.
6. The industry isn’t going to fix itself. Adtech won’t fix ad fraud because it is too lucrative. It’s kind of like the mortgage business. If you’ve ever bought a home, you know the reams of documents that require signature. There are a lot of chefs in the mortgage kitchen, each taking a piece of the metaphorical pie, and the digital advertising supply chain is the same way.
7. The advertising industry is growing -- one source just increased its 2018 growth forecast from 5.2% to 6.4%, which is not insignificant for a 50 year-old industry. And we all know what happens in high-growth marketplaces, especially when unemployment is low: prices rise, and quality suffers....so, buyer’s beware.
8. CMOs are on the hot seat. With some much money being spent on advertising and marketing technology, CMOs are now “squarely in the crosshairs of CEOs, CFOs and corporate boards, who want to know where all this money is going and what they’re getting in return,” according to Bain analysis. #BudgetsAndBudgeting
9. Internet growth is slowing. Both overall penetration and usage growth rates are in the 5%-7% range, following years of double-digit expansion. For marketers, this means both acquisition and engagement are increasingly competitive, and shrewd strategies are the only path to ROI optimization.
10. The vaunted duopoly -- Facebook and Google -- are both “big and behaving badly”. This bodes poorly for small and mid-sized companies that are overly dependent on these advertising channels for their success.
11. All is not what it seems. As a rule, marketing technology over-promises and under-delivers. This is not unique to martech or adtech -- this is symptomatic across the entire, colossal software industry. As one industry observer opines, “Adtech did not cut out the middlemen. Adtech merely replaced one set of middlemen with another.” That’s not to say adtech shouldn’t have a role in a marketing operation -- of course it should -- but it’s not a cure-all panacea that the promotional literature will have you believe.
12. It’s smart. Every functional area of the enterprise that results in a significant line item on financial reports -- HR, IT, compensation, supply chain, etc. -- gets audited regularly. It’s a basic risk management activity, which allows organizations to determine if an operation has appropriate controls in place and is functioning properly. Marketing has historically avoided these reviews, in part due to the classic ad maxim, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half”. Well, the gig is up.

Tim Bourgeois is a principal at East Coast Catalyst, where he leads the digital strategy practice, which provides clients around with the world with marketing audit solutions. Learn more on the company website, and contact Tim at tbourgeois@eastcoastcatalyst.com.