How to display your expertise with a data-heavy audit report

One of the main things you want to demonstrate when selling your services is your expertise. As a digital marketing agency, it’s top of the list when people consider working with you. Especially as there are so many agencies out there that claim they have big boots, but aren’t able to fill them!

Demonstrating this expertise not only creates business, but it will also create brand awareness. Eventually leading to brand authority in your industry. Ready to level up your agency’s reputation?

First off, let me dig a little into what an audit report is. It’s a collation of stats relating to a customer’s digital presence. So it would contain all things ‘online-presence’ like:

The power of a well-laid-out audit should not be underestimated while prospecting! Running an audit, understanding its results and being able to articulate them to a prospect is gold dust in the sales process and should be done as early on as possible in your pipeline.

Audit reports give you (and your client) an in-depth insight into their website build, social channels, SEO and more. This is invaluable information when pitching your services as a solution to their problems.

Ideally – all of this data would be delivered on a lovely-looking PDF, that falls in line with your branding. And from there you would create a proposal that focuses on the aspects of the audit in which the customer may be falling short. These gaps in their online presence will be filled with your services.

Quantitive data is figures. It’s information that can be measured and counted and given a numerical value. A few examples are:

Qualitative data is a subjective opinion, or in this case, your expertise. It’s information that can’t be measured, counted or given a numerical value. Such as:

Is their branding consistent across their site and socials? (This is just as important for you as it is for them!) You want to look at whether:

Are the images well-optimised for their site? Or are they too small, pixelated or far too big? This can have a big impact on their SEO, so it’s critical that the images used are high-res and well-optimised for their site. This plays a massive part in the overall user experience on their site.

The copy on their website should be clear, concise and snappy to keep the visitor engaged. Of course, there are parts of the website that require longer amounts of copy. But the general gist needs to be short and sweet.

This information can make a significant impact on the prospect. And give them a clear direction to take in order to increase their rankings and traffic.

With web accessibility being the hot topic, it pays to stay ahead of the curve. And be able to assess your prospect’s website for accessibility.

Web accessibility is the practice of making provisions within the build of your website that make sure that your information and services are readily accessible and available to all; including those with disabilities.

There are numerous features you can add to your website to make sure that it’s accessible such as:

How can you ensure you and your agency staff are able to communicate your agency’s expertise? Upskilling.

Far too often marketing, design and development agencies are filled with sales agents that only have a basic knowledge of digital service solutions.

However, ensuring that they invest some time in upskilling would be invaluable to your agency. And it doesn’t have to cost thousands to do this, you can upskill your agents by getting them to take free short courses such as Grow with Google, SEMrush Academy, and HubSpot Academy.

An important aspect of your auditing reports that will help position you as an expert in your field is brand consistency. This includes:

Consistency through your brand messaging, i.e making sure your expertise is included with qualitative checks and ensuring all of your wording and language is on brand, builds a solid reputation and ramps up the trust factor for your agency.

Also, keep on-brand with your branded audit. Sending out proposals or quotes on a blank Google Sheets doc? Don’t.

Why?

Most people who use the internet are already extremely sceptical of scammers. And any holes or inconsistencies will immediately flag their trust issues and impact your credibility, as far as they’re concerned.

So what should you do?

Create an aesthetically pleasing and on-brand PDF document, that contains your audit. Laid out in a way that’s super easy to understand and contains no jargon. Not only does it look great, but shows that you really care about attention to detail. Proving that yours is indeed, a brand you can trust.

When presenting your audit to prospects, you want to be able to take a deep dive and be able to break down your audit findings in a clear, non-jargony way whilst demonstrating your expertise. And, of course, be able to answer their questions with confidence.

This will come with a deeper understanding of what your audits contain.

So it’s worth taking the time to help your agents be able to open an effective and engaging conversation about the audit report and fill in any gaps in their knowledge. It’ll give the prospect the feeling that they’re in great hands and they’ll receive value and ROI from working with you.

You also want your agency to make its mark by differentiating your agents’ skills on an audit report. This is super important as it will show that you’ve done more than just pull some figures together. But you’ve created a comprehensive audit and tailored it to the prospect individually.

And of course, if your customers are happy with you, they’ll shout about it! So take the time to help your agents with articulating the data that is generated within your audits and it’s sure to pay off.

Get the data-packed audits you need to up your conversion game, with Insites’ audits. Our comprehensive reports cover everything you need as a marketing agency; SEO, spelling and grammar, accessibility, social presence and more. Plus, they’re ready in just 60 seconds.

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Happy auditing!