Spring Cleaning Your Marketing
We are used to giving our homes a scrub up and and declutter in spring, but what about our businesses, or more specifically, our business marketing? It can be incredibly helpful to look at your current marketing efforts and plans and give them a virtual clear out, tidy and polish. This way, you can streamline your efforts and be sure that everything is in place. So, where to start?
Tidy up: When we literally clean our house, there’s a certain order we do things in. For example we know that there’s no point vacuuming if the floor can’t be seen for clothes, so we put them away first. Digital marketing has its own equivalent, in that before we start, we need to have a clear idea of how we want things to work. This will ensure we focus on the important things and can identify the things we need and the things we don’t need. To do this, it’s good to reflect on what’s currently working for you. Where do the majority of your customers find you? Where do the sales come from? Which of your products/services are the most popular? You want to keep those things! Put them tidily away in your marketing plan.
Declutter: As with a physical spring clean, decluttering is helpful because it clears away unnecessary encumbrances and helps highlight what actually needs doing. In the digital marketing world, this could mean letting go of things that aren’t working for you or your business. For example, you might have a Pinterest account that you never post to, or your computer might be full of half-finished blog articles, photos for social media posts that didn’t work, or other marketing materials you’ve never used. This stuff often makes you feel bad about the things you haven’t done, rather than focusing on the things that are going well—a bit like holding on to old clothes that no longer fit. If it’s getting in the way and not accomplishing anything useful, then it’s time for it to go. This can free up space in your computer, head and schedule to focus on the things that are working, or to try something new.
Clean and polish: Once you’ve got rid of the unnecessary things that aren’t working for you, you can take a look at the things you do actually need and think about if there’s anything you can do to make them even better. Are they working as well as they could be? Maybe your social media posts are a bit perfunctory and irregular, with no real plan or strategy behind them. Maybe your website needs updating or improving, or maybe it’s been a year since you took at look at your automated email welcome message. Also think about whether there’s something that you think will work well for you if you implement it in future. Maybe you’ve been meaning to start a newsletter or regularly post to a blog. You might now find you have the space to bring those in.
Get help: Finally, there are certain things with a physical spring clean that most of us will happily pay a better equipped professional to do for us, such as cleaning the windows, shampooing the carpets or clearing the gutters. And sometimes there’s things with a digital spring clean that we may not feel able to do ourselves. That might be writing some new website copy, getting set up with a mailing list, creating a marketing calendar, or producing high-quality photographs. It’s worth hiring someone to get these things in place if they seem daunting, as they can make life and work so much easier when they’re sorted.