We all get the itch to tidy up our surroundings when the weather starts to turn in the spring. We sort through our things, tossing out what’s worn and tired, what doesn’t fit any more, what doesn’t reflect what we’ve become over the past year. The process of renewal allows us to face the new season with a focus on what’s important to us right now.
If you’re a small business owner, spring cleaning isn’t just beneficial for your closet. Giving your marketing strategy a thorough annual once-over can help ensure that you’re concentrating your marketing resources where they’ll do the most good and that you don’t continue to pursue a plan that no longer fits your goals.
Give Your Marketing Strategy a Makeover
A great place to start your marketing spring cleaning is with an update of the elements of your core marketing strategy. Begin by looking at your customer profiles. Do they still accurately reflect your target market, or has your targeting shifted over the past year? If you need to tweak the profiles, now’s the time to do it.
The same is true for your messaging. There’s a good chance that a year-old marketing message is no longer saying what you want it to say, especially if your customer profiles have changed.
Prune that Contact List
Now is also the time to give your contact list the deep cleaning it’s needed all winter. Make sure that all the information for your contacts is accurate, and get rid of contacts that are irrelevant, redundant, or otherwise out of date. The last thing you need is to spend time and resources on contacts that are no longer valuable.
Spruce Up Your Social Media Profiles
You and your company don’t look anything like you did at this time last year. Shouldn’t your social-media image reflect the changes? Update your profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, and other media to show an up-to-date image of your company, with current messaging, product descriptions, and anything else that will show that your business is fresh and vibrant.
Get Rid of Expired Web Content
The need for freshness extends to your blogs and website content, too. Your customers look to your web content for assurance that your company is a dynamic, up-to-the-minute source of information. If your content is stale, your messaging will be, too. Jettison the outdated stuff and replace it with current, valuable content.
Clean Up Your Web Design
Web design trends change fast, and what looked great to customers last year, probably looks a little dated now. Take the time now to renovate your web design so that it’s shiny and new in terms of look, functionality, and user experience.
A New Year, A New Plan
The bottom line is that what worked for your marketing plan past may not work so well now. Since you developed your marketing plan last year, you’ve learned what works and what it doesn’t.
Spring cleaning gives you the opportunity to apply what you’ve learned, to stop doing the things that don’t produce the desired marketing results, and to try new tactics for getting a bigger return on your marketing investment.
Want step by step directions for improving your marketing results? Click on this link to download your Marketing Makeover Guide. It will lead you through five important steps that will help you clean and improve your marketing results.
