Do you feel like your business has reached a plateau is terms of sales and enquiries? If so, it might be time to bust out the feather duster, take out the trash and have a well overdue spring clean of your marketing strategy!
Every business has countless marketing techniques at its disposal to bring in new customers. Each technique must be properly measured and reassessed to maintain its effectiveness. Follow these spring cleaning tips to keep your business in excellent shape to blow your competition out the water.
Website Performance
Your website is the modern day equivalent of your store front. Customers will immediately jump ship and go elsewhere if your website doesn't meet their expectations. You must be critical of your website if you have any hope of competing in today's competitive market.
You must look at the following and alert your website design company if anything is amiss:
- Overall functionality - Check that all your pages load. Check that all internal text links and CTAs go to the correct destination / landing page. Check that your top navigation and footer links are working. Check your social media icons are working. Ensure your checkout system is working and check that the customer receives their invoices through email.
- Contact forms - Check that all forms are working. Check that your business is receiving the notifications and replying in a timely manner.
- Mobile responsiveness - The layout and page format should change to be accessible on a small screen. If you have to pinch the screen or scroll from left to right to view content then you must contact your web developer to have the site upgraded as soon as possible.
- Images - All images should be good quality. It's also worth noting that extremely large images (anything over 800px) will slow your page speed down. Images should be mobile responsive; this means the images should shrink to the size of your device / mobile / tablet and not be cut off.
- Page Speed - Check your site speeds using this link. Contact your web developer if the speed is below 70 on either desktop or mobile.
Offers
Online offers and discounts are a fantastic way to attract new customers, however these types of offers can also cause havoc, especially if they aren't managed correctly. If an offer is due to expire (or has expired) then you must delete it from your website/emails and social media to avoid confusion. Likewise, if you have a product on sale then you should update the page to say you have low stock/ran out.
Furthermore, if your CTAs aren't performing as well as expected (for instance, they aren't receiving any clicks or visitors aren't completing the online form on the landing page) then you should raise this with your marketing company. Making subtle changes to the CTA such as changing the design, the text or the placement could boost your clicks and conversions, which may result in more online enquiries.
Social Media Performance
Don't make the foolish mistake of believing that social media is 'just for kids' or that social media doesn't tie in with your industry or business niche. Just about everyone in this day and age uses social media to connect with people or perform research about something they are interested in. For this reason it's imperative that:
Your business uses the correct social media channels for your target market. Think about where your customers would 'hang out' online. As a general rule of thumb, younger audiences tend to be on Twitter and visual platforms like Instagram and YouTube, whereas business professionals tend to use LinkedIn and Facebook.
Secondly, ensure that you regularly post relevant, educational content that your target audience will like and appreciate. Each social media post you publish should fit a particular purpose. For example, your content should acknowledge the problems your customer faces and suggest ways in which your business can help. Don't focus too much on “me, me, me” - instead focus on helping your buyer persona. For example, publish articles such as “X Common Mistakes To Avoid When Buying Kitchen Tiles” rather than “X Reasons Why You Should Choose Joe's Kitchens To Fit Your New Tiles”
To perform a spring clean log into all your social media accounts. Firstly, double-check that your bio and contact information matches your website. This will help increase your brand's number of online citations (mentions of your business which in theory will improve your SEO ranking) and divert visitors back to your main website. Ensure that your images are all good quality. Also, I suggest you look through your recent posts and delete anything that isn't relevant or is waffle (for example holiday season posts or outdated offers/sales) as this type of content clogs up your page.
It's also worth mentioning that you don't need to be on every single social media platform. Focus on the platforms that will help your business connect with your buyers in a meaningful way. Weed out any platforms that aren't essential to save you both time and resources; customers find it off-putting if it looks like a business “gave up” on their social media presence.
Tidy Your Online Database
Having an extensive online database of customer contact details/customer journeys is all well and good providing the data collected is correct and within content. It is pointless to store information that is outdated as this will only create confusion for your sales and marketing departments.
If your outgoing calls, emails and letters are being continually ignored by the recipient then I strongly suggest taking them off your mailing lists. Pestering people with content when they show no interest in your service can damage your reputation and credibility.
Some marketing automation software packages like HubSpot automatically “tidy” your contacts database (this is called “Smart Lists”), however here's how you can perform this step manually. It's imperative that you back up your system before starting this process. Appoint 1 or 2 people to manually go through your database and remove anyone who isn't active. You can delete these contacts if you wish, but I recommend segmenting them into a separate list in case you want to revisit them in the future.
Are Spring Cleans Essential?
Spring cleans are a great way to sharpen your business' focus. Metaphorically speaking, throwing out the trash and dusting your shelves can help you unearth little problems that are preventing your brand from reaching its full potential in terms of productivity ROI. Contact the JDR Group today for a FREE 20 minute audit of your current marketing strategy to see how you can improve for the future!
Image source: Unsplash
