Spring Cleaning: freshen up your summer marketing

If you’re reading this, you’re either behind on summer planning or already knee-deep in event planning and need to make sure you’re still somehow on the right track.

So, where do you start? Let’s step back, take a breath and get a bird’s-eye view. Download our one-page summer planning worksheet here and follow along in this blog.

The most important question. Are you planning to launch a new product? Or providing a new service or undergoing renovations? Start listing every single thing, no matter how small. From there, determine which is going to be of most interest or value to your customers. Not everything needs to be promoted. Start with the top three priorities if you have a long list.

The key here is to not overwhelm yourself. You can always expand further as you go.

What’s new is almost always newsworthy to the local media. A short press release or media alert (accompanied by an image) is often all you need to get the media’s attention. Pro tip: Give the publication at least 2-3 weeks to publish the press release.

If you don’t have anything new to showcase, that’s perfectly OK! The following questions can help you determine what will be important to promote this summer.

Take a lap through Google Analytics on your website. What pages earned the most traffic? The least? Do those low-traffic pages need some love? Where is the traffic coming from? Are there markets you’d like to grow in? These questions get you closer to your goals, which will help you figure out the objectives.

Also, take a look at the back end of your social media accounts. Facebook retains data for 2 years, while others hold them for a lot less, like LinkedIn (180 days), Instagram (90 days) and Pinterest (30 days). A scheduling/monitoring platform like AgoraPulse or Sprout Social will store data for at least two to three years. Take what you can get and see what all of the data tells you—you may find customer behavior patterns that will provide some insight into your target audiences, which is better than no insight at all.

An SEO (search engine optimization) audit or a report from Google Search Console can give you some clues as to how you’re performing on search engines. A thorough SEO audit will give you greater depth of what’s working, and more importantly, what’s not working on your website, and will include direction on off-site issues like backlinks and local SEO.

A simple method to improve your SEO rankings (if you don’t have access to an SEO tool like SEM Rush) would be to focus on select pages and drive traffic to them. And within these select pages, you can link to other key pages in your site. First, select your pages. Then go incognito on Google and search those pages and see where they rank. From there, you can start strategizing how to drive traffic to those pages to boost your ranking (see part 2 for strategy).

A marketing budget is vital to any business. Sources like Salesforce, MailChimp and even Business Development Bank of Canada (yes, we’re citing Canada) say small businesses should consider reserving 5-10% of your annual revenue. And if you focus on a 5:1 ROI expectation, it’ll be money well spent.

While you’re building your budget, consider your goals and strategy. For example, if you want to drive traffic to specific pages, which platforms are going to give you the best bang for your buck? If you want brand awareness, which is what we like to call the “bird shot,” then you may want to consider a larger budget for doling out impressions. If you want clicks, or “buck shots,” then perhaps a PPC (pay-per-click) campaign is up your alley.

Ultimately, never forget your audience and where they are.

So, what campaigns are going to need marketing dollars? Tactics like social media, Google ads, digital direct emails, out-of-home and native ads all bring something specific to the table, so you’ll want to determine what will best reach your audiences. Plus, don’t forget to put something aside for print collateral, if that’s a proven tactic for your audience. 

Once you’ve determined your budget, it’s time to draft your marketing strategy. Are you ready? Bring your completed summer planning worksheet and see part 2 here.