Spring Cleaning: freshen up your summer marketing

There is no fun intro here, we are going to pick up where part 1 left off and dive right in.

So you’ve asked all the questions and explored the answers in your worksheet, and now you’re ready to build your strategy. At this point, you should have outlined the following:

• Your goals

• Your target audience

• Your budget

Things get a little simpler from here. Sort of. Now that you know what you want, you just have to figure out where and how to get it.

Before you decide which tactics to commit to your budget, you need a narrative foundation. Story is everything. A story emotionally connects you with your audience. A story makes your brand more memorable and engaging. As a small business owner, your story is the beating heart of your business. It’s your passion. And passion sells, in more ways than one.

Now more than ever, telling your story is important. You believe in your business, and by extension, you believe in yourself—this is why you took the risk to become a business owner.

To avoid falling down an existential rabbit hole, let’s focus on your goals. Then ask “why?”

Why are you offering this new service or product? Why do you do what you do? Why does this matter to your customers? Answering these questions ultimately shapes and clarifies your messaging, which will drive (ha) your marketing strategy and content creation.

But it’s also good to note that great messaging isn’t just about storytelling—it can be about inspiring action, whether that’s booking a trip, signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase.

Ultimately, keep it simple, short and sweet.

So far in our exercise, this is what you know about your target audience (see worksheet):

• Your customer demographics (age/household income/gender/generational)

• Your customer geography (the reach of your business—think local, regional or national)

• Your customer interests (interests that relate to your offerings)

It’s time to figure out where your target audiences are. Where do they most likely hang out? What do they most likely read? Which platform do they most likely do the most scrolling?

That’s the thing about marketing—there are no straight answers, so go with the “most likely” answer. We can certainly drill down and look at every aspect of the different types of customer journeys. But if your business has a limited marketing budget, your best path to success is to focus on the “most likely.”

For example, are your customers most likely on Meta (Facebook and/or Instagram) or Pinterest? This doesn’t have to be an either/or answer, because in reality, there’s a good chance there’s a Venn diagram for both platforms. But when you are deciding on a budget, it helps to know which is the “most likely” answer. Plus, there’s also an advantage to understanding the utility of each platform so you can maximize your ROI. So in this exercise, Pinterest is ideal for brand awareness and Meta makes it easier for you to purchase directly. Go with what is most important to reach your outlined goals.

Referring back to your worksheet, you can start deciding what tactics to devote marketing dollars to.

While you’re in your worksheet, take a look at the web pages you’d like to steer traffic to. Which of these pages align with your summer goals? These pages can serve as your landing pages, linked to the ads you plan to run. These can be linked directly, through a QR code or a special URL that can redirect to one of the pages. Ideally, we’d want to create fresh landing pages, using special campaign messaging and design (this allows you to direct customers to different parts of the website to explore purchasing opportunities). But on a tight budget and timeline, you can just tweak the messaging on the existing pages.

Now that you’ve sorted out your landing pages, consider how you can boost organic and referral traffic to the pages. The obvious drivers (ha) of traffic are channels like social media, blogs and emails. If these have worked well for you in the past, no need to fix what ain’t broke.

Take a step further and develop a content strategy around the sharing of these pages—for example, additional blogs can be developed to support the landing pages. Map it out on a calendar and find fresh ways to showcase the pages.

Not sure if you’ve realized it, but you’ve pretty much developed your summer marketing strategy. Don’t believe it? Fill out this one-page strategy template and see for yourself!

Now, of course, this is a very simplified strategy, there are a ton of ways to get more surgically strategic, but a good start is better than no start at all (and haphazardly flying by the seat of your pants). Just remember to have fun along the way. After all, this is your playground.