10 Tips, Tactics and Tools To Spring Clean Your Online Marketing
By Matt Harrington, Southwestern Vermont Chamber of Commerce & Julia Scott, J.Scott Marketing
Spring cleaning isn’t just for your windows and your garage. Let this time of year inspire you to tune up your business as well! Implement these ten tips, tactics, and tools to freshen up your online marketing and coast into year-round business success.
Organize a budget for marketing. According to a recent survey, the average marketing budget for startups to build brand awareness and start attracting leads is 11.2% of overall revenue. Do you have a budget for your business? Do you have a line item for marketing?
Here’s a tip—start small. It can be difficult to “invest” your hard earned cash and even more difficult to plan a budget and stick to it. Start with a marketing budget of 2–5% of your revenue and measure your Return On Investment (ROI). If you gain impressions, brand recognition, and customers walking through your physical or virtual door, then bump it up!
Clean up your website. Your website is your home base, your castle, your 24/7 sales agent. Are you keeping it in tip-top shape and getting the most in return? Is your website merely a brochure with basic details? Or is it a place where future customers get excited about buying from you (and can easily do so)? If you’re guilty of any of these nine web design mistakes, it’s worth an investment of time and resources to fix them.
Optimize your Google business listing. Consider your Google business listing a mini website, where you can showcase your services, case studies, special offers, and of course testimonials (reviews). Make asking for reviews part of your team’s workflow so that you can gather more reviews than competitors and rise to the top of Google searches.
Rock one social media platform. TikTok? LinkedIn? Instagram? Strengthen your presence and master one platform before branching out to others. The right social media platform for you is a combination of three factors:
Customers: where your customers are
Creative: what kind of creative assets your team can reasonably create on a regular basis (if your team struggles to create videos, skip TikTok)
Commitment: where you can make a consistent commitment (some platforms are more time consuming that others)
5. Nail down your value. Why should someone buy from you instead of your competitor? What are the top three benefits of purchasing your product or service? Take time to clearly articulate how you solve your customers’ problems, and make their lives easier.Then train your team to share this message at a moment’s notice.
6. Be strategic. Would you cook a new dish without a recipe? Investing in marketing blindly is like tossing together random ingredients—you may get the occasional surprise hit but generally it’s not going to end well. You need a strategic marketing plan. Pause and identify your top goals for the year, connect them with the appropriate marketing tactics, then work backwards to create monthly, weekly and daily tasks to reach your goals.
7. Create marketing content. Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about three times as many leads, according to DemandMetric. For B2B businesses especially, we recommend creating landing pages, blogs, and email content that answers the most common questions future customers ask, targets SEO keywords to increase traffic, and positions you and your team as a trusted resource.
8. Dust off your customer service training. Even if we’re talking about online marketing, customer service is still important. How is your staff on the phone? Are they equipped to answer questions on Facebook messenger? Do they know how to provide a “wow” experience regardless of how the customer got to your business? Perhaps it's time to send your staff to a customer service workshop to hone their skills and become great brand ambassadors for your business.
9. Flash your Chamber Member digital decal. Did you know that a recent study found that when consumers knew that a business was a chamber member, they were 80% more likely to purchase goods or services from that business in the future? Our annual Chamber Membership decal is no longer just for your front door! The SWVT Chamber now provides and encourages a digital decal for your website and social platforms to show customers that you invest in your community, that you’re a trusted operation, and that you support your local business economy by supporting the Chamber of Commerce. If you’re a member, ask us for your physical and digital decal!
10. Attend the SWVT Chamber’s online workshop. You’ve done everything on this list and still want more!? Join the Southwestern Vermont Chamber and Julia Scott of J.Scott Marketing on March 9 for their 2-hr workshop on “Spring Marketing Cleaning: How to Manage 3 Top Review and Ranking Sites.”
The mission of the Southwestern Vermont Chamber of Commerce is to promote, lead and advocate a unified effort, on behalf of our business and nonprofit members, to maintain and improve a healthy business climate and rewarding quality of life for the entire Shires of Vermont region. Our vision for this organization and our region is to grow businesses and enhance the Southwestern Vermont economy, influence and foster stable growth to this region's creative ecosystem, assist in building safe and healthy communities, and market Southwestern Vermont to people from all walks of life through the efforts of the regional Shires of Southwestern Vermont brand.
J. Scott Marketing is a digital marketing agency that makes marketing easy—yes, it is possible! Imagine a flexible marketing partnership to support the success of your business dreams. Want more time for core priorities? Let us handle your marketing. Our partnership allows you to focus on core operations, increase profits, and let your brand shine. Whether through social media, SEO, web copy, blog posts, digital advertising, or email marketing, we create and implement marketing strategies that bring customers to your door. We are a women-owned business based in VT.