5 Days of Improving Your Marketing Strategy That Won’t Break the Bank

The world has changed. As business owners and marketers, we have had to adapt quickly to the changing needs of our customers. Some businesses have had to strategically pivot their business to stay relevant. For example, several breweries have converted parts of their manufacturing equipment to produce hand sanitizer instead of alcohol.  Whole industries are looking to find new and creative ways to stay profitable post-pandemic, if there is such a thing. There is a good likelihood that this will become the new normal for the foreseeable future. Therefore, marketing budgets are tight, especially for small businesses. Now is a great time to review your marketing plan and start to plan for the future. Here are 5 things you can do in the next 5 days to improve your business’ marketing strategy that won’t stress you out or break the bank.

Marketing Strategy Day 1

Google My Business

We can start off easy for this first step. Log into your Google My Business account. If you don’t have a Google My Business account, you need to create one. One of the major benefits of having a Google My Business account is that users can easily find your local business and get quick information about what you do. Oftentimes your business will show up in the 3 pack at the top of the search results for local search queries even though your website might be ranking lower.

1. If you have registered and verified your account, now update your Google MyBusiness settings. (If you haven’t registered and verified, ask us how to do this.)
2. Make sure all your information is up-to-date.
3. Make sure your hours of operation are updated.
4. Add recent photos or videos.
5. If you are currently running any promotions, you can also add them here.

Marketing Strategy Day 2

Google Analytics

When was the last time you looked at Google Analytics? (Here is the link to Google Analytics so you don’t have to look for it.) If you are like a lot of businesses, it has probably been a while. Even if you have, do you know what to look for? Understanding Google Analytics is vital in developing an online marketing strategy. Understanding where your visitors are coming from and knowing how they interact with your site is key. This will help you prioritize your time and allocate money to the proper channels.

Here are a few items that will help you start to understand what kind of traffic your website is getting, so you can develop a better plan for building out your website going forward.

1. If you don’t dive any deeper into Google Analytics, at least look over the dashboard (located under Audience, then Overview). The account Overview dashboard provides a wealth of information. From this view, you can see how your site is performing over a set period of time, how many visits have been made to your site, and how many of them are new. If you haven’t already, I would suggest spending some time exploring, so you can start to understand how powerful this tool is.
2. If you want to dive deeper, you can find out detailed information, such as how long each visitor is spending on your site and what their journey was. You can also view which social media platforms are generating the most traffic.

Marketing Strategy Day 3

Write a blog post

Write a blog post. Easier said than done. Writing a blog post can be one of the most challenging tasks you can do if you are not comfortable writing or don’t have a lot of experience in doing so. To get you started, here are a few tips to help you create value-added, engaging content.

1. Remember, you are an expert in your industry.
2. Take some time, make a few notes, and write what you know.
3. Think about the questions you get asked by your customers. How were you able to solve their problems?
4. Once you do write something down, spell and grammar check it. There are free tools such as Grammarly that can help you with checking this sort of thing.
5. Develop a content calendar to keep on track with posting to your blog. If scheduling a blog post every week is too time-consuming and causing you too much anxiety, then set a schedule that works for you. It is better to have a smaller number of posts that are of high quality and provide value to your audience than creating content that is thin and not very helpful.

Marketing Strategy Day 4

Create and send out a newsletter

For day 4 of your marketing strategy challenge, I encourage you to create a newsletter and send it out to your mailing list. Even if your list is small, growing an email marketing subscriber list can be very profitable over time. Here are a few talking points that you can include in your next newsletter.

1. Have you changed your business hours or are you offering anything new or differently during the pandemic?
2. Let your customers know that you are still “Open for Business.”
3. Are you running any specials?
4. Include your newly written blog post.

The newsletter doesn’t have to be very long. The goal is to keep your business top of mind. Whether you are using MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, or sending emails manually through Outlook, make sure you keep to a schedule and that the newsletter contains something of value to your audience.

Marketing Strategy Day 5

Update WordPress

Here is another easy task to end the week on. Make sure WordPress is up-to-date. If you don’t know what WordPress is, contact the person who built your website, unless you are using build-it-yourself platforms such as Wix or SpareSpace; either way, you will want to make sure your platform is up-to-date. In the case of WordPress, they are continuously updating and improving on the platform, fixing security issues and other problems. To keep your website safe from hackers, spam, or just keeping your site running smoothly, it is recommended that at least once a month a check is made to make sure the website is up-to-date. Leaving too long in between updates could cause bigger issues down the road. So, for your last task, log into your website and perform those much-needed updates.

So there you have it. 5 tasks that you can easily implement this coming week. With a little planning, you should be able to implement these 5 tasks without too much trouble. Leave me a comment to let me know if you accepted the 5-day marketing challenge and then how the implementation went.