Spring is upon us and at home that means it’s time for a Spring Clean, decluttering, tidying and doing all those little jobs that have been on the back burner over winter.
A great way to get through every room is to sort items in three ways – clean what you love, fix what is necessary and bin what is no longer needed, broken or worn-out.
The same idea should be considered for your communications strategy. When you reach this time of year, take a moment to evaluate your program and decide what needs to be cleaned, fixed or binned depending on its performance. To give you a hand on de-cluttering your collateral, we’ve put together a list of 6 tips for spring cleaning your marketing communications strategy.
1. Goals and Objectives
Look back at your last year’s goals and see how they worked or didn’t work for you. Are they still relevant or do they need a refresh? If there was a significant spike in a KPI, try to identify what led to this change and align your new objectives with the same intention.
2. Clear Messaging
Take some time to review your brand and consider if your values and mission statement are being clearly and consistently communicated. Is what you aimed for when you began your business still current today or has it shifted? If there is a gap between how your audience perceives you and your brand vision, take a consumer-centric approach and re-draft.
3. Website Refresh
Fresh content is a must in the ever-changing online environment. Review your website analytics to help optimise your performance. What content has gained the most clicks? It is important for decision-making to understand why visitors click out and where traffic is coming from. Now is also a good time to consider your website design to see if it stands out of the crowd or if it has become “so yesterday”. This doesn’t mean you need a whole new website, it could be as simple as new banners, images, and some good old-fashioned housekeeping.
4. Social Refresh
Evaluate the consistency in which you communicate your corporate identity through social media. Are you maintaining brand integrity? Do you need to set some guidelines? Aim to speak on your online platforms with the same voice as the company brand. Are there new platforms that you need to consider? Re-evaluate which platforms are getting the best engagement with your audience and if your time and efforts might be better spent on just a couple of platforms rather than spreading yourself too thin.
5. Graphic Design
Gather all your mailing, flyers, posters, business cards, and other printed collateral and lay it out in front of you. Your brand identity, messaging, corporate colours and even your logo can evolve over time and become muddy and inconsistent as they are transferred to different mediums and platforms. Does your internal and external collateral match your digital identity and vice versa? It might be time to tighten things up by creating a set of brand guidelines and bringing all your communications inline.
6. Digital Communications
- Take-a-look at where your audience/customers are coming from. Are you easy to find? Is your content optimised to benefit your Google page ranking?
- Are a lot of users accessing your site through a mobile? And if so, is your website mobile optimised and, more importantly, user-friendly? If you are a retailer, might it be worth looking at a mobile e-commerce app?
- Are there other tactics you can also implement to reach out online such as display campaigns with remarketing and Adwords? Do your digital platforms support your business goals? The world of digital communications changes so quickly, it’s no longer just a case of “set and forget”.
An effective, well-considered communications strategy is key to business success and sometimes all you need is a fresh set of eyes to work out what you need to change.
