Spring Cleaning Your Digital Marketing Efforts

March draws to a close with the familiar end of winter symptoms; the temperatures are slowly creeping up toward double digits again as snowbanks melt and flood the streets. While scarves and hats are being tentatively tucked away into closets and pollen is slowly drifting into the air, the familiar tradition of spring cleaning takes hold. Old furniture gets tossed to the curb, and the weird gap behind the TV stand gets dusted for the first time since last spring.

One thing people often neglect to think is that spring cleaning shouldn’t stop when you rearrange the computer desk. Take advantage of this seasonal motivation and use the time to spring clean your digital marketing while you’re inspired.

However, the idea of spring cleaning your digital marketing efforts are often easier said than done. Without a clear end goal, this may seem daunting and discouraging. In fact, it may seem like something easy to brush aside as a problem for later, but we don't recommend that!

Don’t neglect the deep clean because it appears disheartening. Take a look at these guidelines, and grab that metaphorical mop and bucket — give your digital marketing efforts the spring cleaning it deserves.

Goals & Branding

Start with the bigger picture and work your way down. Spring signifies a fresh start and new beginnings, which is the best time to realign your digital marketing goals. Having clear, defined goals allows for easier alignment of the rest of your digital marketing strategy. Once you have refreshed your goals, take another look at your branding to ensure seamlessness and consistency across all platforms you use. This is just the first step in spring cleaning your digital marketing efforts and preparation for the new season.

Social Media

Now that you’ve tidied up the surface, it’s time to dive a little deeper. Anyone living in 2019 understands that social media isn’t just a buzzword anymore — it’s a necessity. This means you most likely have social media accounts and you’ve probably already started observing them while checking for consistent branding. This is fantastic, as it can lead you to a deeper social media audit. Review your personal information such as any bio you may have written in the past; don’t be afraid to dive deep into the past and get rid of any outdated or irrelevant information to avoid confusion. Observe what medium you are using to reach your audience and whether it is effective; take a look at your analytics and track your previous engagement patterns to see what needs work in the coming season. Have you responded to all comments, messages, or other forms of communication in a timely manner? If not, you may want to consider revamping your response strategy moving forward.

Content

As it goes hand in hand with social media, do not neglect your content when spring cleaning your digital marketing. Content is critical as it can create a better user experience and increase SEO. The first important thing to note is that there is a time and place for creating fantastic new content for your brand, but this is not that time. With your spring cleaning, you want to refresh and revitalize old content so it’s relevant and sharable once more. Digital marketing software organization Moz suggests four strategies that can renew, refresh, and recycle old content for a bigger reach. On their list of suggestions, they recommend giving old posts a facelift with a new look and finding your social sharing “sweet spot” by repackaging content. They also say a “social shake-up” can be advantageous to reach and test with different audiences, and last but certainly not least as we look toward innovation: automate! Reinventing old content is one of the best tricks in the book to increase SEO, which is critical in today’s digital marketing landscape.

SEO

With that being said, your SEO efforts may need a tidy as well as you continue your spring cleaning. A blog post by Ashley Ward on AuthorityLabs compares cleaning your SEO to cleaning the basement of your house — that is to say, a place where you often neglect during spring cleaning. However, when you do tackle that basement, you know it’s been done even if nobody else sees it, and you’ll see the results yourself. In her post, Ward recommends tidying your keywords. She notes that you should check for irrelevant and low search volume keywords to drop, as well as deciding whether to drop or ramp up spend on low-to-no impression keywords. This should leave you with a leaner and more efficient list of keywords moving into the new season. Finally, Ward notes that keeping up with the latest trends is critical, as it may affect the way people are searching. On an Advision blog, author Teresa Grammatke recommends a full SEO audit for spring cleaning including a review of best practices and features such as page speed, H1’s, meta descriptions, content, readability, images, and schema markup. Employing a few tidying tactics can streamline your SEO processes moving forward and prepare your strategy for the next chapter of your digital marketing pursuits.

Paid Search

Much like SEO, paid search and media can also vastly benefit from an audit during your spring cleaning. Grammatke also has recommendations for a paid search audit. She highlights the importance of keywords, except instead of minimizing them as discussed in the paragraph above, she recommends reviewing to see if any need to be added. She also notes the importance of reviewing ad copy, making sure your ads are both grammatically correct and still relevant. Ad extensions enhance listings and improve quality score, so it's a good idea to do a scan to make sure you are using ad extensions that make sense for your business. Finally, she advises confirming sensible campaign and group structure, whether conversion tracking is properly and targeting is appropriately set up. With these factors in mind when revising the paid search and media strategy, your spring cleaning should positively impact your digital marketing efforts moving forward.

Email Lists & Campaigns

As a final step to your big spring cleaning spree, you should take a closer look at any email campaigns and lists that are active. Most organizations will hold on to a variety of lists, whether it be for prospects, existing customers, memberships, or other segregations. The thing about these lists though, is that they are only useful if kept up to date. The spring overhaul is the perfect excuse to consider each of your contact lists and ensure the information is up to date and accurate as possible. When the lists are neat and organized, you have a refreshed group to target with your email marketing campaigns. Before launching back into it though, don’t forget to ensure your emails match your branding, and all your content, links, and information are up to date. Finally, based on your previous email campaigns, consider switching things up if the numbers indicate poor performance. Revamping your email lists and strategies are just one more step in spring cleaning your digital marketing efforts.

In the End...

In short, spring cleaning your digital marketing efforts can be a daunting task. But don’t let yourself get overwhelmed! Like most other things in life, they can be tackled one item at a time. Don’t be disheartened by the effort it may take, as you’ll find out in the end that it will only benefit your digital marketing strategy — it’s well worth the time commitment. For anyone who may be feeling a bit overwhelmed by this list, don’t fret! TechWyse is here to help with all of your digital marketing needs. Give us a call at 888.208.3095, or contact us here!