It’s the time of year when everyone seems to be in a cleaning frenzy – windows are open, fresh air is flowing, closets are being de-cluttered and baseboards are being dusted. But what about your business? If you run a local store, clinic, dealership or e-commerce site, spring is the perfect time to give it a thorough cleaning, too. But only if you want to see your business grow.
It can be easy as a business owner to fall into the trap of working IN the business and not ON it, but if you can check these five things off your list this month, your business will be in great shape to continue growing!
1. Review Your Marketing Strategy and Goals
What goals do you have for your marketing strategy? What do you hope to achieve, and does your current strategy offer the right path to get you there? It’s a good idea to regularly review your strategy and make sure that:
- It still aligns with your goals
- You’re following it consistently
- It’s giving you the results you want, and
If it’s not working for you, adapt it!
2. Don’t Sweep COVID-19 Under the Rug Just Yet
Of course, with COVID still very much a factor for local businesses, it’s important to take the pandemic into consideration when planning for the year ahead. What messages do you want to convey? Have you pivoted in any way? How else has the pandemic affected your business? Ensure your store hours are updated, adjust the number of employees working at a time, factor costs of masks and sanitizer into your budgeting, and keep your Google My Business profile up-to-date at all times, so customers are aware of any changes that may impact how they deal with you.
3. Refresh Your Website
It’s natural that your business and the services or products you offer will evolve over time, so if you haven’t refreshed your website since you launched your business, it probably doesn’t paint an accurate picture of what you do anymore. The reasonable shelf life of your website is three years, give or take. So now is a great time to go through your website and make sure it still reflects your offers, pricing model, brand, and current team!
4. Adopt Automation Wherever Possible
Automation can be nerve-wracking at first; trusting that computers and systems are just going to ‘do’ things for you without you checking in – but the amount of time you will save by adding in automation wherever possible can have a huge impact on your business. And many of these ideas go hand in hand with refreshing your website as well.
For example, consider setting up a scheduling software to allow customers to book appointments with you automatically based on your schedule, and put forms on your website to automatically add new newsletter sign-ups to your mailing list. You can create a simple e-commerce shop to allow customers to order online, and you’ll be automatically notified via email when a new order is placed for you to fulfill. You can even automate your marketing, using scheduling tools to plan and set everything up a week or month ahead, and then you don’t have to worry about posting to your blog or social media when you’re tight on time later in the month.
Automation might feel like a loss of control at first, but the amount of time and control you gain back in the long-run is well worth it. Plus, many of these software solutions offer free basic plans to get you started.
5. De-Clutter Your Documents
Missing emails, lost contracts, version-control problems with documents – nothing causes a bigger headache than unorganized systems! It can be a big task, but now is the time to sit down, create a system that works for you, and put everything where it belongs. While this might take a good chunk of time to complete, you’ll be saving yourself and your employees a lot of time down the road (did you know employees spend, on average, 20% of their time looking for information?)
If your business is in need of a spring cleaning but you don’t know where to start, send us a message and let’s chat about how we can help your business grow! From websites, to Google My Business, to targeted marketing campaigns – 10|20 Marketing can help ensure everything your local business is doing is helping it grow.