After 2 tough years, now is the time to spring back into action and aim high to achieve your objectives and galvanise your balance sheet. Spring is a time for new beginnings, for reflecting on what has passed and what is to come. It’s a time for focusing your mind and fine tuning your strategies and your data to deliver on your objectives and achieve the best outcomes.
Spring marks both an ending and a beginning. The end of winter (and Q1) and the beginning of the fresh shoots of Spring. It’s a time for getting ahead, developing, improving; concentrating on your planned strategy and ensuring that it is achievable. Are you still on track and how are your strategic objectives going to be met?
What can you do this Spring to reinvigorate your 2022 marketing strategy? The simple answer is … have a Spring clean:
Look at the products and services you are offering and the way you are marketing them and undertake a ’stop, start, continue’ activity. Take stock of what is working/selling and what needs reviewing/improving. Stop what is not working, start new campaigns and continue with what is bringing in ROI.
Review your website and other marketing collateral. Does this need a Spring clean and a refresh? Take an objective look and compare your marketing/branding with your competitors for an industry-wide view of contemporary branding. Spring clean content, visuals, and functionality to give the best user experience to your website visitors.
Focus on renewal and revitalisation: create a vibrant marketing campaign to match the vigour and dynamism of the season and celebrate the ethos of new life springing forth in all its colours and glory with all the positive promise it brings. From the bright green grass to the yellowing buds on the trees, take inspiration from nature to help design your spring marketing campaigns.
Take a marketing channel inventory: Ensure you are implementing a multi-channel strategy to make the most of disseminating your message as widely as possible. Multi-touch marketing gets most bang for its buck as it raises brand awareness across a variety of touch points. Such an approach will help your short-term and long-term goals and maximise your chance of success.
Consider undertaking a SWOT analysis to see if there are gaps in your strategy and, if so, how you can best fill in these gaps in the Spring season.
No matter how much work you dedicate to the items above, putting a spring back in the step of your marketing will count for nothing if you neglect the lifeblood of all marketing … data.
Now is the time to review your database; is your data looking a little dusty and unkempt? Data, like many other elements of your marketing activity, needs regular cleansing to keep it performing at its best. The key to good data is to care for it … do not neglect it or it will go to seed and be rendered useless.
Contact data can go stale very quickly and is susceptible to decay. Each year, mainly due to job changes or mortalities, business data can decay by c. 30 – 40% making accurate targeted marketing virtually impossible. After only a few years post-purchase/creation, your database could be riddled with inaccuracies and this dirty data will be the cause of your marketing messages failing to hit home and result in lost opportunities, reduced sales and wasted marketing budgets. Dirty data can also result in brand damage, failure to adhere to legislation/regulations, an exodus of customers and inability to prospect for new customers.
Review your options and decide how to make your data work best for you. You can either choose to have your data cleaned, or you can replace it with net new data.
Take a look at your database. Does it need cleansing? Is it up to date? Is your data decaying? Does your database need an injection of new target data or should you be considering subscribing to a data list which is kept accurate and up to date by a specialist third party agency? Giving your data a Spring clean will enhance its value, meaning it will add value to your sales strategy.
If you decide your data needs a revamp, ensure yours is as accurate as possible with a data Spring clean, using a service like PureData. Making sure there’s no dust on your data will ensure your marketing campaigns can work most effectively, hitting the right people at the right time with the right messaging to build your pipeline for months to come.
This spring, breathe new life into existing marketing strategies; polish up your database then use it as a springboard to achieve greatness!