Mid-Year Check In: Cleaning Up Your "Messy Marketing"

Congratulations on making it through the first half of the year! Now that you've had some time to reflect on your marketing efforts and identify areas for improvement, it's time to tackle your small business or nonprofit’s “messy marketing” once again. In this sequel, I’m sharing five additional tips to help you refine your marketing practices for the second half of the year. Follow along!

1. Analyze & Adjust Your Strategy

To avoid repeating the same mistakes, it's essential to have comprehensive reports on all your marketing analytics from the past six months. Gather data on website traffic, social media engagement, conversion rates, campaign performance, and audience feedback. What kind of trends or patterns do you see? What areas need improvement? Use this insight to adjust your marketing strategy, optimize your campaigns, and focus on tactics that have shown success.

2. Review & Refine Your Target Audience

Mid-year is an ideal time to review and refine your target audience. Analyze the demographics, behaviors, and preferences of your existing customer base to gain insights into who your most valuable customers are. Use this information to adjust your marketing messages, channels, and tactics to better resonate with your target audience. By honing in on your ideal target audience, you can optimize your marketing efforts and improve the effectiveness of your campaigns.

3. Leverage Tools & Technology

If you find yourself spending too much time on repetitive tasks or struggling to keep up with various marketing channels, it's time to embrace automation and marketing technology. Identify areas where automation can streamline your processes, such as email marketing, social media scheduling, and paid advertising. Explore marketing tools and platforms that integrate with your existing systems to simplify your workflow, save time, and improve efficiency.

4. Cross Train & Document SOPs

Staff turnover can often disrupt your marketing efforts and lead to inconsistencies. Take this mid-year check in as an opportunity to reset. Prioritize cross training within your marketing team to ensure that multiple team members are familiar with different roles and responsibilities. And if you have not done so already, develop documents that outline step-by-step guidelines, or standard operating procedures (SOPs), for each marketing task. These documents will serve as a reference for staff members, providing clarity on processes and improving consistency among roles.

5. Maintain Consistency & Accountability

After investing time and effort in cleaning up your "messy marketing," it's crucial to establish a system of consistency and accountability within your team to ensure that the improvements you’ve made are sustained throughout the rest of the year. How will you and your team commit to not only putting these tips into motion, but actually following through and sticking with them? Set clear boundaries, adapt when necessary, and keep striving for improvement to achieve your marketing goals.

Remember, marketing is an ever-evolving field, and it's crucial to adapt and reiterate your strategies as you go. By implementing these additional tips and continuously learning from your experiences, you'll be well on your way to transforming your “messy marketing” into a well-oiled machine. Embrace the second half of the year with renewed focus, creativity, and determination to achieve your marketing goals. You got this!

Is your marketing a hot mess? Let the experts at Evergreen Strategic Communications help. For more guidance on how to improve your “messy marketing”, connect with us today!