When most people think of spring cleaning, they automatically picture everything in the garage being hauled to the curb on trash day and deep cleaning inside the home. While these are two activities that are certainly in the spirit of spring cleaning, it’s important to realize that this time of year is the perfect time to make changes beyond the home. As a small business owner, you should use this opportunity to clean up some things around your company so you’re ready to step into summer with a clutter-free work area and strategies that’ll go the extra mile with your marketing money.
Where should you focus your attention and energies? Here are five spring cleaning tips for small business owners that will help you put your best foot forward as the weather starts warming up.
1. Check in with Your Digital Footprint
Check for accuracy across your digital footprint. Is your business information correct and consistent across all of your profiles and channels? If not, it’s time to make an update.
Checking in with all the various channels can be a tedious task, but it’s something that shouldn’t be ignored for too long. You should do a thorough review of all the places where your business’s information is found at least once a year, which makes spring the perfect time to pen it onto your calendar.
Why is this important?
Well, there are a number of reasons. For starters, if you have different addresses, business names, phone numbers, websites, or hours of operation listed across multiple online platforms, the chances are high that you’ll confuse your current and future customers. If you’re lucky, they’ll reach out to you and ask for clarification. More than likely, however, they’ll keep looking for a company that cares enough about its online image to update its information so people have everything they need when they’re ready to make contact.
Your business information needs to be accurate and active on all online channels and platforms. Check to make sure you’re not displaying an old phone number that’s sending people to a dead phone line, or worse, a different business.
Be mindful that your online information can change without your knowledge, so it’s important to check in what’s being displayed to your potential customers at least once a year.
2. Refresh Your Brand
Use this time to update your social media profiles. After all, when was the last time you changed your cover photos? Changing backgrounds and cover photos are simple ways to update the look and feel of your social media sites without exerting a lot of effort.
You could even make a subtle change to your actual logo. Today’s modern logos are streamlined and simple. If your logo seems outdated and doesn’t seem to match what’s out there in the contemporary universe, it might be time to do a logo refresh.
You’ll want to make sure you’re using high-resolution logos for your business, so this is a good time to check in with the images you’ve been using to see if you can create logos that have an even higher resolution, which will offer your visitors a crisper, cleaner visual experience when they visit your website and social media pages.
Think about creating a new visual style that’s in line with your brand. You can do this in several ways, including:
- Substituting your typeface. Just like logos evolve over time, so do people’s preferences in typography. Simple serifs are popular and easy to read. While script and handwriting fonts were once trendy, the truth is, they’re hard to read and don’t always set the right tone for all uses.
- Expand your color palette. A splash of new color can make your site and brand more visually appealing. A lot of today’s color palettes include vibrant hues of magenta, lime green, orange, and bright blue. If your brand identity doesn’t align with such vivid colors, you can still add complementary colors to your existing brand identity to boost a modern appeal. Remember, a change in color doesn’t have to be forever; you can use this update to spice up a specific campaign or evolve your color palette again when trends change.
- Incorporate a trend into the overall design. Other trends exist besides color and typography. Maybe you add a background video on your website or incorporate flat style buttons in your site’s design. Be mindful that using trends does come with risks; they can quickly fall out of style. But, if you’re just making aesthetic changes and not completely overhauling your branding, you can probably handle the changes when trends are replaced with new fads.
- Invest in new video or photography. New imagery can give your brand a facelift in an instant. Check out your photo collection, for instance. This may seem like a very little thing, but this type of giveaway can make your brand look dated, even if it’s not. Invest in new photography or video that showcases your products and services in action. Be sure the images are high resolution and cropped to standard screen sizes.
- Add a secondary mark with a modern flair. If you’re tired of trying to fit your logo into thumbnails on websites and social pages, there’s a simple solution. Create a secondary logo that’s simple, excludes text, and can easily pop into oddly-shaped and -sized locations. This second, more streamlined logo, will make it a breeze for you to fill your social spaces when your primary logo doesn’t fit the bill.
3. Optimize Your Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile, formally named Google My Business, is a local business’s best friend. If you don’t already have your business claimed and your profile set up, that’s your first step. Do that right now!
Once you’ve created your account, you’ll want to learn to use this free tool to its fullest extent. Every feature and function of your Google Business Profile fills in an important piece of the marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) puzzle, but there are certain elements you should absolutely work to understand and utilize right away.
- Posts. These appear in your profile when a person looks for your company’s name on Google or views your Google Business Profile on Google Maps. Your Posts can even be shared on social media to maximize your exposure and customer outreach efforts.
- Reviews. Potential customers trust people who have already worked with your brand. As such, reviews and testimonials are extremely important to gaining new attention and ushering future customers down the sales funnel. Beyond that, Google’s algorithms take your reviews into account when they’re deciding where to put you in the search engine results pages (SERPs). The more five-star reviews you have (and the more recently you’ve received them), the more likely you are to be rewarded with a great ranking from the search engine.
- Q&A. The Questions and Answers section of the profile offers you a great place to answer questions one person asks to your entire audience base. This makes it easy for your customers to gather the information they need about your business without having to talk to you. It also helps factor into your overall SEO efforts, as you can (and should) add strategic keywords to your Q&A section.
4. Diversify Your Ads Budget
Increase your effectiveness in reaching your target audience (and reach a wider audience) by diversifying how you spend your ad budget across multiple platforms. On Google, you should use both AdWords and Local Service Ads. Then, you can head to social and place your brand before people who haven’t yet heard of you. You need to know where your audience is so you can make the most of your efforts. Consider diversifying across:
- Bing
- YouTube
5. Clean Up Your Physical & Digital Workspaces
Has your home become too cluttered? Are you using the right digital tools to make life easier as you grow your business?
The way your physical and digital workspaces are set up can completely affect the way they function.
Delete any old photos and posts on social media that no longer accurately represent your brand image and style. Delete any old photos you uploaded to Google Business Profile; maybe you thought some of them were outstanding at the time, but now that you look back on them, they weren’t really so great after all.
Use your spring cleaning time to get down and dirty with cleaning up your physical and digital workspaces.
Attend a Surefire Local Marketing Platform Demo
Knock out all of these spring cleaning items (and more!) within the Surefire Local Marketing Platform. Gain a holistic view of your marketing spend, ROI, and revenue generated from your efforts. Leverage the platform insights to drive the most budget and resources into the channels that deliver the highest ROI; you can get new customers at a cost-per-lead that allows you to be profitable. Grow your business anywhere by accessing the platform from your computer, tablet, or smartphone.
Schedule your demo with Surefire Local today!
