It’s never the wrong time to de-clutter and simplify. Just as you should bring fresh air into a stuffy house, you can also breathe life into a company to achieve an improved state of success.
DUST OFF THE COBWEBS
When your marketing goes stale, so does your business. The purpose of cleaning up your online business is to stay relevant to consumers. So, what does it take to be relevant?
- Stay up with the times. Take time every few months to read about new marketing tactics that can apply to your business.
- Be better! Look at what your competitors are doing online, and see if you can do it better.
- Be social. Don’t leave your Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest accounts unattended for long periods of time or consumers will view you as stale, resulting in a loss of fans, followers and connections.
- Appeal to the masses. Make sure the content you are posting appeals to the appropriate audience and remains cognizant of what’s trending in your industry.
STRATEGIZE AND ORGANIZE
Have you embraced the social media realm yet? Let’s face it: social media engagement is important for business success. However, you must be mindful of what you are posting and engaging in on social media. Social activity for the sake of activity is a waste of time. You want to eliminate the excess that doesn’t benefit you.
If it’s not relevant, appealing, or creating revenue for your company, it’s not working for you. At the end of the day, your social interactions should bring a return on investment. There should always be a payoff, so there must be a sound strategy behind any social initiative. Here is one strategy you can follow:
- Pinpoint the ultimate goal. What do we want from our visitors? What is our call to action? Once you have a goal in mind, you can commit and act to follow through and succeed.
- Look at your site’s analytics. What are you doing that’s working? What is not working? What could work better? There is always room for improvement – find out what can and should be improved.
- Look at the social analytics. What do Facebook or Twitter have to offer your business that you may not be taking advantage of? Social media continues to grow, so keeping up to stay relevant is critical.
REFINE A FAMILIAR FOCUS: YOUR AUDIENCE
Whether you’re sweeping up dust bunnies or brainstorming new business strategies, you can ask yourself these questions when reviewing your online marketing:
- What will people think about these efforts?
- How will they make people feel?
- What will people do with this information?
Your content should give your audience something to think about, something to feel good about, and something productive to do. It can appeal to urgency with a limited-time offer or appeal to kindness with a charitable campaign.
No matter what you choose to do, you must focus on how the campaign and efforts will affect your audience. Rethinking or refining your marketing plans will give your business a renewed edge.
REFRESH YOUR BRAND
If you are an extreme organizer, you won’t stop at just the kitchen or attic. You’re going to fix up the entire house, top to bottom. Consider adopting this mentality for refreshing your brand as a whole. Remember these tips for improving your online business brand:
- Define what your brand currently represents. Apple, Pepsi, and McDonald’s have used a variety of different slogans over the years to tailor their brand messages and stay relevant to consumers. It’s part of what makes them so successful. You can do this, too.
- Be consistent in your presentation. Don’t forget what you’ve defined from the beginning. Although your look or slogan may change, the heart of your business should remain the same.
- Be willing to grow and evolve based on your vision, your audience, and your image (keeping consistency in mind).
- Rinse and repeat.
Adam DeGraide is the CEO and founder of Astonish, which was recently ranked 267th on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. DeGraide and his team are the driving forces behind a vision to help the insurance industry across the country grow its businesses by using the Internet. Now currently serving over 800 retail brokers in America, Adam DeGraide and his team at Astonish are encouraging the insurance industry across the country to “join the Internet marketing revolution, or get left behind!â€
The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.