Spring Cleaning for Your Brand

For many of us, springtime brings new energy and ambition to tackle things we’ve been putting off. Why not use that verve to get organized, look at things with new perspective, and do a little spring cleaning for your brand?

Where to start? Here’s a checklist of things that might need a little spit and polish.

Contact lists

Having the right contacts in your database is important for most organizations. Now is a great time to give it a fresh look. Do you have complete info? Have some people changed jobs or switched to working fully from home? If you and your staff don’t know how to contact your customers, how are you going to communicate with them? A regular review of your data will insure you have current info so your efforts aren’t missing the mark (or ending up in the junk folder/trash). It’s ok to reach out and ask your customers for updated info. Just be clear about why (e.g., so we can continue to send you our holiday cheer) and what value sharing the info provides (e.g., so you get insider deals or loyalty gifts). 

While you’re at it, make sure the whole office is using the same database and it’s a system that’s flexible for how you plan to use it throughout the year. Using the right tools for the job can make data management a lot easier to keep current and consistent.

Website and social channels

You probably don’t need a website redesign every year, but giving your site and social channels an editing eye each spring might make a bigger difference than you think. Are you keeping your landing pages current with updated images and regular content additions? Are your staff bios up to date? Are you showcasing your latest case study examples or new product offerings? Is it time to clean out old news posts or dated content? Before you make cuts, make sure to take a look at your analytics to see what customers like and what never gets viewed. You’ll make better decisions about new content types, social channel promotions, or other online marketing efforts if you take time to analyze user data and use it to your advantage.  

Marketing collateral

All the little touchpoints of your brand add up to a bigger impression for your customers. Are you being consistent with your messages? Are your visuals telling a complete story about your brand? Do you have the right tools and templates in place to support all the needs of sales, customer service, or other departments? It might be a good time to audit your marketing collateral. Brochures and newsletters are obvious but don’t forget electronic templates for letters, memos, and invoices as well as email newsletters and social posts. Pay attention to the details like your address lock up, your email signatures, and your writing style. Consistency creates efficiency, clarity, and strength for your brand. Doing little clean up tweaks anywhere you find inconsistencies can make a big difference. 

Marcom plans and content calendars

Many organizations make communications plans in the fall or launch new content calendars at the start of the year, but doing a spring check-in will make sure you are staying on track. A good plan should include elements of being organized and organic. That means you have key themes and planned content mapped out for the year, but you keep your process flexible enough to add in new, more relevant content as the world around you shifts. Spring is the perfect time to reassess. What’s working in your plan? What could use a little modification? Have you over committed in one area and need to add more support or decrease the effort in order to do a better job at hitting the mark? A quick review and some small adjustments might be just what you need to give your brand (and your team) new energy for the second half of the year.

Using this springtime checklist will help you keep up with the changes that happen so quickly in the marketing world. Strong brands get stronger when they pause to reassess, clean out, and put forth a fresh shine.