5 Tips for Your Digital Marketing Spring Cleaning

You probably often think of spring cleaning as an endeavor involving dusting, mopping, and Lysol. But, like everything else in our lives, digital marketing strategies also occasionally require a little bit of upkeep. Letting your online marketing tactics run on autopilot can be a recipe for diminishing returns. That’s why taking some time to engage in a little digital marketing spring cleaning is valuable.

So, whether your digital marketing strategy involves just a basic company website or you have a vast network of marketing channels, it’s important to assess your tactics and clean them up when necessary.

1. Make Sure Your Website is Functional in Every Capacity

The last thing any prospective customer wants to see when they go to your website is a 404 error or images that fail to load properly. A website that doesn’t function well will produce a negative impression on a visitor. Studies have shown that 39% of internet users will simply leave a website if they have to wait for images to load or if images never load at all.

So, it’s a good idea to assess all the individual pages on your website to ensure that everything is formatted correctly and that everything loads completely and in a timely manner. Of course, it’s not uncommon for websites to develop issues like:

• Dead links
• Pages that are no longer necessary
• Design flaws
• Outdated contact information or other details

It’s also important for your website to be optimized for mobile. According to Statista, mobile traffic accounts for 52% of all website traffic on the internet, meaning that it’s likely that over half of all your visitors are coming to your website via a mobile device. If your site is finicky when viewed from a smartphone, then you may want to invest in an overhaul.

2. Perform a Content Audit

Auditing, by its very nature, is tedious and not particularly fun. But, it’s also necessary to adjudicate the value of the content on your website with a content audit. This is just as important as making sure the functionality and formatting of the website are intact because the content is a marketing tool that can bring in more clients.

So, what does a content audit actually entail? A good content audit asks all of the following questions:

• Is the content up-to-date? – As an example, blog posts from 5 years ago might feature information that is inaccurate or no longer relevant. Consider updating this information, or simply remove the post and write a new article to reflect the changes.
• Is the content thorough? – Every page on your website should provide some value, whether it’s a page informing visitors about your brand or a how-to guide on your blog. If you have pages that are thin on valuable information, expand and improve them.
• Is the content covered elsewhere on the site? – If you have a lot of blog posts or pages with duplicate messages, it’s likely you can excise some of them or combine them all into one page. With multiple pages discussing the same topics, you run the risk of providing disparate or less authoritative information.
• What are the metrics? – With tools like Google Analytics, you can identify metrics like traffic rates, engagement, keyword efficacy, time spent on the page, and others. Find out which types of pages on your website work most effectively so that you can use the same tactics in the future.

3. Perform a Social Media Audit

Yes, digital marketing spring cleaning requires more than one type of audit. It’s likely that, over the course of your business’s existence, you have opened up and abandoned more than one social media profile. It’s also probable that you have plenty of social channels that perform efficiently and bring in traffic.

In most cases, it’s not a good look to simply leave social profiles dormant. Either make an actionable plan to improve engagement on those platforms or get rid of the profiles altogether. In some cases, you can keep little-used channels around if they provide some SEO value. Whatever you do, you might want to consider updating the look of your social media profiles to provide a fresher look for your brand.

You can also clean up your social media profiles by getting rid of spam comments or bot followers and by unfollowing inactive or fake accounts. This will give you a better accounting of who is seeing and engaging with your content. Also, consider looking through links on your social channels to see if they still work and deleting posts that are no longer relevant or functional.

Furthermore, remember to check your Wikipedia presence. Since anyone can edit the site, there’s a good chance that a competitor or ex-employee has taken the time to add a few unfavorable items to your page. Although not technically a social media platform, you need to make sure to clean up your Wikipedia page to maintain a positive presence online. 

4. Take a Deep Dive into Your Email Database

It’s very likely that you have a database or list of email addresses. You probably also send a good amount of promotional emails to this list. Though, sometimes, you might be better off tossing a message in the bottle in the ocean. 

Email addresses that no longer exist or whose users simply don’t engage with your messages are dead weight. You can get them out of your database to focus on clients who actually want to receive your messages. If you want, you can also reach out to inactive email addresses with a message that asks something like, “Do you still want to receive these messages?” 

Beyond that, you should also assess the quality of the emails you’re sending. Do the links in the contact info still work? Are there people listed in the contact info that are no longer employed by your business? Is the design of the emails still relevant to your brand? How successful are the email campaigns?

5. Monitor and Improve Data Security

Data security is an increasingly important concern for many consumers. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, a full 92% of consumers believe companies should take preventative measures to avoid hacks and cyber attacks. Not investing in data security can leave you vulnerable to such attacks and, ultimately, customer defections.

A simple step you can take is to strengthen your passwords and make a plan to change them every two to three months. You can also ensure that you update programs, firewalls, and systems frequently to ensure that they have the latest security protections. A good data security policy will increase consumer trust in your brand.

Concluding Thoughts

Springtime is a great time to take a look at all of your digital marketing channels and clean them up a little. If you neglect any spring cleaning, you might end up with a huge mess on your hands and a digital marketing strategy that is less effective than it could be.