When you think of spring, what comes to mind? Fresh green grass? Blooming flowers? Baby animals? What about spring cleaning?
Key Takeaways
- Keep your online listings accurate and up to date across directories like Google, Yelp, and Bing
- Make sure your website is fast, mobile-friendly, and easy for customers to use
- Refresh ad campaigns with seasonal messaging, updated targeting, and optimized budgets
- Create spring promotions and limited-time offers to attract seasonal customers
- Update your SEO with fresh content, keywords, and technical improvements
- Actively manage reviews and maintain a clean, engaged email list
The season is all about renewing and refreshing—that goes for your business too. Most owners probably have things like updating displays, tidying up their reception area, or deep cleaning their trucks on their spring-cleaning list… but they forget about all about their online business presence.
We want you to stay ahead of the competition and make sure your digital presence gets the attention it deserves. So, we’ve put together this marketing refresh checklist that includes the most important areas of focus—your mobile website, listings, ads, SEO, etc.—so that your spring cleaning is as thorough as possible.
[Related: Podcast: 3 Marketing Mindsets to Success]
Marketing refresh checklist
As you plan your digital refresh this spring, follow this checklist to make sure your local business is still following best practices and representing your brand well.
Dust off your listings
When people are looking for information about your business, they won’t just check your website. They might look at your Google Business Profile or the dozens of other directories that exist online like Yelp, Bing Places, Angi, and many more. In fact, 94% of consumers used an online directory to find information about a new or previously used business in the last 12 months.
The important thing to note is that if you made any changes in your information—like your hours of operation, address, or phone number, for example—all those directories don’t automatically update to match.
When surveyed, 93% of respondents indicated that it was frustrating to find incorrect information about a business online. So, you need to make an effort to compare and correct all those listings, and spring is the perfect time to do it.
Here’s a quick checklist:
- Verify business hours
- Upload new photos
- Respond to recent reviews
- Update services and categories
- Add spring promotions
Bonus Tip: Not sure where exactly your business is listed online? Use our free Business Listings Scan to see how your business information appears.
Freshen up your mobile website experience
As we move further into the digital age, we know how crucial it is to have a local business website (Over three-quarters of shoppers visit a business’s website before its physical location), but even that is no longer enough.
Your website also needs to be optimized for mobile. As of late last year, mobile devices accounted for 62.54% of global website traffic.
Add this quick mobile audit checklist to your spring to-do:
- Loads under 3 seconds
- Click-to-call phone number
- Address and hours are visible
- No horizontal scrolling
- Buttons are thumb-sized
- Simple navigation
- Images load quickly
- Forms are easy to fill out
- Reviews are visible
- Directions are easy to open
Why is this important? Because nearly 90% of consumers will shop with a competitor after a poor website experience.
Polish your ad campaigns
A new season is the perfect time to take a look at your ad campaigns and give them a refresh. Or if you haven’t begun using ads yet, this season is a great time to start. 84% of small businesses said that they see good results from their PPC advertising campaigns.
Use this as a guideline when assessing campaigns:
- Review Google Ads performance
- Update seasonal copy
- Adjust budgets based on results
- Test new audiences
- Create seasonal landing pages
Bonus Tip: Our Ad Campaigns solution is powered by the Hibu One platform, which means our experts handle the creation, optimization, and ongoing management for you. Plus, you’ll see exactly how your campaigns are performing through a simple, centralized dashboard 24/7—not just during your spring check-in.
Plant spring promotions
Spring is a season of new beginnings, which makes it the perfect time to introduce fresh offers that attract customers who are ready to get out, spend, and start new projects. Whether it’s homeowners tackling repairs, families planning holiday events, or people simply enjoying the warmer weather, seasonal promotions can give customers the extra nudge they need to choose your business.
Think about what your customers typically need during this time of year and create offers that match those needs. Limited-time offers also create urgency, encouraging customers to act sooner rather than later.
Here are a few ways to plant the seeds for successful spring promotions:
- Create limited-time seasonal discounts
- Bundle popular services or products
- Offer spring-themed packages
- Promote specials across social media and email
- Add promotions to your website and listings
- Highlight offers in your ad campaigns
Seasonal offers can have a big impact on buying behavior, with 53% of shoppers saying they delay purchases until seasonal discounts become available.
Refresh and revive your SEO
Search engine optimization (or SEO) is what helps your business appear when customers search online for products and services like yours. And because search engines reward websites with fresh, optimized content, giving your strategy a little refresh this spring is a good idea.
We know that only 25% of people go to page two on Google. In other words, 75% of people never scroll past the first page of the search engine results page (SERP.) So, getting your site on that first page is crucial to staying ahead of the competition.
Add these SEO tasks to your spring checklist:
- Update meta titles and descriptions
- Refresh outdated blog posts and service descriptions
- Add internal links
- Optimize for new keywords
- Update schema or structured data
Even small improvements like these can make a big difference over time.
Bonus Tip: Creating seasonal content, like spring landing pages or blog posts, can help your business show up for timely searches and bring in new local traffic.
Spruce up your reviews
Remember how we said people go online to check out your business before ever making a purchase, appointment, or visiting your physical location? Well, reviews play a big part in that research.
Data shows us that 72% of consumers will take action only after reading a positive review, making them an important part of your digital marketing strategy.
Take some time this spring to check in on your review profiles and make sure they reflect the quality of service your business provides.
This quick review refresh checklist can help:
- Respond to recent reviews (both positive and negative)
- Thank customers for their feedback
- Address concerns professionally and helpfully
- Encourage satisfied customers to leave a review
- Check major review platforms like Google, Yelp, and Facebook
- Monitor your overall rating and trends
Businesses that actively manage their reviews not only build stronger customer relationships but also increase trust with people who are discovering them for the first time.
Tidy up your email list
Email is one of the best ways to keep in touch with your customers directly. The average open rate for email across all industries is 80%. But it only works well if they’re actually getting the emails.
A healthy email list can help improve open rates and conversions, but over time, it can become cluttered with inactive subscribers or outdated contact information. Which is why giving it a tidy should be on your priority list this season.
Start by reviewing your existing list and removing contacts who haven’t engaged in a long time. Then focus on strengthening the connection with the customers who remain.
Add these tasks to your spring email checklist:
- Remove inactive or invalid email addresses
- Update customer contact information
- Segment your list by interests or past purchases
- Create a spring newsletter or promotion email
- Add a signup form to your website
- Encourage in-store customers to join your list
A clean, organized email list makes it easier to share updates, promotions, and helpful content throughout the year.
[Related: Why Local Businesses Need an All-in-One Marketing Platform]
Avoid all the digital marketing clutter with Hibu One
When you’re managing your digital marketing on top of all the other day-to-day tasks that come with running a local business, things might get a little messy from time to time. And that’s ok, as long as you make some time each year to tidy everything back up.
This checklist can help you do just that.
But, if you want to make sure your market strategy stays perfectly optimized and clutter-free all year long, it might be time to partner with Hibu.
Our all-in-one digital marketing platform—Hibu One—is powered by AI and backed by decades of local marketing expertise to make your marketing easier, more efficient, and more effective. You’ll get:
- A custom, professionally built website
- Listings, reviews, and reputation management
- Automated email and text marketing tools
- A centralized analytics dashboard
With the option to add other solutions powered by Hibu One, like:
- Search, display, and social media advertising
- A fully managed SEO service
It truly is everything you need to amplify and grow your business online.
Ready to learn more? Call us today at 877-237-6120 for a no-cost consultation or request a Hibu One demo.
