Ah, summer. When the days get longer and the sun gets hotter, people start taking vacations and work in the office slows way down. While that may mean closing fewer sales or undertaking fewer all-hands-on-deck projects between June and September, there are a few marketing projects perfect for the summer lull.
We think about marketing initiatives as vehicles to get our products and services to prospective clients
(who are similarly in summer mode). But there are many background tasks that underpin our marketing projects and actually make more sense to do while the pipeline is slower. Here are some marketing project to-do’s that we like to check off during the summer months.
SEO Audits
SEO (and its four pillars of links, content, performance and user experience) underpins so many of your digital marketing activities. But while certain tasks can be automated (like reporting), much of SEO maintenance is undeniably dull and time-consuming. Because SEO maintenance tends to languish at the end of to-do lists, SEO audits are the perfect summer marketing project.
When is the last time you checked the length of your page meta titles and descriptions? When we create automatic posts about new projects, events, webinars, we often rely on auto-populated fields for speed and ease. But exceeding your character lengths gets ‘punished’ by search engines like Google, which is not what you want happening to your best-performing pages.
You can also use this opportunity to create ‘topic clusters’ of related blog content. Pick a keyword that fits in a few blog articles (and note ideas for new articles while you’re at it). Then go back to past blogs and add these new keywords to headlines and the introductory paragraph. (While you’re editing, ensure that you have links to your products or service pages, and some sort of clear Call to Action within). Then, insert internal links between each of the articles within the cluster—linking them together to create a robust onsite linking strategy.
Content Calendars & Refreshes
Creating content—both on your website’s blog and across social media channels—can often be the first thing to fall by the wayside when project work takes over. Planning content calendars one quarter ahead is a good way to keep your team on track…if you make time to create them. Thankfully, a summer slowdown is a perfect time for this marketing project. Here are some ways you can come up with brand new content:
- Look ahead to the next quarter and use placeholders for any events (such as conferences) you’ve already committed to.
- Make a plan for webinars and associated supporting content, or research other companies you can partner with.
- Talk to your sales teams to see whether they have any data about specific types of inquiries or requests they get at certain times of year
In addition to planning new content, you can also refresh older content as part of your summer marketing project. Adjust years mentioned if used in articles, re-publish articles about available software
Update WordPress Plugins
Plagued by notifications about updating plugins in WordPress? We’re guilty of ignoring them too. As annoying as they may be, the summer slowdown is the perfect time to work through this. Updating your WordPress plugins ensures they will perform as you need them to. And updating WordPress plugins and themes can be critical for your website security. Developers regularly release updates that increase security by patching the vulnerabilities, therefore strengthening your system against attacks. In fact, one of the most significant ways to reduce your website’s hacking or compromise risk is to keep it updated.
Segment Email Contact Lists
If you’ve been using effective lead magnets, then you have a list of leads who, if not ready for a sale now, may need nurturing in the future. Because anyone can theoretically access your lead magnet in exchange for their email address, consider using your summer months to segment your list of contacts.
You can segment your email list in a few different ways—here are some examples:
- Industry
- Job title
- Geographic area
- Past purchases
Once you have a better idea of who comprises your list, you can create more specific email campaigns based on that group’s interests or pain points.
Need Help Executing Summer Marketing Projects?
Coming up with ways to fill slow hours during the summer is one thing, but executing is another. If you need help with these marketing projects, talk to the team at Paper Sword—we’re here to help lend a hand.
