Marketing Inventory Checklist

December 21, 2021

Making the most of what you have.

What’s not OK is when we do all the work to move forward and build marketing assets but don’t use them because we never took the next step. Then those hard earned assets are about as useful for growing your business as the change sitting under your couch cushions is for buying Starbucks.  You earned that money but you can’t use it when it’s hibernating in the crevices of the couch.

When it comes to marketing we all start where we are. And that’s OK. Pat yourself on the back for being where you are. 

Whether you put an email signup form on your site and forgot all about it and didn’t send an email to any of those contacts for years or you set up a paypal account to collect payments and never remember to transfer the money into your bank account each is pretty painful.

I have personally forgotten every single one of the items on this checklist at least once.  And learned the hard way exactly how crappy it feels to forget the final steps to put marketing assets into play. Let’s take a look at my list of misadventures so you can learn from my mistakes instead of making them yourself.

Website

Site Admins

Review your site admins. Make sure all the users on your website should actually be users and, and are not past employees. Delete anyone who should no longer have access, just don’t delete ALL the site administrators! You don’t want to accidentally lock yourself out of your website.

Staff, Service & Project Pages

Look at your staff and services pages. 

• Are there services that you offer that are not listed on your website right now?
• Are there staff members that haven’t been added to the website or their staff members that need to be taken off the website? 
• Are there job listings that have expired? 
• Are there events that have passed?
• Are there projects that need to be added? 
• Are there projects that are just kind of not cool anymore?  

Phone Friendly?

Make sure that your website doesn’t stink for your mobile users. Open your website on your phone. Really look at it, click on stuff. 

• Does it work? 
• Do you hate it? 
• Does it look cool?

People are more likely to view your site on their phone now more than ever. Every year for the past 5 years I have seen an increase in mobile traffic on every website I review…and that’s a lot. Most websites have a minimum of 25% of traffic from a mobile device.  

Look at your biggest competitor on your phone.
What does their website look like? 

Because we may have built this website four or five years ago, when things were really different out there. The browsers were different, the website expectations were different. Is your website keeping up with the times (and the Joneses)?

Test the Contact Form

This may seem like a strange suggestion initially, but you should pretend to be a visitor to your own site and fill out your contact form—or application, or whatever lead generator you use on your website. This will accomplish two things: First, you need to find out if the lead generator is set up to collect all the information you need to work the lead and is working properly. Is your form asking for enough information and is that information being sent to the right place in the right way so that it’s easy for your staff to collect it, collate it and use it?

Second, you should receive a confirmation email. You want to see whether people are getting an email back that’s meaningful to them, starts a relationship with them and tells them what the next step in the process is going to be. Because sometimes we just set up a website, and then we never test the form so we don’t know what the response looks like. But if you think about it, this is the first time that people come in contact with your business. Is it nice? Do you seem competent and helpful in that email?

Test Your Payment Gateway

If you offer the ability to make donations on your site or make payments but don’t receive them regularly, now’s a good time to test your payment gateway (in layman’s terms test paying online on your site). Are you getting a success email? Did the transaction complete? Did the payment go into your bank account? Were you notified of the payment? 

Email Marketing

Keep The List Updated

You have to keep your email lists updated. I know; it’s incredibly painful. But you’ve gathered these emails all year and odds are good that you may have forgotten to add more than a few contacts to your email marketing list. 

• Export new clients from billing.
• Export from your sales or donor management software. 
• Export all the people signed up for events last year.
• If you attended events, and they gave you an email list, make sure add all those new friends in your email marketing.

Nothing feels worse than gathering all these contacts all year long and then realizing they were never added to your email list. You could have been building your relationship with hundreds more people throughout the year. Make sure you do that year-end housekeeping to get all those contacts properly sorted into your email systems so you can be in an even better place for relationship-building next year.

Social Media

Keep The Best, Ditch The Rest

A lot of us are in more than one network. If one network is really working, and another that’s not, be brave enough to let go of the dud and keep the winner. 

You don’t have to be everywhere. You just need to be where your audience is. If you tried out a new network and it’s just not growing that’s OK. You can let it go if it’s extra work for you, takes too much time or isn’t within your strength or your skill set. If people aren’t responding to it, you can stop. 

If you’ve been posting on LinkedIn because you think this is where construction people need to be, but nobody’s clicking on your stuff and you don’t have time to make it work, stop putting it out on LinkedIn. What’s the worst thing that could happen?

Review Admins

Just like your website, I want you to go review your social media page admins to make sure all those people should still have access. The last thing you want is for an ex-employee to suddenly get pissed-off at you and take revenge by posting something inflammatory on your social media channels.

While you’re at it, take a look at your email notifications from each of your networks. Are you receiving notifications from your business accounts? (Are you even the right person to get those notifications?)

Don’t Be Afraid To Ask

Check and make sure that you are inviting the people who interact with your social media posts to like your page. A lot of people forget to do that on a regular basis. But it’s one of the easiest ways to grow your following.

Another super easy way to grow your following is to invite all your staff to invite everyone they know to like your page. We’re all continually connecting with people via social media but we often forget to ask them to like our pages, now’s the time to do it! 

That Was In My Teeth The Whole Time??

You take at least one last look in the mirror before going out on a date, right? 

Your social media also makes a first impression. Is it still the right one?

Check your chat and messenger autoresponders to make sure you have them set up correctly and that they say what you want them to say. Make sure you’re interacting with potential customers the same way you would in person.

While you’re out there do some reconnaissance to make sure that your contact information, logo, cover image and hours are correct too.

Keep the change ya filthy animal!

Like I said before, I have personally forgotten every single one of the items on this checklist at least once. Learn from my misadventures. Don’t feel bad, get even!  Excavate the change from your couch. Make sure you’re up-to-date and start your next marketing push where you are now, not where you were last year.