July Small Business Marketing To Do List

Depending on your industry, you may find that the heat of the summer is your busiest time of the year, or it’s a time for planning and scheming for your fall and winter boom. Regardless of which is the situation for your business, we want to help you capture everything you need to be doing to make your summer marketing succeed.

One-Hour Tasks

Website Upgrades

Is there functionality you’ve been wanting to add to your website? Perhaps it’s the ability to register for events right on your site instead of using EventBrite, or allowing customers to log in to see past purchases and receipts. Or perhaps you’ve been hosting your event calendar in an embedded Google calendar that is ugly and unwieldy. A simple WordPress plugin and an hour of transitioning that data may be the perfect solution that will make a huge difference in your customer experience. 

Event sponsorships

Sponsoring events hosted by your community or other organizations can expand your reach beyond those you usually connect with. But figuring out which festivals, sports, or events takes time, and then of course contracts, planning your marketing materials and maybe even staffing a booth all need to be accounted for.

Event Prep

You’re probably attending or hosting a few events in the coming months so set aside some time to work on everything you’ll need to be successful at those. Check you have enough product and merch, that you share where you’ll be on social media, and that your event calendar listings are up to date. You also might consider changing strategy based on ticket sales. For example, if your author signing has sold out, perhaps stop running ads for that event and focus on your book club instead.

Holiday Heads Up

It’s wild to think about, but the fall holidays are approaching and it’s a great idea to start thinking about Halloween and other important fall celebrations now before you’re scrambling to come up with creative ways to market your business just before the busy winter months.

Level Up Your Loyalty Program

Customer retention can be a powerful tool for your business because it is affordable and serves long-term growth, not just seasonal spikes. Consider how you can improve your loyalty programs and attract more of your current customers to join it.

The tasks in this category could take as little as an hour, but if you’ve got some major events or website upgrades you want to tackle, that could of course take significantly longer. The point is to move it up from the wish list to the to-do list, plan and start.

30-Minute Tasks

Create Content

Planning out what you’re going to post on social media for at least the next two weeks can save you a lot of headaches each day. It can be the first thing that falls by the wayside if you’re juggling other responsibilities, so it’s best if you can set aside time for it. We like to not only think about what we’re posting, but then actually create the content, whether that’s a graphic you’re creating in Canva or a photo or video you need to shoot, then write captions and potentially even schedule the post in the platforms. It will depend on your goals, but we recommend a minimum of 2-3 posts or reels with 5-6 stories on Instagram and Facebook per week, 10-15 pins on Pinterest, 2-3 posts on LinkedIn, or 10-15 videos on TikTok.

Send Your Monthly Email Newsletter

Other than transactional emails related to purchases, you should be sending at least a monthly email newsletter that gives some business updates to your subscribers. If you templatize it, it should be simple to create each month and a great way to connect with your most loyal fans.

As always, some of these items need to be done every month, or even multiple times per month. And one of those items is updating your entire team. Your bartenders, booksellers, and cashiers should know about all your current events, promotions and new product releases since they are your business’s direct connection to your customers.

5-Minute Tasks

Socialize With Your Customers

If you haven’t already scheduled your social media content, take time to do that, but also scroll a bit from your business accounts. Like, comment, share, and save that content. It truly does help the algorithm know that you’re a great account to recommend to other potential followers. Respond to DMs, comments and messages, and reply to reviews, emails and voicemails.

Add To Your Google Business Profile

Speaking of social media algorithms, you should add a post and photos to your GBP at least once a week to keep that content fresh. That little sidebar might be the first thing folks see when they Google you, so make it good

Peek In On Your Paid Ads

Your Google Ads, social media ads, or any other advertising you’re currently running might need a couple check ins throughout each campaign. Ensure you are adding or removing relevant keywords, tweaking your daily budget or cost per click, or even just analyzing the results and noting what you can do to improve the next one.

If you haven’t seen our previous monthly marketing to-do lists, you can read them here. There certainly may be items you haven’t completed yet from previous months that you want to add to your plan.