Blog & Podcast Takeaways (TLDR/TLDL):
Topic: A 5-step, mid-year marketing and messaging checkup framework to help small business owners refocus, re-energize, and move into the second half of the year with clarity and intention.
What you’ll learn: Most business owners do a single annual review, but a mid-year checkup gives you the chance to course-correct while you still have half the year left to act on what you find. This post walks through five diagnostic steps: taking stock of where you’ve been and what you’ve accomplished, honestly evaluating where you want to go from here, checking the vital signs of your content and messaging energy, running the diagnostics on your numbers and metrics, and doing a brain scan on your mindset, messaging, and whether your marketing still reflects who you actually are and who you’re actually serving. Ends with a practical set of intentions to carry into the second half of the year.
Who this is for: Entrepreneurs, coaches, service providers, and small business owners who want to pause, take an honest look at where their marketing and messaging stand, and head into the second half of the year with renewed clarity, energy, and focus.
Written and Produced by: Emily Aborn, Small Business Copywriter and Podcast Host of the Small Business Casual Podcast, based in NH.
Refocus & Re-Energize
If your business had a body, how would the heartbeat be?
Is the pulse alive and thriving or slowly dragging its feet forward?
In this episode, we’re doing a mid-year check-up on our marketing and messaging! You’ll walk away with the tools you need to do a full scan with clarity, revived energy, and next steps.
Put on your surgical-grade gloves, get out the stethoscopes, and refresh and refocus!
A lot of people do their business check-ups once a year, around New Year’s or tax time.
Personally, I like to do four smaller check-ins throughout the year and one big one at year-end.
Especially when you’re moving at a breakneck speed, a marketing check-up can give you a solid lay of the land so you can keep moving forward with intention and momentum.
No matter how often you decide to do them, this will break it all down for you so you can hit the ground with renewed energy, a pep in your step, and all the vitamins you need to keep on crushing it!
I. Taking the Health History
Where have you been already in the first 6 months of this year? What have you accomplished, overcome, and set into motion?
Take time to think about and write down:
- Personal and professional wins and celebrations
- Clients you’ve worked with and loved (don’t forget to add how they found you!)
- Speaking engagements and podcast appearances
- Events you’ve attended
- New collaborations
- Things you’ve launched or started
- Things you’ve stopped
- What’s gone well?
- What lessons have you learned?
- Posts, podcasts, or specific content that’s gotten engagement
- Platforms you’ve been seeing more traction on
- Marketing strategies in motion
This gives you a bird’s eye view of where you’ve been thus far this year.
II. What Brings You in Today?
Where do you want to go from here? Consider and reflect on these questions:
- Are you on track with your goals, values, or vision, or are you drifting away from them? Be honest!
- What’s working right now in your content, marketing, messaging, and business as a whole? Where are you feeling oh-so-good; yes, please more of that!?
- What’s not working? Where do you feel stuck or uninspired?
- Where do you want to go!? What do you want to accomplish, do, be, feel in the next 6 months?
- What needs to be tweaked or recalibrated (voice, tone, offers, frequency, platform focus) in order to get you there?
- What do you want more of in the next 6 months? Less of?
- Are you trying to talk to the same people, or have your ideal clients evolved? What do you need to do to make these adjustments?
✔️ Know who you’re talking to
✔️ Ensure your content is relevant
✔️ Are you excited (not just obligated) to create and share?
✔️ Are your people digging it and engaging?
✔️Are you as consistent as you want to be?
✔️ Have you clarified your message without updating it everywhere?
III. Checking the Vitals
Taking the pulse, checking for life, and ensuring you’re not running on fumes.
Here, we’re trying to answer:
- What’s alive and thriving in your business marketing and the content you’re sharing?
- Are you still excited to show up? Do you feel connected to your message?
- Take the pulse: Do people understand what you do when they land on your stuff?
- What topics/content are getting my energy lately? Which feels flat?
- What’s been energizing to create lately?
We WANT to and should feel excited about what we’re sharing! We also want to make sure our message is consistent with our brand values, voice, and tone… cohesive across the board. If not, do you need a major business marketing surgery or just a band-aid? This will help you know where you need to focus and if you need help to move forward.
IV. Running the Diagnostics
This is where you might look at any numbers, metrics, or analytics relevant to you.
- Your bank account
- Your website analytics
- Ratios like: How many people go from a connect call → paying client?
- How much revenue are you generating?
- How are your expenses?
- Any sneaky little subscriptions that are sucking up all your dough on the regular?
- Are you getting ROI from your investments?
This is like taking the blood of your business to find those numbers and identify problems before things get out of hand, in either direction!
You may also need to make some decisions here. If you’ve been investing time, money, and energy somewhere (and given it the time it deserves) and there’s no budging in those numbers, perhaps it’s time to see whether or not it’s worth it.
V. Brain Scan Time!
The Brain Scan checks in on the powerhouse of the whole operation.
- Does your messaging match what you’re currently offering or want to be
- How’s your mindset around your marketing?
- Has your audience evolved? Are you still speaking to the same version of your ideal client?
- What’s grown or shifted, but you haven’t updated your messaging and content to reflect that?
- Have you outgrown past thinking?
- Have you got any old beliefs, thoughts, patterns still pervading your beautiful business owner brain?
And of course, no good doctor would let you leave your check-up without…
A plan!
We’ve done the full scope, head-to-toe exam, and now we’re going to make a few recommendations.
No prescription needed, but instead, things YOU want to set as intentions for the next 6 months:
- What’s your intention for the second half of the year?
- How do you want to FEEL? How can take a step to feel this way right away? Today?!
- What are your MAIN 3 focuses here on out?
- What do you want to double down on?
- What do you want to let go of?
- What support do you need internally or externally to keep going?
If you could wipe the slate clean and design the second half of the year however you want (spoiler alert: you can!), what would you prioritize?
And, my dear patient, there you have it…
We successfully just gave you your mid-year marketing and messaging checkup! I hereby issue you a clean bill of health, with just a few little things to work on moving forward.
Here are two more podcast episodes along these same lines I recommend giving a listen:
- Tonya Leigh’s School of Self-Image Podcast Episode 444) How to Make the Next Six Months Your Best Yet
- Andrea Jones Mindful Marketing Podcast Episode 356) What To Do When Marketing Feels Hard
If you need me, you know where to find me! I’ll be right alongside you doing this in my business, too!
FAQ: Mid-Year Marketing Checkup
Why do a mid-year marketing checkup instead of just an annual review?
+ Because waiting until year-end to evaluate means spending six months potentially headed in the wrong direction. A mid-year checkup allows you to course-correct while there’s still meaningful time left to act on what you find. It also prevents the kind of end-of-year overwhelm that comes from trying to process twelve months of decisions all at once. Smaller, more frequent check-ins keep your marketing aligned with where you actually are rather than where you were when you set your goals in January.
What should I review during a mid-year marketing checkup?
+ Five areas worth covering.
1. Take stock of where you’ve been: wins, clients, content that performed well, platforms gaining traction, and lessons learned.
2. Get honest about where you want to go and whether you’re currently on track.
3. Check your vital signs: are you still excited about what you’re sharing, and does your audience seem engaged?
4. Run the diagnostics on your numbers: revenue, website analytics, conversion ratios, expenses, and whether your marketing investments are producing results.
5. Do a brain scan on your messaging: does it still reflect your current offers, your evolved ideal client, and where you actually want to be headed?
How do I know if my marketing needs a major overhaul or just a small adjustment?
+ Ask yourself whether the core of what you do, who you help, and why you do it has fundamentally changed, or whether it’s more that the expression of those things needs a refresh. If your messaging no longer reflects your current offers, your audience has evolved significantly, or you’ve outgrown the way you’ve been showing up, that’s more of a surgical situation. If things feel slightly off but the foundation is solid, a band-aid adjustment, updating your bio, refreshing a few key pages, or shifting your content focus may be all you need. The checkup process helps you tell the difference.
What questions should I ask myself at a mid-year marketing review?
- Am I still excited to create and share, or does it feel like an obligation?
- Do people understand what I do when they land on my content or website?
- What’s been energizing to create lately, and what feels flat? Am I talking to the same ideal client I was six months ago, or has that evolved?
- What do I want more of in the second half of the year, and what am I ready to let go of?
- If I could design the next six months however I wanted, what would I prioritize?
How often should small business owners check in on their marketing?
+ At minimum 2-4x a year. A quarterly check-in doesn’t need to be as comprehensive as an annual review. It can simply be a shorter pulse check: what’s working, what’s not, what needs attention, and what one thing would make the biggest difference right now. The goal is to keep your marketing aligned with where you actually are, rather than running on autopilot from decisions you made months ago that may no longer fit.
