The smartest marketers take thoughtful and strategic approaches to achieve maximum results. That requires planning – a process that can be lengthy.

While we’re huge advocates for creating actionable plans that are rooted in a solid strategy, we also realize that quick and simple changes can often make a pretty big impact.

In that spirit, here are five hot marketing tips you can implement today!

1. Maximize the potential of your email signature

Chances are you’re sending countless emails every day. Those emails are a touchpoint with you and your brand and as such, should be consistent with the rest of your marketing experience.

Take 15 minutes to review your current signature and determine whether there are ways you can update it to better reflect your current brand messaging:

• Is everyone in your organization using the same signature?
• Is the signature compliant with your current brand style?
• Is your brand tagline or a key message incorporated?
• Do you have links to your main social media channels?
• Do you have a link included to your email newsletter sign up form?
• You can also consider incorporating a graphic banner or an offer at the very bottom.

2. Create a simple workflow for customer testimonials

Testimonials from your current clients is where it’s at. It’s a third-party endorsement for your brand that tells your story from the customer’s perspective. While everyone loves a good testimonial, getting one published can be a bit of a time suck. Here’s a simple way to make things easier:

Create a Google Form that contains 3-5 questions for your client to fill out. The goal of the form is to get a basic testimonial, along with a few other details that could lead to a full-on case study. Here are some starting points for the questions:

• What’s your name and title?
• How long have you worked with <your company>?
• Tell us about your experience with <your company>.
• Would you recommend <your company> to others? Why? Why not?

When you wrap a big project with a client or you have a customer who provides you with positive feedback, just grab the link to your form and ask them to fill out the questionnaire for you. Easy-peasy!

3. Utilize templates whenever possible

Do you find yourself writing the same “type” of email over and over and over again? Same!

There’s a handy little tool in Outlook that lets you create templates. This allows you to write copy for certain types of emails that you find yourself sending on a regular basis. Once you’ve saved your template, all you have to do is open a new email, select the template you want to use, and the email is pretty much pre-written for you. Plug in some timely details, and you’re off to the races!

Here are three ways you can deploy this:

• If you have certain processes or workflows your customers go through when they work with you, write up a description of each process and save it as a template.
• Write out your value proposition or brand position and save it as a template. This will allow you to integrate it into emails to prospects. This has the added benefit of ensuring you are communicating your benefits in a consistent manner.
• Do you find yourself explaining certain product features or answering the same questions repeatedly? Save the answers as a template and then just plug them in whenever you get the question.

4. Give your content more legs

If you publish, they will come…right? Wrong!

While it’s good to take a moment to relish in your accomplishment of getting a blog post published, retrain your brain to also look at it as the beginning of a new phase: giving your content more legs! You spent a lot of time pulling together the perfect post. Now, that content can live in more places than just on your blog. Here are some examples:

• Write three social media updates that you can use to push folks from your social profiles to the full blog post.
• Turn your blog post into a LinkedIn carousel. Here’s an example of what that could look like.
• Pull out key sections of the article – or quotes – and create a banner for your website home page or graphic that you can share on social media.
• Write a two-paragraph tease for the article that you can incorporate into your next email newsletter.

5. Be social on social

How often do you pick up your phone to go on social media with a clear goal? We’re guessing not very often.

If you find yourself passively scrolling your LinkedIn feed during the day, stop yourself and reframe the action. Spend 15 minutes purposefully scrolling to interact with customers, prospects or employees on LinkedIn. Read their posts, and then make a thoughtful reply that demonstrates that you read their post. Send a direct message to someone you haven’t talked to in a while and check in. Share content that you’ve found useful with your audience.

By turning your 15 minutes of social scrolling into meaningful interactions, you’re not only building your network, you’re also strengthening your brand.

Connect with us to talk strategy, social media and other ways to make your marketing more efficient!

Inga Rundquist

Inga Rundquist is a Public Relations Arsonist and Co-Owner at MindFire. When she’s not dreaming up ideas that will generate publicity, you can find her knee deep in the social media world, also known as the next PR frontier.