10 Updates to Keep Your Marketing Strategy Fresh, Flexible, and Focused
Author's Note: As part of The Good Lemon’s 10-year anniversary celebration, we’re taking time to share what we’ve learned through various experiences throughout the years. Drawing on this combined decade of experience, this series is packed with the tips, tricks, and insights we’ve gathered along the way—designed to help you work smarter and strengthen your strategy. In our last installment, 10 Tips to Help You Work Smarter, Rest Better, we focused on how creating healthier habits and clearer boundaries can fuel both your well-being and your work. This series is both a reflection on our journey and a guide to the approaches that continue to shape our success, and can support yours, too!
We don’t need to tell you: The world of marketing moves fast. What worked last year (or, let’s be honest, last month) might not land the same today. If your content’s starting to feel stale, your engagement’s slipping, or you’re just plain uninspired, it might be time for a strategy refresh.
If you’re feeling like you need to tear the whole thing down and start over, take a deep breath. We know the pressure to “keep up” can be overwhelming, and the thought of starting from scratch is enough to make anyone slam their laptop shut.
The good news? You don’t have to.
Whether you’re a team of one or leading a crew, small shifts in mindset and method can breathe new life into your marketing. We’ve rounded up 10 practical, people-centered ways to shake things up based on what’s worked for us and for our clients during the last decade of doing this work.
1. Revisit and Repurpose What’s Already Working
You don’t always need new content; you just need new angles. If you’ve already put time and energy into creating something valuable, why not keep it working for you?
Start by checking your metrics. Which blog posts, newsletters, webinars, or social campaigns have driven the most traffic, generated the most engagement, or performed well against your specific goals? What still holds up? (Spoiler: Probably more than you think.) That’s evergreen content, and it’s a goldmine.
Turn a blog post into a short-form video. A guide into a carousel graphic. Or even a fun quote from an interview into a quick-hit story post that aligns with your social theme that week.
The goal isn’t just to reuse: it’s to reimagine. Stretch your strongest ideas across multiple formats and platforms to reach people in the way they prefer to engage. One great piece of content can have 10 different lives with a little creativity and some smart tailoring.
2. Experiment with New Channels
Is your strategy feeling a little too predictable? Like, “Oh look, another newsletter” predictable? It might be time to shake things up. That doesn’t mean chasing every shiny new platform, but trying out something unfamiliar can do wonders to get your creative gears turning.
Think beyond your usual go-to formats. Try doing a live Q&A in your Instagram Stories, hosting a poll on LinkedIn, or testing out an emerging platform like BlueSky or Threads. Even something as simple as launching a casual email series with a different tone or structure can help re-engage your audience.
Not sure where to start? Think through which platforms or formats might be most worth your time without adding more stress to your plate.
You don’t have to master it all! Just give yourself permission to experiment.
3. Listen More Than You Post
Before you plan your next campaign, pause and tune in. What’s your audience actually talking about? What’s trending in their world, not just yours?
Too often, we get caught up in pushing out content and forget to slow down and listen. But listening is where strategy gets sharper. It helps you spot patterns, understand evolving needs, and uncover opportunities to show up more meaningfully.
Start simple: Pay attention to comments on your posts, DMs, and questions that come up in meetings or webinars. Browse Reddit threads, LinkedIn conversations, and Instagram Stories responses. Use tools like Google Trends or social listening platforms to track what people are curious about right now.
You can also get proactive—run a poll, ask an open-ended question, or invite feedback through email or your next event. The responses might surprise you—and can spark stronger, more resonant content ideas.
When you listen with intention, your audience will feel it. And your content will reflect it.
4. Give Your Visuals a Makeover
Sometimes, your content isn’t the problem… your visuals are! A light brand refresh (new colors, fonts, templates, or photography style) can make your existing content feel brand new and more aligned with where your organization is now.
5. Update Your Messaging
As your organization evolves, so should your voice. What felt right a year ago might sound off-brand today. Revisit your messaging pillars, value statements, or taglines.
Remember, there is a difference between voice and tone:
“Your brand voice stays consistent throughout everything you write. Your tone can change depending on your audience and what you’re writing.“
Make sure they still reflect your goals and resonate with the people you’re trying to reach. And consider using small paid campaigns to test your messaging with real people.
6. Revamp Your Marketing Tools
Stuck in a spreadsheet that’s become chaos? If your tools are slowing you down, it might be time to switch platforms or streamline your systems. Project management tools, email builders, or content calendars that work for your brain (rather than against it!) can make a huge difference.
Our TGL Tested series from last year dives into SO many tools, from monitoring to project management to graphic design. If you’re looking for a new tool to try but don’t know where to start, try out our top recommendations here!
7. Reassess Your Audience
Even if your audience hasn’t changed, their needs and behaviors probably have. What they care about, or how they consume information can shift quickly.
Survey your community, revisit your personas, or host a Q&A to get back in sync. And if direct engagement isn’t feasible right now, there are plenty of online tools that can help. Platforms like Pew Research and social media benchmark reports offer valuable demographic and behavioral insights. You can even use AI tools to spot audience trends, summarize sentiment, or identify key content themes.
This is also where regular social listening comes in. Monitoring conversations and mentions around your brand or sector can uncover what’s resonating, what’s frustrating people, and where you can better show up.
Audience research doesn’t have to be overwhelming, but it should be ongoing. The more current your understanding, the more effective your strategy.
8. Recenter on Your Organizational Goals
Is your marketing strategy still aligned with your actual goals? It’s easy to keep executing on autopilot, posting regularly, tracking standard KPIs, sticking to the same content buckets, without realizing your larger priorities have shifted.
If your tactics are tied to metrics that don’t matter anymore, it’s time for a reset. Revisit your organizational goals and ask yourself: Are your marketing efforts supporting them? Are you still trying to grow awareness when the real priority is deepening engagement—or vice versa?
Schedule a quarterly check-in with your team (even if that’s just you!) to reflect, reprioritize, and realign. Focus on what success looks like now, not what it looked like last quarter.
9. Make Space for Creative Recovery
If you’re running on empty, you won’t come up with fresh ideas, no matter how many brainstorms you schedule.
Creative recovery isn’t lazy; it’s essential. Step away for a bit. Read, watch, or listen to something totally unrelated to work. Take a walk without a podcast, go down a random internet rabbit hole, or spend an hour noodling in Canva just for fun. Let your brain play.
Ideas don’t always arrive on demand. They show up in the quiet moments, the silly side projects, and the mental white space we rarely give ourselves. So give yourself permission to pause. Creativity needs room to breathe.
10. Reframe “Stuck” as a Signal, Not a Failure
When things feel flat, don’t panic. It’s not a sign you’re doing everything wrong, it’s a nudge that something needs to shift.
Feeling stuck can be frustrating, but it’s also full of valuable insight. It might mean you’ve outgrown a tool, your messaging needs a tune-up, or you just need to try a new creative direction. Whatever the cause, see it as a checkpoint, not a dead end.
Reframing “stuck” as information rather than failure keeps you curious and nimble, two qualities every strong marketing strategy needs.
Keeping your marketing strategy fresh doesn’t mean reinventing the wheel every quarter. It means staying connected to your audience, your goals, and yourself.
And remember, you don’t need to try all 10 of our recommendations! Pick what fits your goals, your bandwidth, and your audience. Try one or two of these shifts, and see how they help you re-engage with your work in a more intentional, aligned way, and let us know how it goes.
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