The spring marketing audit: what to keep, cut and fix before the Christmas run-in

I run this exercise with clients every spring, and most years I run it on my own business as well. It is a marketing audit, though not the fifty-page kind. It fits on a page, takes an afternoon, and answers three questions. What do we keep, what do we cut, and what do we fix before the Christmas run-in starts?

The timing matters more than people expect. In Australia, September is the last reasonably quiet window of the year. October fills up, November disappears into Black Friday and end-of-year work, and December runs on whatever you set up beforehand. Problems you find in September can still be fixed. Problems you find in November, you mostly just live with until February.

Why an audit beats a new plan right now

Most owners I meet want to skip straight to planning. A new campaign, a new channel, a big content push for summer. I usually slow them down, because planning on top of a cluttered marketing setup just adds clutter. An audit clears the bench first. It shows you what is actually pulling its weight, which is usually a shorter list than any of us would like to admit, and it frees up the time and budget you will need once the season gets busy.

Keep: what is earning its place

Start by listing everything you currently do. Every channel, every recurring task, every subscription, every place a customer can find you or contact you. Then ask one question of each item: if I stopped this tomorrow, would anything bad actually happen?

The keepers are the things with a clear job. The email that reliably brings repeat work. The Google reviews of new customers mention when they call. The referral relationship that quietly sends you your best clients. Keep those, and protect the time they need through the busy period, because they are the first things to slip when December gets loud.

Cut: what is running on habit?

Every business I audit has activity that exists because it always has. The social channel you post to out of guilt, with nothing to show for two years of effort. The directory listing you pay for and have never traced a single inquiry to. The monthly blog written for no one in particular. Cutting these feels risky, and in my experience it rarely is. The hours and dollars you get back become the budget for everything else on this list.

Fix: the almost-working list

This is where the audit earns its keep. Most businesses have nearly right marketing. An email list that has grown for years but never gets sent anything. A website that describes the business you were in in 2022. An enquiry form that lands in an inbox nobody checks on weekends. A welcome email that mentions a service you no longer offer. None of these needs a rebuild. They need an afternoon of attention each, and spring is when that afternoon is still available. Pick a maximum of three. A fix list longer than that is a plan for not fixing anything.

How to run it

Block out an afternoon and do four things. First, write the full list of activities and touchpoints. If you have mapped your customer journey before, work through it stage by stage so you audit what customers actually meet, not just what you produce. Second, pull whatever numbers you have. Enquiry sources, email opens, jobs won, and where your last ten customers came from. Direction matters here, not decimal places. Third, sort every item into keep, cut, or fix, and be honest about the difference between sentiment and results. Fourth, put your three fixes in the diary with dates attached, because a fix without a date is just a wish.

What to do with what you find

Most owners can run this on their own and get real value from it. The place people get stuck is the sorting, because it is hard to be objective about marketing you have been doing for years. If you would like a second pair of eyes, this is exactly what a strategy session is for. We run the audit together, make the keep, cut, and fix calls with your numbers in front of us, and you head into the Christmas run-in with a shorter list and a clearer head.

2. "Should I be using AI for this?"—a decision rule for small business marketing

Meta description: A simple decision rule for using AI in small business marketing: when to use it to think, when to use it to do, and the jobs you should skip entirely.

Tags: should I use AI for marketing, AI for small business marketing, when to use AI in business, ChatGPT vs Claude for small business, AI marketing decision rule, how to use AI without losing your voice

Body:

The question I hear most from clients this year is some version of "Should I be using AI for this?" It comes up about blog posts, about email, about proposals, and about replying to reviews. The honest answer is that it depends, and "it depends" is useless advice on its own, so I have settled on a rule I now give every client. It has held up well enough in real client work that it is worth writing down.

The rule: separate thinking from doing.

AI is good at two very different jobs, and the most common mistake I see small businesses make is muddling them.

The first job is thinking. When I am unsure about a decision, I use ChatGPT the way I would use a colleague to think out loud with. What are my options for this campaign? What am I missing in this pricing decision? Argue against my plan. This kind of use is low risk and high value, because nothing goes anywhere near a customer. The output is better thinking, and you are still the one doing it.

The second job is done. When I know what needs to be made, I use Claude to produce it. Draft the email sequence, build the report, turn the meeting notes into an action list, and write the first version of the web page. This is where the real-time savings live, and it needs more care, because the output does reach customers. Your facts, your judgement, and your voice have to go over it before anything ships.

That is the whole rule. Reflect with one tool, produce with the other, and always know which mode you are in. Clients who keep the two jobs separate get value quickly. Clients who blur them end up either publishing half-thought ideas or spending an hour polishing a brainstorm that never needed polishing.

What I tell clients to skip

Where not to use AI matters just as much.

Skip it for the moments where the customer needs to hear from you personally. A response to a complaint. A thank-you to a long-standing client. An apology, a condolence, a difficult conversation about price. These moments carry the relationship, and readers can feel the difference even when they cannot name it.

Skip it for decisions only you can make. AI can lay out the options for your positioning or your pricing, and it does that well. It cannot know your appetite for risk, your capacity this quarter, or what you promised a customer over the phone last Tuesday. Use it to prepare the decision. The call stays with you.

And skip the tool-collecting. You do not need eleven subscriptions. One tool for thinking and one for doing, used consistently, will beat a drawer full of half-finished trials every time.

Why the human moments now matter more, not less

There is a bigger shift underneath this rule, and it is the thing I find myself saying in almost every strategy session. As AI absorbs more of the routine steps in your customer's journey—the confirmations, the follow-ups, the scheduling—the moments that stay human become the ones that decide whether people trust you, stay with you and refer you. Automation raises the stakes on the human touchpoints. It does not replace them.

That is why I pair every AI conversation with customer journey mapping. The map shows you which moments in the journey actually build trust and loyalty. AI and automation clear the routine work out of the way so you have the time and attention to deliver those moments properly. Automate the process, never the relationship.

A quick test before you hand anything to AI

When a client is unsure, I give them suggestions. Is this thinking human—or am I using the right tool for that job? Does this moment need to be unmistakably me, or is it fine to shape a draft? And it has a human, meaning you, checked every fact and read it aloud before it ships. If you can answer all three, use the tool with a clear conscience.

Where to from here?

Rules like this one are most useful when they arrive at the moment you need them, which in a small business is roughly weekly. I share what I am seeing work with real clients, including the workflows behind it, in my newsletter below. It is short, practical, and written for owners who want AI to save them time without costing them their voice.