As a business owner, you already know how many different moving parts it takes to run your business smoothly and continue to offer great tours and activities to your customers. With so many tasks to take care of, it can be hard to keep track of what needs to be done and when. To make your life a little easier, we’ve compiled a checklist of the most important tasks you should be doing once a month to keep your Dashboard, website, and business current and fresh.
General Business
Competitor scouting: Check out your competitor’s websites and social media to stay informed about your local competition and get ideas on where you can improve and what makes your business stand out.
Dashboard
Archive any old/no longer used items.
Check your Refund Reserve and ensure there are funds available for any incoming refunds.
Check the booking calendar for next month to make sure that the schedule is correct and special events or holiday events have been entered.
Make sure your booking flow and website highlight any special discounts or holiday tours that you’re offering for the month.
Check item descriptions and headlines to make sure that any schedule or price changes are reflected.
Review current campaigns and disable unneeded promotions.
Verify that booking restrictions are working correctly if they are supposed to vary throughout the year.
Check transportation options offered to make sure that any changes are reflected (construction, ongoing detours, etc.).
Check for any new changes to the Dashboard in the Dashboard announcements.
Website/SEO
Review your site’s performance in Google Analytics to identify if any pages need immediate attention (for example, if bounce rate has increased on a certain page, review it to see if it needs any improvements or updates.) Make sure that you look at data year over year, not period over period.
Write a blog post! New content is a great way to increase the overall authority and keyword rankings of your site. See what’s on your content calendar for this month and get your new content posted. Review these quick tips to make the most of your content.
Check your keyword rankings using a tool like SEMRush or Google Search Console. If you see any keywords where you’ve dropped in rankings, take a look at the page to see if the headings, content, or metadata could be optimized.
Review your FareHarbor Booking Report to determine whether you need to feature a popular activity on your website or highlight an activity that isn’t selling as well as you’d like it to.
Keep your website current with any new images, announcements, or current events that need to be featured.
Marketing
Develop your monthly content outline for social media and email campaigns . You should already have an idea of what content you need from your content calendar . Begin writing and/or developing new content for the upcoming month so it’s ready to post when you need it.
Set campaign budgets on any paid ads on social media or other platforms. (You can also review these weekly if you want to keep a closer eye on the budget.)
Generate your monthly projection/forecast for expected online bookings or conversions that will come from marketing. This will help you with budgeting each month and understanding the success of your campaigns.
Analyze the previous month’s campaign performance to make any adjustments as needed.
Optimize your campaigns based on performance.
Keep notes about your analytics each month to make sure you have a reference and you can compare months as needed.
Analyze your success and ROI with your various advertisement channels to better strategize for the next month.
Once you’re all set for the month, head over to our weekly/daily checklist to get ready for the day-to-day operations of your business and our annual checklist to plan for the big picture.