Many businesses cut marketing in slow periods instead of trying to cut elsewhere. That is the Number One Biggest Mistake a company can make. Every business experiences on and off seasons throughout the year. Your marketing efforts should change during each on and off-season – but they should ramp up during your slow times.
One of the things you can do to help manage your marketing during slow times is to create a budget for your business, which includes a marketing budget. Having a year-round marketing budget and strategy can keep your business ahead of the game throughout the year. While it's tempting to pause marketing during slow periods to save money, you'll negate any headway you made throughout the rest of the year – and this is the time when you really need to get yourself in front of as many people as you can.
Marketing in Busy and Slow Seasons
Some are of the mind to slow or stop marketing during the slow seasons to help save money, and others are of the mind to slow or stop marketing during the busy seasons to help save money. Both strategies only hurt your business.
Why Marketing During the Off-Season is Critical
You might consider cutting back on marketing during the slow seasons, but this only hurts your business. While you cut back, other businesses won't – and they'll be grabbing up customers that could have been yours. Cutting marketing efforts during slow periods also affects sales throughout the year.
You need to stay at the forefront of people's minds, even in the slow periods. If a person or company wants to purchase your products or services but waits until they are in a better position, they may forget about you, especially if the person or company sees marketing from a competitor. When it's time for that person or company to make the purchase, they end up with your competitor who did not slack off on marketing during the slow period because that is the last ad they saw.
Slow times are the best times to create and curate content, social media and brand awareness. You can also advertise deals and sales you offer, which can also boost sales during slow periods.
Why Marketing During Peak Seasons is Equally Critical
During your busy seasons, you should always continue your marketing efforts. You can use social media to showcase testimonials and reviews and discover new ways to improve customer relations to streamline your sales process further.
The best time to get your brand out there and create customer engagement is during the peak season. Responding to reviews and connecting with your audience on social media can significantly increase responsiveness to your brand, which will carry over into the slow periods. Think of it as a truck picking up speed while it is going down a steep hill and using that speed to propel it up the steep hill in front of it. If you can get enough speed during the peak season, it will carry you to the top of the slow season's hill.
Growing your lead database during peak season also helps during the slow season. Grab the interest of people and businesses who use your products and services during peak season when they show more interest, and keep yourself in the forefront of their minds during the slow season with email marketing campaigns.
Consistency in Marketing Builds Trust
Pausing marketing efforts during either season means you are not consistent, which decreases customer trust in your brand. Customers want to know they can count on you – if you are consistent with marketing, they know you aren't going anywhere. This is especially important for businesses that offer services. Because of the consistent buildup of trust in your brand, your ROI will be higher throughout the year.
Create a Sales Plan that Targets Slow and Peak Periods
Timing is often a major consideration in amping up your marketing. Use slow periods to create new ways to increase revenue and drive interest. Use peak periods to hammer that interest home with customer interaction and reviews. Some methods to increase revenue throughout the year include:
Invest in Inbound Marketing
Work on inbound marketing for your business. In fact, this is one area of marketing that should never be put on hold. Think about customer behavior as it relates to your business. For example, a pool company may want to start ramping up with posts about pool cleaning services about six to eight weeks prior to the time most people open their pools. A gardening shop may want to increase its online visibility by adding more blog posts during the two months prior to the last frost.
Hiring a professional writer or content strategist to help you with inbound marketing is the best and easiest way to get this done. Ignoring SEO or not doing it right is right up there with the Number One Biggest Marketing Mistake of pausing campaigns.
While your customers may not be quite ready to buy or they are saving up for a service or product, you still need to keep yourself in the front of their minds. Creating content that fills the top so the funnel and ranks for search engine optimization early means you beat others to the punch.
Run a Long Game
Think about the long-term, not just this slow season, this peak season, this week, or this month. Work with a content strategist to create a digital marketing schedule to benefit your business. It won't be the same as for other businesses or even competitors. Use several factors to plan inbound marketing content, including:
- Slow seasons
- Holidays
- Global events
- Local events
- National events
- Weather
- Change of seasons
These are only some of the factors you can base inbound marketing content on. As they say in the legal world, "Document, document, document," or in the real estate world, "Location, location, location." In the marketing world, we say, "Distribute, distribute, distribute."
Focus on creating the best content to maintain search engine result page standings and increase social media presence. Don't just narrow your business down to one growth channel – keep them all going all of the time. When one slows down, another may pick up the slack. Always keep something in the pipeline.
Focus on Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) isn't something you do once, and it keeps working. You must keep at it day after day, week after week, and month after month. SEO also isn't just finding the right keywords. It's a combination of inbound marketing, content marketing, working several marketing channels, and more.
Channels might include:
- Email marketing campaigns
- Social media campaigns
- Regular mail marketing
- TV and radio
- Ads
- Backlinks
- Blogs
- Updating your website
- Case studies
- E-books
- Videos (on various video platforms)
If organic traffic takes a hit, social media traffic or another method may fill in and vice versa. Regardless, you're accessing multiple audiences. Not everyone looks on the internet for information, products and services, and not everyone pays attention to TV and radio commercials.
Build Brand Awareness
Use top-of-funnel content to build brand awareness and trust. While this is an excellent strategy for slow months, you should also continue it during the peak months, as it keeps customers familiar with your brand.
Customers do a lot of research before they purchase a product or service. Know when the seasonal trend is for searches of your products or services and really hammer out the content during those times. Keep a steady stream during other times.
Referral Programs
Create a referral program to boost sales during the slow months. A referral program where the referrer and the referee get an extra product or a discounted service when they sign up works really well and can drive thousands of referrals per month.
You can create referrals in many different ways, including:
- Run an in-house competition among the employees to get referrals. Give your employees a bonus for each referral or run a contest for time off for the person who refers the most people.
- Advertise a referral program through social media for current and new customers to earn something when they refer someone.
- Offer returning customers a discount on a product or service.
- Create a loyalty program.
Build Your Social Media Presence
Stay on top of your customer's and potential customer's minds by building your social media presence. Regardless of the time of year it is, the more you post, the more you'll stick in others' minds. Use social media to show you are experienced, have expertise in your field, and are a trustworthy company.
Invest in Customer Retention
Inbound marketing not only helps find new customers but it also helps retain existing customers. Find different ways to keep in contact, including push notifications, SMS messages and email campaigns – neither of which require a large sum of money, which is good during slow times.
Target past buyers using multiple marketing channels as they are less costly than Facebook ads and Google ads.
Additional Ideas to Attract Customers
You can use social media and blogs to gather additional leads by:
- Holding a contest or giveaway.
- Create a limited edition product or service that follows a media trend.
- Build your text message marketing base by offering a freebie or discount if people sign up for text messaging.
- Create custom pieces or limited editions, or if you offer services, create a service package.
- Create a VIP segment for special offers.
Contact EpochWriter for Digital Marketing
EpochWriter provides content strategy and digital marketing solutions, including blog posts and websites. Contact us for more information or to schedule a marketing evaluation.
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