Summer and Your Business
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Summer’s right around the corner! How will it affect your business?
For many, business slows down during the summer months. This can happen if many of your clients are busy with their kids while they’re out of school, dealing with staff vacations, or away on vacation themselves.
Instead of seeing this as a problem, why not take advantage of your lighter schedule and catch up on the marketing tasks you never seem to have time for?
Here are 15 ways to make the most of the downtime and maximize your marketing. I’m sure you can come up with even more!
- Review your marketing plan and evaluate how well you are doing.
- Check your website for broken links.
- Write and schedule a series of blog posts.
- Try a new marketing technique, such as live video.
- Prepare a series of emails that you can send out to your list over the next few months.
- Update your website content to include new products, services, credentials, or other information that may be missing.
- Review and refresh your social media profiles.
- Set up Google Analytics on your website and familiarize yourself with the data that’s available to you.
- Reconnect with past clients.
- Check out a new networking group. Attendance tends to be lighter in the summer, so you might find it easier if you’re not comfortable in crowds.
- Research organizations and events for potential speaking opportunities.
- Create a Facebook ad.
- Develop a CRM system for tracking leads and following up with prospective clients.
- Get a new headshot.
- Look for ways to maintain your marketing momentum when business picks up.
Just don’t forget what they say about all work and no play! You’ll be busy again before you know it, so be sure to take some time off, whether it’s for a week or more, or just a few hours here and there. If you’re worried about losing business by not answering phone calls or emails while you’re off, here’s something I wrote about vacations a few years ago.
A good vacation will allow you to help your clients and run your business with more energy and enthusiasm – bringing you even greater success in the future.
Janet Barclay
I eliminate stress for my clients by hosting, monitoring, and maintaining their WordPress sites so they don’t have to worry about security, downtime or performance issues. When I’m away from my desk, I enjoy reading, photography, cooking, watching movies, drinking tea, and spending time with my family.
So far summer has been super busy for me, but what I love about this post is how relevant it is for any slow time. I often hear small business owners talk of the “slump,” and I agree that this can be a blessing in disguise… a time to tackle those tasks which we tend to put off. I always have a running list of “projects to get to” when I have some free time. Great to have these ideas ready to go!
Another thing I’ve found – due to Murphy’s Law, if you have specific tasks you want to work on when business slows down, it’s less likely to happen!
Ha! Good point. I think it’s excellent to have a list of ideas like this handy for slow times. But if there’s something you REALLY want to do, best to plan and schedule it, don’t wait!
Good tips, Janet. I am going to investigate creating a Facebook Ad plus it’s always good to get back in touch with former clients.
That’s exciting, Diane! I’ve only tried Facebook ads once, and I learned the hard way how important it is to check and double check everything, including your custom audience. I forgot to include location in my filters, and used up my budget before I got one new subscriber in North America.
Great list of reminders to do this summer. We always forget to do these tasks during the summer months. Thank you for gathering the information together and reminding us that it is a great time to revisit these tasks.
I like to keep a list of things to do “when I have time.” Otherwise, if I have a slow day (or week), I tend to waste it on things that don’t really matter.
Business, especially organizing, can be feast or famine. June and July are usually dead spots in my schedule, but because everyone’s been waiting all-COVID-long to get on my schedule, things are really hopping. That said, we ALL need to bear in mind what we can do when quiet time happens. I wish I’d been reading this during the pandemic; sure, nobody had any motivation over the past year, but I think this post would have kicked my butt into gear, at least a bit.
As always, you give the best advice!
I made a few suggestions in my newsletter early in the pandemic, but as you say, at that point people were more concerned with other things (stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive).
I don’t have a vacation planned this summer, so I am using the time to work on several of the marketing ideas you mentioned. I have a meeting scheduled with a social media expert next month since I need some expert help there.
I like the suggestion to review my social media profiles as well. I haven’t done that in a while.
We so rarely look at our own profiles that it’s very easy to forget that they aren’t up-to-date.
I don’t have a planned vacation either – maybe I should schedule a week to work on my business too!
I worked hard when I was in lockdown doing some of the things on your list. I feel like I need a break since there was no travelling, no visiting with family, no visiting with friends. I am taking as many half days off as possible this summer. The pandemic taught us that you never know exactly what will happen in the future. I will continue to do the basics, social media each day, clients and answering emails leaving the open time to enjoy the outdoors and not feeling guilty.
Julie, that sounds wonderful!
Summer is going to be a combination of some travel, being (in person) with family and friends, and working too. We just returned from one of our first vacations of the summer. It felt so good to get away, and also good to be back. The breaks to have a change of scenery, connect with loved ones, and recharge, are important.
The link you gave for updating your headshot was awesome. I love the tips for doing your own headshot and the link to Photofeeler to help evaluate it. Very cool. There are always things to tweak in business be it the website, one’s processes, marketing and more. I love all of the suggestions you made for making the best of your time when it’s slow or busy.
That sounds like a wonderful summer. We won’t be travelling this year but hope to get in some day trips and it will definitely be great to gather in person with loved ones again.
I’m glad you liked that link. If you (or anyone else reading this) is interested in taking your selfies up a notch, you might want to check out Susanna Miles’ Selfie Upgrade Challenge. I did it last summer and it was amazing!