Staying Productive During The Off Months

With school starting back and holidays just a jump, skip and a hop away, it’s not unusual for business owners to experience a dip in sales or customer interaction during this time of year. It’s actually completely normal!

However, as normal as it is, it’s also common for business owners to get extremely anxious during these times. Revenue may drop and nerves may spike as they worry “is it me? Is it something we’re not doing?”.

While there’s certainly nothing you’re doing wrong, there are still things you can be doing during these silent times as your audience may shrink away.

The following actions can buy you confidence that you’re doing everything you need to do to keep your business ahead of the game and top of mind for when consumers are ready to jump back into the shopping pool.

Start A Blog

When consumers get quiet, it's typically because they’ve retreated into the busyness of their lives. And what do most of us do when we’re dealing with life? Read blogs to see how other people are dealing with life, of course!

Starting a blog during the quiet months may be a great way for you to show your customers your expertise and share words on how your products/services can enrich their lives and make their day-to-day life easier.

You can take this task a step further by ensuring that your blogs are SEO rich so that they’re easily popping up on search engines and targeted to the audience that would most likely benefit from the information so that you can not only increase your likelihood of turning readers into buyers but also increasing the traffic to your site and spreading brand awareness.

Ramp Up Your Newsletters

If you’ve already got your email marketing game going - great! Now is a great time to ramp it up. And if you don’t have your email marketing game going - great! Now is a great time to ramp it up and get started.

Email marketing is a powerful tool that allows you to make stronger connections with your audience and give them an even more intimate peek into your business. However, during these off months, it’s also a great way for YOU to get a peek into what they’re currently experiencing.

Send out newsletters letting your audience know about current sales and ways you're accommodating their needs during the Back-to-School season or even as the holiday season approaches. They’ll be grateful and more likely to purchase knowing that you’ve kept their needs in mind and that you have reached out to them on this 1:1 level.

Be Active On Social Media

Just because it’s a slow month, does not mean that your marketing should slow down; if anything this is reason to go overboard!

During life's busy moments, most people tend to spend their free time scrolling social media which means this is a great time for you to start appealing to your audience!

Hop on stories, schedule out some valuable content, create some fun/appealing ads and make your accounts something they start looking forward to.

You may want to even consider posting some video testimonials of your products/services or even walk throughs on how to use it as most social media platforms are now moving towards video as their primary attractor.

Stay Relevant

Lastly, and maybe most importantly, is that quiet months in your business are great moments to plan ahead.

Start reviewing numbers.

What’s currently working and what needs some tweaking? What ideas can you test out right now that, if fails, you could afford to do? What events in the lives of your audience/consumers are on the horizon that you can plan ahead to? What offers can you roll out to attend to those needs? What is your competition doing that seems to be working? How can you elevate those ideas and make them your own?

By planning ahead, you can stay relevant within your industry and to your audience so that you’re always their go-to choice no matter the time!