Summer is typically a slow time for many businesses. Foot traffic dwindles, revenue shrinks, and employees go into a form of hibernation. The thought of freedom and fun that beckons just outside the office window doesn’t exactly make for high productivity or record-breaking sales.
If you feel like your sales have taken a nosedive recently you’re not alone. Much like TV’s summer lineup, business often slows during these hot months. But it doesn’t have to be that way! Let’s figure out how to help you create some business.
Take a look at your customers and see what is driving them at the moment. Everyone has needs and as a business it is your job to try to fill them. Summertime presents a sizable opportunity for companies to shine, especially since many businesses dramatically reduce or pause their marketing. While others cut back, you should press forward. Search for how you can fill a timely need for your customers and provide an experience that capitalizes on that.
Summer is a time of bright colors, changes in wardrobe, and eating habits. Try to make your monthly newsletters, blog topics, and promotional tactics mimic everything summer that fits with your brand. Relating summer to your marketing strategies is how you can attract customers.
For instance, during the summer children often find themselves with huge chunks of free time and parents worrying about the mischief and/or headache that can bring. Grab onto this thinking and sell an experience like Target did summer of 2012 in their “under the radar” campaign called Big Honkin’ Summer that put together elements of the season into fun, family-filled experiences and helped parents fill and enrich the down time they have with their children during these months with their summer toys.
Target packaged several products together to not only fill the empty time but enhance it. Instead of just selling a blow-up pool, they allowed customers to utilize idea packages that added things like a snow cone maker, beach towels, sun lotion and inflatable play sets to give a more fulfilling, inclusive memory. If you have a business that a can do something like that, you will relieve some of the stress parents commonly feel during summer, but also encourages them to bond with their children more at the same time.
• What are the day-to-day lives of your customers like?
• What really motivates them?
• How can your business fill a need they currently or soon will have?
• How can your product/service do more than just be a sale—as in provide a greater benefit to the customer?
Evaluating your customer demographic will give you clues as to what is going on with them at certain points of the year, what’s important to them and what their needs are. Sometimes you have to read between the lines and see what they aren’t saying. But if you can do that, you’ll have opportunities to connect with them on a deeper level that goes far beyond sell-buy-consume.
Whatever you do, just be sure to put summer into your marketing strategy, such as co-marketing with local summer spots or creating your own special summer occasion.
And for those of you thinking ahead…
The beginning of the school year will be around the corner before you know it. But “back to school” isn’t the need. It’s the situation. The need might just be the impending stress brought on by the time crunch, the need to get organized, the ability to manage a day, errands, sports practice, etc…
How do you create a feeling of family and quality time in this situation with your brand? What can your brand do to create a timely offer for your customers that fulfills a need? Answer that and you’ve got the formula for any time of the year.
Need a little assistance? Give us a shout by email at signal@hero-farm.com or on Twitter @herofarm.