Maybe it’s a bit of an exaggeration, but I feel like we waste an average of three months every year to grow our business and stay ahead of our competition. Between summer, Christmas, Easter, bridges, intensive days, etc. We spend much of the year beginning and ending.
No, don’t think I’m suggesting living just to work, just to inject a little common sense into our way of doing it.
Every year we waste an average of 3 months growing our business and staying ahead of our competition
Summer is coming and economic activity in general has almost completely ground to a halt. At the end of June, companies are taking their foot off the gas pedal and starting to postpone projects until September. It seems that since June we’ve been preparing to go on vacation in August (almost 10 years ago I talked about it on the blog and I see things haven’t changed much).
No matter how much I say or may be more or less right, that’s how things work and there’s little we can do.
Market activity should not block marketing
I see both extremes in my marketing mentorships. One company is in the middle of high season and another in low season. Well, both have reduced their activity to a minimum. I can imagine you’re thinking, “How can this happen?»
In larger companies, there is a certain structure that allows things like this to happen less often. But let’s keep in mind that the vast majority of companies don’t have the budgets or the people to avoid this.
In the first case, for lack of hands, and in the second, for lack of strength. Ideally, the first would take advantage to sell more and the second would prepare for the new course. Of course, both are still doing something. But they miss an incredible number of chances.
As the activity picks up its pace, the operational problems that the company brings become visible. What ends up being a “we have to fix this” becomes a very serious problem causing them to give up action and/or make desperate decisions. And what’s even worse is the risk to the company and its results
But what happens in companies in the off-season? Well, they’re dedicating their resources to other areas, leaving the “real marketing” to the return of summer.
So both come to the same point. If they really need marketing to function, they’re not ready yet..
What’s up?
SMEs don’t understand how marketing works
That’s the real reason. They understand they need to do marketing in order to sell, but not what needs to be done to make that happen. Some are aware of this, but are unwilling to bet on it.
For marketing to work, we have to work all year round. Starting from a good strategic definition, each month’s work is divided into short and medium term phases. What things should I focus on now and what things should I prepare for? (Let’s make a life plan).
Digital marketing strategy for the summer
This brings me to my first approach and a question that many SMEs ask themselves:
How can I give the maximum in high season? Use the rest of the year to prepare.
The problem is that no matter how much advice I can give in my mentorship, the reality of SMEs is different. They either don’t have the necessary resources, lack marketing training and experience, or a combination of both.
Let’s assume that summer is mid or low season for your company. What can you do with marketing this summer? If I tell you in detail I could write a new book, so let’s go to the pillars. The key is to keep making improvements each week. Any momentum you lose will cost you extra effort to regain it.
- Match the printing of your campaigns to the season. That is, modulate the investment to adjust it. Both in the brand and in acquisition.
- Review and redefine processes that aren’t working well. And of course think about whether you have the right team in each case.
- He continues to work on the basic marketing channels: content, SEO, email marketing and social media.
- Check and correct the strategy. Based on the data, what should we change to meet the year-end goals? This includes realistic planning.
- Work on the projects or processes resulting from point 4.
These and many other things make marketing successful. It would be perfect to have a “marketing button” that we can press when we need to sell, but the reality is that the work starts much earlier.
The image that accompanies the article (work on the beach) is from Freepik
