Many businesses have certain periods during the year when they are at their most frantic. For retailers, Christmas and New Year are often described as the silly season for a reason. Others depend on summer trade, when tourists are in greater numbers. Busy periods can also revolve around local events such as concerts. For hotels, bars and restaurants it could be an upcoming festival or a special bank holiday event .
Whatever season you have to look forward to, planning ahead with your digital marketing is vital. It can save a lot of time and energy as well as ensuring that your marketing covers all the important areas you need to attract customers.
Take Advantage of the Off-Season
The key factor is that you should have more time on your hands when you are in the off-season than when you’re coping with the panic of a seasonal rush. The last thing you want to be doing at busy times is worrying whether you’re sending out the right social media messages to your followers or getting that blog post up on time.
You can plan all this in advance and essentially forget about it once the rush starts. Having more time also means that you can sit back and consider a whole range of possibilities and put in the resources to get things done that you might not have considered before.
Managing Your Marketing Budget
Preplanning also enables you to manage your marketing finances better. Once you’ve got your plan in place, you should have a reasonable idea what it’s going to cost you. That means you won’t get any rude surprises when you least expect it. If you use a third party to handle all your marketing, you’re also going to be sure that they’re available and not caught up in the holiday rush the same as you.
Create a Better Marketing Plan
If you are juggling your digital marketing while trying to satisfy customers, the chances are your plan is going to be more than a little on the makeshift side. It’s going to be reactive rather than proactive. Putting everything in place beforehand means you’re going to have a stronger marketing campaign that has been thought out in greater detail. That doesn’t mean you can’t react to unforeseen events or add marketing initiatives during the seasonal period but you’ll have done the hard yards already and anything extra should be easier to organise.
Grow Your Mailing List and Social Media Contacts
Working on your digital marketing off-season gives you the opportunity to take a look at what worked well last year and what you need to improve. It also gives you a chance to grow things like your mailing list or boost your local followers on social media sites like Twitter or Facebook.
Work Out Your Social Media Strategy
For many businesses, social media is the primary way they stay in contact with their fans and followers. Preplanning gives you the opportunity to identify key times during the season when you’re going to want to reach out and tell people about great promotions or events. You can prepare these so that they go out automatically which means you won’t miss anything out because of the seasonal hustle.
There’s a lot that can be done with your marketing before the season gets into full swing. If you want your approach to be more relaxed and certainly more focused, pick the off season to get everything ready.