The summer holidays are pretty much upon us, whether you are trying to juggle family commitments over the next 6-weeks or just trying to work around your client’s reduced time in the office, demand for your product or services may slow down. I get asked quite a lot how as a small business, they can keep going over the summer or when you are taking some downtime.
An estimated 42% of the population will take a holiday this year, according to the ABTA Holiday Habits Report 2017 and many of these will take their holiday over the summer months. Fortunately, there are some great free tools out there to help you keep your business going, we wanted to share our top tips with you:
1. Plan, plan and plan
As you will know from our past blogs and discussions, we are big advocates of having a plan, and this approach is no different over the potentially quieter summer months. Understand your small business trends, for some small businesses, summer will be their busiest time, but for others, things will quieten down. Be clear on what you will do and when try to pre-prepare activity not just from your business perspective but also if you are trying to juggle childcare. If you are experiencing a quieter time, why not use the time to clear out or plan and prep for September?
2. Be realistic about what you can achieve
Once you have your plan, be clear on what you can achieve over the summer. Why not introduce flexible working hours or block time in your diary as needed? Plan to do less as your clients may potentially be on holiday too. Let your clients know when you will be taking some downtime.
3. Prepare and schedule your marketing
Using your plan, why not prepare and schedule your marketing activity? Take advantage of the automated tools in Mail Chimp, Facebook, Hootsuite, Buffer, Tweet Deck or Sprout Social to plan the activity you wish to deploy so that your marketing is still working hard for you at the right time.
4. Enlist some help
If you think you are going to be busy whilst you are away and you can, why not enlist the help of a virtual assistant or one of your team members to cover any client requests or enquiries?
5. Assess success!
As with any good marketing activity, ensure you are keeping track of what your business is doing and how it is performing. Ensure that you build in any seasonal trends to your plans for next year. If you are busy, plan to be here, if things are quieter, what would you do differently?
Please contact us to see how we can help you get your marketing strategy and plan in place for your small business for the final part of the year. Don’t forget that we all need some downtime to refresh and recharge, as a small business owner, this is key. So, all that is left is to say – have a lovely summer!
Enjoy your holiday!
