As the summer rolls into its last month of plump tomatoes and memories of azaleas, it’s a perfect time to update your business’ integrated marketing needs. Just as a garden can’t be planted and bloomed in the same week, your integrated marketing measures need to be implemented and maintained with an eye toward the future. The goal? Take best advantage of growing conditions for maximum yield. Here are our tips for maintaining and strengthening your “garden” of marketing needs.
Plant Your Fall Leads for the Fourth Quarter Bloom
The month of August is the perfect time to plant for fourth quarter rewards. Include subtle reminders in your communications with your client base and start to think of holiday ads to run. Most magazines ads have a deadline of October 1, so make sure you have a plan ready to take the lead during the holiday season.
Don’t Over-Do the Watering
Social media has become an overwhelming opportunity and business necessity, but once you have “likes” and “followers”, don’t over saturate them with fluff. Although social media is a perfect platform for reaching out, consumers want content; not communication. Make sure that your content reflects your expertise and reward your loyal followers with special discounts and value.
Weed Out What Isn’t Working
You know when something hasn’t worked: evaluate if it’s time to weed it out. More often than not, if your “garden” isn’t responding to your measures, you need to make a change. Talk with your valued and long-time customers. Touch base with them and ask them what their favorite experiences have been with your business and what they would like to see changed. Encourage honesty and make sure that your business is responsive to the needs of your valued customer base.
Go Back to Your Principles
It’s easy to get caught up in the flurry of e-mails and running around, but the principles that you initially set for yourself and your business will always guide you back to what’s right for both. Although gardening days are spent sweating in the sweltering sun, wrestling rocks from the Ice Age, and scraping dirt from your fingernails at the dinner table, the true reward of tending to a garden is the holistic feeling of accomplishment. What you do should be fundamentally rewarding. Reflect on what makes you love what you’re doing and find ways for those principles to play out in your business.
Evaluate Your Timeline
Stay in tune with the seasons! Every business has a different peak: make sure you know what season your business blooms. Prioritize what aspects of your company need to be focused on once that surge comes. Strengthen these aspects by highlighting specific examples of how they have created a winning strategy for clients who have taken advantage of your services. Show where and how your business is and has been a winner and your target market will react accordingly.
Editor’s Note: This blog post was written by our fabulous summer intern, Parker Allen. Parker is off to South Korea to teach English for a year. We’ll miss you Parker and wish you all good things ahead!
