In almost every industry, there are times throughout the year when business slows down. Whether it’s summer or winter, you may find yourself working to push through a few months until business starts to pick up again. While these periods of fewer sales or leads may seem discouraging, there are several ways to use the time effectively to improve your business.
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Take Advantage of Idle Sales Months
When business is booming, there’s little time to change or fine-tune processes and strategy because you’re focused on meeting customer’s needs and staying on schedule. Instead of being disheartened when business declines, this is an excellent time to perfect the inner workings of your business. Here are four positive actions to take when business is slow:
1. Lead Nurturing
Through the busy months, marketing and sales is focused on lead generation and closing deals. However, there are often opportunities that take more time through the funnel. For these opportunities, lead nurturing is required. Lead nurturing involves building relationships with leads through the buying process. When business is slow, there is more time to work on lead nurturing tactics like sending personalized emails, implementing lead scoring, leveraging targeted content, and utilizing multiple channels to reach your customers.
2. Website Redesign
If you’ve been looking to update or redo your website, this is the perfect time! With website fixes or major changes, there is a chance that elements may break. When business has slowed down, there is less risk of missing incoming leads due to broken forms or customers navigating away due to broken links. One thing to keep in mind is the cost of this project. If a website redesign is being outsourced, make sure to budget this expense into the average income of your slower months.
3. Content Optimization
Improve your search visibility by implementing SEO strategies throughout your online content. This is an ideal time to include keywords, structured data, and optimized title tags and meta descriptions to your website, blog content, social media, and more. SMA Marketing offers a free SEO checklist to ensure you optimize everything in order to correctly give the search engines the valuable information they need.
4. Rethink Strategy
One of the best uses of this time is to revisit your marketing strategies. Are you looking to switch from an outbound to an inbound methodology? Do you wish to have a more content-focused strategy? Does your social media presence need more attention? Take time to determine the best strategies for your business and how to best implement them.
Stay Positive
There is no doubt that running a business is difficult at any time, but can be more so during trying times. It’s important to remain positive and do what you can to persevere through slow times until business picks up again.
For questions about lead nurturing, web design, SEO, or marketing strategy, contact SMA Marketing.
