There’s no reason the arrival of summer, with its hotter days and increased free time (ha!), shouldn’t also usher in a season of increased traffic and sales for your SMB. With savvy and creative content marketing, you can make your product or service as enticing to your prospects and customers as a Mai Thai cocktail on a summer isle!
So come summer, how do you make your business get the attention of consumers, not only above the sea waves of competition in the marketplace, but also alongside the diversions and distractions the summer season has to offer? You do it with inviting, absorbing content that taps into the customer’s appetite for more pleasure and recreation from June to September. Make sure you’ve assembled a talented team that’s up to the task. Does your graphic designer successfully interpret your vision? Does your content writer seamlessly deliver your message? If not, it’s time to contract that designer with the killer portfolio who seemed so attuned to your business, and that freelance copywriter for hire who has always wanted to work in your industry.
Once that bill is filled, it also wouldn’t hurt if your creatives genuinely understand the subliminal and subtextual nature of the summer season so they can tap into their wells and produce marketing material that will hook consumers during this period. For many companies, summertime is a “harder-sell” time of the year. This, of course, doesn’t apply to seasonal enterprises like sporting goods, beach ware, and so forth, but for business at large it can be harder to convert prospects into customers when so many people are on vacation and so many kids are out of school. Again, pleasure, diversion, and recreation can take precedence over “What do I need and where do I get It?”
As a result, the need to engage, entertain, entrust, and satisfy your prospects is greater than at any other time of the year. In the summer, people are caught up in planning and taking trips, having pool parties, sunbathing, summer reading, and similar seasonal delights. And even those people who avert these activities are still more attuned to more relaxation and a somewhat slower pace due to longer and hotter days.
So you have to give people a “vacation” from the routine when they’re surfing the web and visiting your website and social media networks. Here are some hot tips for a sizzling summer sales season:
- Your content marketing should entertain and satisfy, above all else. Don’t “wring out” your prospects with a “hard-sell” approach.
- More visuals and less copy in your design motifs. With hotter weather and countless diversions, people want to see more and read less.
- Make your content shorter and your copy blocks smaller. The best summer reading is in books!
- Offer special summer deals and promotions to convert prospects and reward repeat buyers.
Surf’s up… and so’s business!
Michael V is a freelance writer available on WriterAccess, a marketplace where clients and expert writers connect for assignments.
