It’s that time of year again – a chance to look forward to a busier, more financially stable end of the year.
In layman’s terms, Q3 is the summer months in the UK – July, August and September – a time to go on holiday, relax, and prepare for the storm coming in the run-up to the festive period.
From a sales point of view, this can be the slowest time of the year (especially in 2022) as the people we need to speak to are disappearing off to the beaches of Europe and further afield to unwind, appreciate some family time, switch off – how dare they!
Is this the time to follow suit and jet off to the Med and let things stagnate in the office? It is the perfect time to align your marketing strategy with the company goals, or, in some cases, put one in place!
Who is in charge of implementing that marketing strategy? The easy answer is….the marketing department. What if you don’t have one? Who does it fall to then? The accurate and honest answer, whether you have a marketing team or not, is everybody within the company, whether they realise it or not, is responsible for helping to market that company.
In reality, there are 4 main strings to your marketing strategy: communication, the products or services you provide, your current clients and your prospective ones. The way in which you deal with these seemingly separate entities can massively impact the other 3.
When speaking to prospective clients, I am constantly amazed by the number of people who will ask for us to revisit our conversation at the start of Q4 as that is their busiest time of the year saleswise. Why would you leave any discussion on marketing until you are at your busiest point? To gain any kind of momentum, trying to start from zero whilst trying to juggle any number of other things is not the way to go about it. Then, when businesses are already busy, marketing takes a back seat as people feel that they cant take on any more sales. What happens next? The marketing strategy is put back until Q1 or Q2 and before we know it, the seasons have crept around and we are back at square one, ready to start again.
When Covid initially hit, marketing budgets and plans were one of the first things to go or be reduced as businesses did not feel the need to market when people were unable to buy – it is even more imperative when people are unable to buy your products, to ensure that you remain in the public consciousness.
Marketing should be at the heart of every business plan and the importance of the plan needs to be communicated to every element of the business to ensure that everybody knows what part they can play and how what they do, or don’t do, will impact the bigger picture.
If you don’t do anything else over the summer, get your marketing strategy up and running and up to date or contact us to see how we can help you in SEO, PPC, Social or Email.
