We all love the summer, but it can be a rough time for business—they don’t call them the “dog days of summer” for nothing.
With kids out of school and families going on vacation, the world of commerce becomes less predictable. To help you fight back, here are seven ideas to heat up your warm weather sales. Some will give your bottom line an immediate boost; others will help improve your brand recognition and loyalty.
1. The summer of social media
Create a thread that will carry through your social media campaigns. You might use a “road trip” theme on Facebook, for example. As you “travel” to different states, highlight something about the state that relates to your product or service. If you are a retail establishment, create killer displays in your windows and throughout your store that are totally Pinteresting. Find ways to dovetail summer visuals with your business.
2. Nostalgia is what it used to be!
Summertime is nostalgia time. We all think about summer family vacations. Have a sale with throwback prices. Again, grab the visuals of a previous generation’s summer memories.
3. Vacation and recreation giveaways.
If you can swing it, have a summer vacation sweepstakes. If you need to scale that idea down, try tickets to a nearby summer hangout, like a water park or the county fair. How about a drawing for a summer picnic basket complete with food?
4. Go where your customers go.
Summertime is a season of festivals, community events, Little League games and more. Be there, or be square. If you can’t set up a booth, be a sponsor and hang a banner. If you can’t sell, hand out information.
5. Temp up, prices down.
To get people out of their homes when the heat wave hits, try offering a $10 discount on purchases over $100 when the mercury hits the 100-degree mark—double it if the humidity also hits 100 percent!
6. Take me out to the ballpark.
Entertain your best clients by treating them to a classic summer event, like a warm evening at the ballpark. Another option would be to rent a pontoon or houseboat for a day of cruising and barbecuing.
7. Celebrate special days.
There is a “day” for everything, check out this calendar of special days. Find some fun days that you can transform into a “hook” to get people to your business. One cousin eats free on Cousins Day, for example. By the way, I’m celebrating Penuche Fudge Day on July 22 whether or not your small business figures out a way to take advantage of it…
The bottom line with all of these ideas is to associate your business with the season on some level of customer consciousness. That will tend to help maintain the flow of people to your establishment and you should then be better able to afford your own summer vacation!
For more small business marketing insight, watch our new video series Market Your Business on a Shoestring Budget on the Constant Contact YouTube Channel.
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