When—and How—to Start Marketing a Seasonal Business

Running a seasonal business can be a huge challenge since you don’t have a steady income stream. However, the off-season is a great time to focus on marketing so your business can thrive during its busy season. Here are seven ways to market your seasonal business:

[Read more: Marketing vs. Branding: What’s the Difference?]

Take advantage of customer reviews

Customer reviews are a crucial part of growing a business and establishing credibility in your industry. Over 70% of customers won’t even consider purchasing until they’ve checked a company’s reviews.

Fortunately, 68% of customers are willing to leave businesses reviews if asked. So your best bet is to spend your peak season collecting customer reviews, then promoting these reviews in your content marketing and email marketing efforts.

Continue to focus on content marketing

The off-season is the perfect time to start ramping up your content marketing. Your customers are still interested in reading quality content, so now is a great time to start updating your blog posts, social media channels and email campaigns.

By continuing to focus on putting more content out, you’ll build your business’s credibility and position yourself as a leader in your industry. And by staying active on social media, you’ll ensure that your customers stay engaged.

Plus, staying on top of your content marketing ensures you don’t have to start over again at zero. And you can even start planning and creating content for your peak season when you won’t have such ample time on your hands.

[Read more: How to Develop a Small Business Content Strategy]

Update your website

If you haven’t updated your website in a while, now is the time to do it. Ensure all of your business’s information is accurate and up to date, including your hours of operation and contact information.

Make sure the user experience is positive across your entire site. This includes looking at how fast your pages load, how professional your site looks, and how easy your content is to read. This matters because websites that provide a better user experience will rank higher in Google search.

And you might start looking for ways to optimize your website for SEO. For instance, by doing some basic keyword research for your industry, your website will be more easily searchable in Google.

Give off-season discounts

Just because your peak season is over doesn’t mean your revenue has to dry up completely. A good way to continue generating interest in your business is by offering off-season discounts. For instance, offering periodic flash sales on all of your merchandise could be a good way to bring in extra money even when business is slow.

Hold a contest or giveaway

One of the best ways to connect to your customers is by periodically hosting contests or giveaways. Everybody likes getting something for free, and when done correctly, a giveaway can be a great way to build brand awareness.

To start, you’ll need to decide the type of giveaway you want to host and what social media channel you plan to host it on. From there, you need to outline the rules and set a clear deadline.

Then you need to create a branded hashtag for your contest that participants will use. This will allow you to easily track the entries and will increase engagement. Try to make the giveaway as easy to participate in as possible, and notify everyone once you’ve chosen a winner.

Generate excitement with early payment deals

Your off-season is the best time to start promoting and garnering excitement for your peak season. And one of the best ways to do this is by offering early payment deals.

For instance, let’s say you run a pumpkin patch and offer seasonal passes to customers who plan to visit multiple times. Toward the end of the summer, you could start offering your seasonal passes at a discount. Not only will this help you boost your revenue, but it’s a great way to build customer loyalty.

Solicit customer feedback

And the off-season is a great time to focus on communicating with your customers and asking for their feedback. Are there any products or services they wish your business offered? What do they like or dislike about your current offering? By digging into customer research, you can focus on improving and refining your business model.

[Read more: How to Grow Sales Through Customer Engagement]

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