Quickfire marketing tips for the summer holidays


The summer holidays may be beckoning but it's just as important as ever that you have all your bases covered for marketing. Here are a few simple ideas to help you maintain your business presence while you soak up the sun!

The weeks leading up to a holiday or time away may be chaotic. While ensuring day-to-day operations and responsibilities are met, it is also important to direct some attention towards handover planning to avoid stagnation or chaos while you are away.

While ensuring that operations continue smoothly while you take much needed time off, many small-medium business owners tend to overlook marketing during the holidays. Understandably so –  keeping your existing customers happy while you are away is paramount for retention.

However, neglecting marketing initiatives while on holiday can dampen your opportunities for business development when you return. At the end of the day, to be out of sight is to be out of mind and your competitors might fill the space while you’re away. 

Here are a few strategies to consider as you prepare for your much needed break. Hopefully, by the time you come back, you have a few more potential customers who are keen to speak to you about how you can work with them.

Ducks in a row

Get your ducks in a row with a clear cut messaging strategy

Yes, planning against a calendar is effective for many people. However, if you are filling up your marketing calendar with no specific strategy that corresponds to objectives, you might be creating more work for yourself with little pay-off. 

Taking about 30 minutes to determine what your objectives are will provide you clues on how to execute your marketing strategically. In order to do this, here are some questions to answer:

  • Is there a product or service line that needs extra attention? What are the USPs and how does it benefit the customer?
  • What resources do you have easily at hand to market this product or service line while you are away? 
  • If there were three key things that must be communicated about this product or service line, what would they be? 
  • How do you speak to your target audience? Through social media or eNewsletters? 

In the event that your business is a single service or product line enterprise, apply these questions as appropriate. Either way, answering these questions will provide you the blueprint towards marketing strategies whilst on holiday and beyond. 

Don’t be afraid to empower and delegate

Once you have created your marketing blueprint by determining objectives and strategy, identify ways which your colleagues can help you propagate the message. By sharing the objectives and strategy that you created with your colleagues, it becomes a powerful tool of empowerment to get the team involved in company marketing. There may even be fresh ideas and approaches that you may not previously have considered. 

Using your messaging blueprint, can your colleagues help proofread any content being released while you are on holiday? Can they help you schedule your social media posts or email outreach to customers? Can they help you oversee that the campaign you have in mind has been deployed? 

Perhaps your business has a small and lean team. If you have been toying with the idea of hiring a marketing agency to take on the responsibility of maintaining your business presence in the eye of your target audience, this is a great opportunity to explore options. This creates a finite time frame with a chance to set clear cut deliverables as your first foray into outsourcing marketing.

Answering these questions will provide you the blueprint towards marketing strategies whilst on holiday and beyond.

Dogs enjoying summer

Mix it up - offer value and fun to your audience 

In our present market, content is king. Content marketing not only positions a business in a place of knowledge authority, it also gives the target audience a chance to catch a glimpse of the personality behind the business. 

By steering away from ‘salesy’ topics and providing value through knowledge, insight and even humour, a business demonstrates value and their potential as a partner in their ideal clients’ endeavours. 

Here are some ideas to kick-start creativity on social media; 

Existing blog posts that are relevant according to current events 

If you regularly update your blog, there is nothing wrong with recycling your content periodically on social media. While circumstances may differ, there will be fundamental instances where an old blog will be relevant and useful to your target audience.

Sector-relevant news articles 

News and recent events provide an excellent springboard for engagement to your page for several reasons. Not only do you demonstrate that your business is kept abreast with current events, it also delivers value to your readers by educating them on what’s going on. 

Themed content & showcasing the characters behind the business

Creativity doesn’t always flow in abundance. However, the seasonality of holidays provides excellent opportunities for themed content. This allows your target audience to relate to your business on a personal level. 

Whether you choose something quirky like what the day of the year represents, a fundraiser or even what colleagues are resorting to beat a summer heatwave, themed content allows target audiences to relate to the business on a more personal level.

Simplify Lead Generation

With all the effort you put into keeping in the eye-line of your ideal customer, it is important to always have a clear and succinct call to action. Whether it is a “contact us” bar at the end of a blog or providing clear contact details, this should tie into the clear cut objectives that you set up at the beginning of this exercise.

Don’t forget to enjoy your holiday

All things said and done, it is evident that good objective planning and strategy is integral to an effective handover. If you need someone to oversee marketing initiatives throughout the year (even while you are on holiday), BoldType is happy to help! Reach out to the team for a no obligations call on how we can work together to boost your marketing. Until then, enjoy your holiday and don’t forget the sunscreen.

Reach out to the team for a no obligation chat today.