Great Guns writes:
Is there any point in running marketing campaigns during the summer months?
Yes, it’s really important. Companies cannot expect to hold off sales and marketing activity through July and August and it not impact their annual results. If you put marketing on hold for six weeks in the summer, that’s going to impact delivery later in the year and give you a logjam. All of us need to consistently win business, and maintain consistent delivery, in order to manage our companies.
But doesn’t everyone go on holiday in August?
It’s a false belief that August is a bad time to do marketing. In fact, we find results can be improved in this period. Remember, if people do take time off, it’s generally only people with children. Everyone else avoids this time so that they can have their holiday infant free. Even those with children won’t take six weeks off, they’ll only take a week or two.
Another significant point is that in April and May, we have a huge amount of bank holidays and our weather over the past few years has often been better at that time. We’ve found that getting hold of people has actually been easier in the summer than at that time of year.
What about the tendency for people to delay decisions in the summer?
People use August as an excuse not to make decisions or sign orders, but they certainly do not use it as an excuse not to see people. They’re very happy to agree to meetings and if there is any kind of trend, it is that gatekeepers are away. Therefore, you can happily soar straight through to the decision maker on your calls.
So, how can we run effective marketing campaigns in the summer months?
At Great Guns, we’ve seen a trend in integrating our telemarketing with other types of marketing. We find that telemarketing becomes so much more successful when we use it as a conversion tool as opposed to a cold calling product. Warming up data using LinkedIn and e-mail broadcasting is very effective. Interestingly, LinkedIn can often be more effective with connections in the evenings, at weekends and when people are on holiday, because they have the time to spend on social media and are much more responsive. Connections build up and they’re more likely to carry out a conversation on those platforms, and agree to meetings. This is a massive change in our industry; in some cases, we’re achieving the same results on these platforms as we are in telemarketing.
What about countries like France and Germany?
If you are targeting certain European countries, some of them will close for a period of time over the summer. This is a great opportunity to cleanse databases, get your Linkedin profiles written and your Linkedin company pages up to speed, ensuring that quarter four of this year is a raving success.
Remember that if you don’t do it, competition will. We’re now in a global market and it’s important that we’re talking to people regularly and consistently, in the language and on the platforms that they want to communicate with us on.
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If you’d like to find out more, please do get in touch on 01223 262240 or [email protected] for a chat.
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