Red Hot Summer Marketing Ideas

Red Hot Summer Marketing Ideas

When it comes to strategizing your best summer marketing idea most small business owners’ first inclination is to cut prices.  DON’T DO THAT! “Small Business Stacey” outlines several red hot marketing ideas to get around cutting your prices to heat up your summer sales. #SmallBizMarketingWiz #ASmallBizLife

Listen to the Podcast

Marketing in 2 Minutes or Less: Red Hot Summer Marketing Ideas

      

Here’s the transcript:

We’re coming into the summer season, and for many small business owners, this means that their sales sometimes slump.

Right? People go on vacation. They’re at the pool. They’re just not coming into your place of business. So, what can you do to not have a summer season slump? I have some ideas to share with you today.

One, consider hosting a social media contest. Maybe it involves pets, maybe it doesn’t, but a social media contest is a great way to create engagement and awareness of your brand, and people share that, and it’s a great way to bring people into your physical place of business.

The second idea is to add value. Don’t discount your prices. So many times when business tends to go into a little bit of a slump, small business owners panic and think, “Oh, my God, I need to bring some business in, so I’m just going to slash my prices to bring people in.” Yeah, you might bring some people in, but all you’re doing is creating a pool of bottom-feeders, people who are always just looking for the best deal and will never become loyal.

So, I encourage my clients to add value. Is there something that you can throw in for free, as a bonus, something that’s value-added that makes it seem so extraordinarily valuable, and put a dollar value on it? For example, I’m working with an electrician right now, and he’s told me that his sales are a little bit slow. So, we are coming up with some great value-added ideas, like a $25 Amazon gift card, dinner out and a movie, and we’re even going to be putting together a contest for people who bring him in in the next 30 days. That’s your second strategy to boost sales in the slow summer months.

The third strategy is to find a holiday and tap into it. I love the power of holiday marketing, and one of the sites I constantly talk about is holidayinsights.com. I just looked up some really great holidays that you could tap into for the summer season. Did you know that July 12th is Different Colored Eyes Day? Now, my dad actually had two different colored eyes, one blue and one green. So, think about how could you use this holiday on July 12th, different colored eyes? Maybe if your customers, clients, or patients have different colored eyes, you could have some kind of prize or reward for them.

July 24th, Tell An Old Joke Day. So, maybe if your customers, clients, or patients come in and they tell a joke, they win a prize. August 10th, National S’mores Day. There’s tons of food holidays that you can tap into. Everyone loves s’mores. Maybe you have some kind of cookout, right, and let people make S’more, either indoors or outdoors. I worked with a dessert shop and they did this outside of their store. They had this little grill set up and people could make S’mores. Worked great because people were curious. It brought traffic over, and then they had this wonderful S’mores event.

August 26th, the last one, National Dog Day, right? I had to leave you with that one. So, how … I’m looping this back to what we talked about in the beginning. How can you leverage the power of pets? National Dog Day, you have time to plan for it, August 26th.

I would love to hear what your ideas are of what you’re going to do to not have a summer sales slump. All right. I think Sammy’s a little bit passed out here. She’s sort of had a rough, rough day. So, thanks for tuning in today.

This is Small Business Stacey, your Small Biz Marketing Specialist here to help you get your marketing into action and help you become a #SmallBizMarketingWiz.