How to take advantage of slow winter months: Part 2

This four-part blog series will discuss how to take advantage of slow winter months. Downtime is not a bad thing as long as you are building an effective business strategy.

HERE ARE A FEW OPTIONS TO CONSIDER:

1. Nurture Current Customers
2. Find New Customers
3. Learn New Skills
4. Prepare Your Business

   FIND NEW CUSTOMERS

Sometimes you are so busy during the Spring and Summer, that you don’t even have time to think about acquisition strategies. Take advantage of slow Winter months by exposing new customers to your brand and bringing them into the top of your marketing funnel.

Developing your brand and reputation matters. It can be the reason customers stop using your business or it can be a source of new customers. If you have a good reputation, here are some statistics to take advantage of:

• 91% of customers who had a bad customer experience won’t be willing to do business with that company again (Glance). This is a huge opportunity! People are actively looking for a better solution all the time. If you can get in front of these dissatisfied customers early, you could become their first choice when they switch.

• 95% of consumers talk about poor customer service experiences with other people (American Express). Just by getting your name and brand out there, people could start recommending your business to these disgruntled customers.

Here are four marketing tactics you should develop during the slow winter months:

   1. SOCIAL MEDIA

The more social media channels you use, the greater your potential reach. You never know where your potential audience could be spending their time. Different social media channels target different demographics and psychographics. Here are just a few of the common channels that are used:

• Facebook: It’s been around for a while, which is why they accumulate more that 1.5 billion active users each month. It’s estimated that more than 1 million small and medium-sized businesses use the platform for advertising.

• Twitter: Yes, Twitter is still an effective method of communication. They have about 320 million active users each month, but it can be much more interactive for businesses.

• LinkedIn: This platform eliminates the unnecessary clutter of cat videos and food photos. Their 400 million registered users understand that this platform is strictly for business-related topics.

• YouTube: Video consumption is becoming the preferred medium for many internet users. They receive over 1 billion website visitors each month and are the second most popular search engine behind Google. Record time lapses of your home improvement projects and promote them!

• Instagram: This preferred visual platform is exclusively for photos, which would be great for your business. Take before-and-after photos of all your projects and promote them on Instagram. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.

   2. GOOGLE ADVERTISING

If you have a website, take advantage of slow winter months by building out a Google advertising strategy. We live in the Information Age, where content is available at the click of a button. If people are already searching for remodels, renovations, or home improvement-related topics… they are hot leads!

As you advertise for specific keywords, more people will be able to request your services. You can develop Google Display ads, Google Re-targeting campaigns, or Pay-per-click advertising. It’s important to keep in mind that at this stage, you only want to develop the content and strategy. Don’t push it live or start paying for it until right before the busy season actually starts.

   3. PROMOTIONS

You can easily take advantage of slow winter months as you offer free services. It doesn’t matter what time of year it is, people always like free things.

Promote free walk-through inspections through social media, emails, your referral network, and your website. This is a great way to get in front of potential customers that are in the decision-making process. Give them an opportunity to get to know you so you can start to develop trust early in the buying cycle.

You can also promote discounted services for smaller projects during the slow winter months and return later in the year to work on bigger projects.

   4. DEVELOP YOUR WEBSITE

Not only do you need a functioning website… you need a well-designed, user-friendly website. And there are so many statistics to back that up!

If you’re driving traffic to your website through social media and brand recognition and users have a bad experience, there’s a 75% chance they’ll never come back. Use the winter months to really make sure you have a good website. Just keep in mind that people prefer images to tell the story instead of long explainer text.

Here are a few recommendations for your website:

• Include before-and-after photos of some of your best projects

• Develop an ‘About Us’ page so people know who will be coming to their home

• List the type of projects you can do for your audience

• Include video time lapses of your projects

• Post your reviews and testimonials to establish credibility

• Make it easy for your audience to contact you with online forms, email and phone information

• Provide free estimates if they fill out an online form

Although these initiatives may take time, what better time is there to invest in your company? There’s plenty of work you can do to take advantage of slow winter months. Make sure you read the other articles in this series to see what will work best for your business.