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The Best Time for Marketing

Guest post by: Kerri Salls

Article Overview: Marketing is not a passive activity. You have to keep the pipeline full. So, periodically, it is important to reflect and assess how to rejuvenate your marketing efforts. This lull between the holidays is a perfect time to focus on all the behind-the-scenes marketing activities that will make next year, your best year yet!

The Best Time for Marketing

The best time for marketing is when they aren’t buying.

Be realistic. If you aren’t selling the hottest new fashion or gizmo for holiday gift-giving, it’s hard to get anyone to think about buying your product or service from Thanksgiving through Christmas and New Year’s. That’s a six week lean selling stretch for lots of sales professionals, consultants and solo business owners. When you are trying to hit your quarterly and year-end numbers that lean stretch can be tough to swallow.

Lead by example. Don’t sit around the office having a pity party. Instead, build this market reality into your schedule and ramp up your marketing activities during sales lulls.

Why should you invest in marketing to your target market when they aren’t buying?

1. To stay front and center on their radar – especially if you target the corporate market.
2. To increase their awareness of you
3. To bring attention to you
4. To highlight the added value you offer
5. To generate a desire to continue to hear what you have to say

What kind of marketing can you do when no one is buying?

Use this time to plan and schedule all marketing strategies for next year and get them scheduled and booked.

• If you will be a conference speaker in April, establish a timeline for drafting the speech, shipping handouts to the location, developing the PowerPoint presentation to go with it, the press release, website promotion, travel arrangements, etc.
• If you will introduce a new product, service or program in June, work out all the details for the most thorough and effective rollout with enough lead-time to implement all the pieces, or identify gaps to be filled in a timely fashion.
• If you have increased your marketing budget for next year – this is a great time to develop some of those promotional pieces or hire contractors/ freelancers to develop them for you.
• If you have a goal of increasing visibility in a new market, a new niche, or a new country, bone up on the nuances and implications of this goal to prepare successful penetration strategies.

On the sales side, you don’t need to be idle during seasonal sales lulls either. Use this time to research growth opportunities for the company and target new territories, channels, niches.

• Use the holiday season as an excuse to followup every sale all year long with a brief visit or a phone call: to personally say thank you for the business, to ensure continued satisfaction with the product, service and your work and to bind client loyalty with strong rapport.
• In addition, each client contact is a great opening to query them about their plans for the next year, to identify client needs which your product/service can address in the new year – i.e., scouting for new add-on sales.
• You can also take time to study the market and your territory vis-à-vis your corporate goals and start developing sales strategies and tactics to achieve the company plan and reach quotas and incentives in the new year.
• Use this season for supplemental (internal or external) training to refine your craft.

Marketing is not a passive activity. You have to keep the pipeline full. So, periodically, it is important to reflect and assess how to rejuvenate your marketing efforts. This lull between the holidays is a perfect time to focus on all the behind-the-scenes marketing activities that will make next year, your best year yet!

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Article Tags: marketing, marketing pipeline, when to market



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