Back when I was playing football, my year was naturally broken up into 3 segments: off-season, pre-season, and the regular season when the games were played. That was my concept of time. And the season determined where I focused my time and attention to further my football career.
This may sound like a stupid question, but which season do you think is the most important for improving your athletic abilities? I’m not just talking about football because this relates to all sports. When do athletes make the most improvement? Is it during the off-season, pre-season, or regular season?
It might surprise you to learn that the off-season is by far the most important season to take your athletic abilities to the next level. Athletes have more time to train and fully recover during the off-season, which means they can make much bigger gains in speed, strength and power compared to the regular season when they have the stress of games.
In fact, some athletes get worn down as the season progresses so that they end the regular season weaker and slower than when they started.
Why is this important?
Your Business Has Seasons Too!
Most businesses have 3 seasons, just like athletes. Take a look at your sales volume trends over the past 2+ years and you’re bound to see similar fluctuations up and down, year after year due to seasonality.
In professional services businesses (like ours), the “off-season” tends to be in the summer. During the summer, people take more time off and plan more trips, and of course that slows down sales.
The natural instinct during your business’s off-season is probably to hunker down and wait it out like a bear hibernating in the winter. In other words, do nothing or do minimal marketing until your season returns. But is that the best option?
Of course not! Hibernating bears can lose about 20% of their body mass during hibernation, which means they wake up weaker, not stronger. Therefore, when you take your foot off of the gas pedal of your marketing in the off-season, you effectively take a step back and enter your regular season in a weakened state.
The solution is simple.
Use the Off-Season to Strengthen Your Marketing
Instead of hibernating in the off-season, use the time to strengthen your marketing like an athlete preparing for the regular season. Then when the seasons finally change, your business will have the marketing systems in place to maximize leads and sales.
In case you’re wondering where exactly you need to improve, I’ll quickly go through what we call the 4 Pillars of Digital Marketing Success. You can think of each pillar like one of the fundamental athletic skills (speed, strength, power, intelligence). With that in mind, every off-season is your time to revisit these Pillars and make incremental improvements.
- Pillar 1 = Website Traffic. Included in this Pillar are all the tactics like SEO, Search advertising, Display advertising, etc. to drive more prospects to your website.
- Pillar 2 = Website Conversion. Included in this Pillar are all the tactics like lead magnets, copywriting, email follow-up, and retargeting advertising to increase your website conversion rates.
- Pillar 3 = Customer Value. Included in this Pillar are all the tactics to increase your average customer value, such as upselling, cross-selling, subscription programs, and customer follow-up to generate repeat sales.
- Pillar 4 = Tracking. Included in this Pillar are all the tactics and tools necessary to track your return on investment from your different marketing channels, such as website analytics, phone call tracking, and customer relationship management (CRM).
Need Help In Your Off-Season?
As mentioned above, many businesses are entering their off-season as we quickly approach Summer. If you want to gain a competitive advantage (rather than take a step back), then I urge you to focus on improving your marketing during this critical time of the year.
And if you need help, then click here to get a free digital marketing quote.
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