529: The 5 Steps To A Successful Summer Marketing Strategy
As entrepreneurs, we often face the challenge of dealing with a summer slowdown in revenue while still shouldering ongoing expenses. In today’s episode, I’ll be sharing five steps you can take to make a successful summer marketing strategy. By implementing these steps, you’ll be well-positioned to overcome the summer slump and seize the opportunities that arise during this time.
Your business cannot afford to slow down entirely if you aim for continuous growth. Listen in as I dive into each part and explore how to create a successful summer marketing strategy.
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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Emily Hirsh
Hello everybody, welcome back to the podcast. Wow it is hot here in Austin oh my gosh we went from We actually had like a mild May and then now it’s literally one hundred and four degrees like 102 to 105 every single day and I wake up and it’s 90° outside and I go to Crossfit and they don’t have Ac and I’m dying and I’m like how are people doing the evening classes. So I am planning Mini trips and escapes this summer. I’m actually so excited I just booked our tickets to go to Alaska which has been a dream of mine for a long time. I love hiking. I love nature and so Alaska is obviously all of that. Um, and I’ve been spending a lot of time Like in my evening kind of trying to research because it’s a little overwhelming to plan where we’re going. A lot of people do a cruise but we’re not doing a cruise. We’re actually doing a land tour so we’re going to go to I think Denali national park and I can’t remember the other one by seaward if you know Alaska it’s like the um Something ford national park I will know it once I go there so I’ve been planning that I am so excited and then on top of that I’m trying to get out of here the whole month of August because it is just way too hot. Other than that I am doing amazing things like life Update I haven’t done in a little while I am still doing a lot of different Ah I guess healing and um, trying different things so doing my microdosing of mushrooms which I’ve talked about on the podcast has been life changing incredible some of you guys have messaged me for. The details on that and if you want to I’m happy to share because I you know think that more people should know about it. Um, and then doing breathwork and I actually just did my first session um doing like a somatic healing body healing session and that was amazing. I did it in person with somebody here in Austin who also facilitates a monthly breathwork session for my team and he’s so great and he’s in Austin and I was like how do you work with clients and so he does this like um I didn’t know what somatic body work is you some of you might know. It is the craziest thing like it is so crazy how intelligent our body is when we tune into it and so it’s very like it was a similar experience to breathwork except for it wasn’t breathwork and it was really just the ability to like tap into my body. And get out of my mind and then process things that came up during the session but it was so crazy because he’d ask me a question and then a part of my body would like Twitch and he’d be like okay that signifies like my lower back that signifies being unsupported. Do you feel that way and I’m like holy crap Like my body is answering this. It was wild and so I’m really working on the connection to my body and getting out of my mind because the reality is our mind doesn’t have the answers or no, but our body does and I have struggled in the past with that kind of Connection because my mind is so powerful and I can kind of overpower my body and you know just push through and ah, that’s a skill set in some ways but in other ways it makes it so ignore my intuition or I don’t you know, feel confident trusting myself in making decisions especially related personally. So anyways. I’ve been having a lot of fun with all these things. It’s just like so incredible. Our bodies are so incredible and really you know, constantly pushing to process trauma to get out of cycles and patterns and things. It’s just amazing.
So anyways, all right today’s episode I am going to give you guys a recap of the training that I did this week. Um I didn’t have a replay and so this episode is going to kind of serve as a recap because it was so good and a lot of you have messaged that you missed it for whatever reason. Um, and so I want to give the recap because I think this will really really help you guys. So I actually have my slides pulled up and I’m going to do a portion of the training. Um on this episode. So the training if you didn’t hear about it was about your summer marketing strategy and making sure that you have something in place. For the summer because the reality is no business can afford a slowdown. Um, your expenses don’t slow down unless you’re pulling back and shrinking your business but your expenses don’t slow down and if you want to grow year over year your business really can’t afford to slow down. In the summer sometimes revenue slows down and entrepreneurs sometimes response to that is how can I pull back my marketing or pause my marketing and wait till things pick pack up in September the problem with that is if you pause your marketing for two months you’ll be paying for it for four plus months because what happens every day every month in our marketing we lose followers. We lose subscribers and so if we’re not growing, We’re going backwards and who do you think what leads are going to be the ones who buy in the fall in the winter. It’s the leads that you bring in in the summer so if you want to have a really successful for example, Black Friday sale or launch in the summer you can’t pause your marketing that will impact you in the future and so that was a huge takeaway on the training a lot of people messaged me like I’m so bad I went because I was going to completely pause my marketing and like I realized that that’s not a smart decision. And actually there’s a lot of opportunity in the summer that you can leverage if you do it right? So even my business I um have a slowdown in the summer and I the last two years and especially this year Have been very intentional about my strategy and I think this year we really nailed it and we’ve been talking about it since like March because I know that this is a slowdown for my company and I don’t like I need my team so I can’t cut back my expenses and I’m also the breadwinner of my family like I have to still be profitable. I still have to generate revenue and so we’ve been really intentional with that and with clients and so I’ve broken this out into kind of what we do and how we create that success into 5 parts. So 5 parts to a successful summer marketing strategy here is how I break it down if you want to write this. You can. Um, and then I’m going to kind of talk about each part. So. The first part is taking into consideration the long game of your business. The second part is leveraging your warm audience more than usual The third part is having specific messaging that relates to your audience right now meaning the summer for this strategy the fourth is making adjustments to your offer if needed this is not for everybody but some people this will be for and the fifth is having a strategy. That’s tailored to the summer and your audience’s experience in the summer so we’re going to talk about each one of these a little bit so part 1 is taking into consideration The long game Regardless of what your strategy looks like we always need to take into consideration the long game in marketing. With marketing that actual you know sales conversion it takes time. It’s often delayed and a lot of people don’t know this number for me. I know it’s six months so on average somebody who joins my email list today will convert in six months obviously there’s some less and more than that. But that’s my average. So I know that the leads I generate this month are going to pay off in six months from now and so therefore the audience and lead growth that you do in the summer is going to lead to sales in the fall. So if you stop your marketing now you might still get some sales and you might. Think you’re okay, but it’s actually going to impact you in the long term so to first define your summer marketing strategy what we have to start with is asking yourself am I going to do a live launch. A new product release, a promotion in the fall that I need to plan for now. In building my audience and list even more, do I need to grow that so that my audience will be the size I need it to be in the fall. So here’s a scenario and an example, let’s say you’re going to do a big live launch in October. Okay. And your goal is to sell 25 people into your $2000 program like your sales conversion that you’re estimating is 1 % of all your list if you have data obviously use that otherwise I want you to estimate from like 0.5 % to 5 because that will be a range if your product is Ah, less expensive. You’ll probably have a higher sales conversion. So if that’s the case I need 2500 people on my email list for my live launch and I need to have a strategy that’s going to nurture those leads and create content to grow my audience and make sure that when I go to live launch They have been building a relationship with me and it’s not the first time that they have heard from me so a couple questions that came up on the training yesterday with this was how do you know how much your your email list is going to convert compared to let’s say you’re doing a webinar for your launch and those those leads are going to convert. It is. A little bit of an estimate Obviously if you don’t have data typically what I do is we set a goal for our lead growth leading up to the launch and then we set separate projections in a goal for the launch itself. So then we’ll have a goal that says. Okay, we’re going to before the launch we’re going to add 500 leads to the list based on these. Numbers in this estimate and then during the launch we’re going to run ads to the webinar and we’re going to get you know 250 leads from our ads and we’re estimating another you know, 200 signups from organic or whatever it is and then that gives us projections for the launch itself right? Now you need to set a goal. For how much you want to grow your list between now and if you have a fall launch happening or an event or like guess at a new product release anything that you want to push out to warm traffic and then how you’re going to keep those leads and existing leads nurtured between now and then because I can Miss you if you disappear over the summer and then you pop back up in September and you’re like hey guys buy my offer. It is not going to work. I can promise you that 100% so that’s part 1 part 2 is leveraging your warm audience more than usual. So during this time of year that sales may slow down from cold traffic. This is when you get to capitalize on being consistent in your warm traffic. So for a lot of our clients, myself included, We plan warm traffic promotions meaning we Do promotions to their existing audience, to my existing audience to bring in sales from those warm traffic leads your warm traffic is is defined as your existing audience your email list your followers people that already exist and warm traffic. Will. Almost always convert higher because they have a relationship with you. It makes sense. So if you create a promotion. Let’s say you do a webinar or you have a bonus added to your offer or you want to do a 10% off sale. And you target 80% warm traffic in 20% cold. What that’s going to do is allow you to spend less on ads but get more revenue from your efforts and during the times of year where revenue might go down from cold traffic like the summer like the holidays. That’s where we lean in on our warm traffic. Obviously for this to work. You have to have a warm audience. So if you don’t have a warm audience. This is not going to work for you. But it’s even more reason why you need to be consistent. You need to build your warm audience. You need to build your leads. You need to build your audience and people following you and consuming your content. And it’s a reason why building that audience in that list is an asset to your business. So if you’re not currently doing this every day every week and you’re seeing those numbers go up. It needs to become part of your marketing strategy because this is why. Just because you’re going to leverage your warm audience as a part of your summer marketing strategy does not mean you want to stop cold traffic because this might be a way for you to create extra cash in the summer where maybe things are tighter. But also you have to bring in cold traffic because guess what. When black friday rolls around and the holidays roll around and this exact same thing happens again and people have more expensive costs and potentially lower sales. What businesses Do you think are going to crush it? The ones who kept marketing in the summer because those are the ones who built their leads and built their list and did not stop. They’re going to feel it in Black Friday when that comes around okay part 3 is having specific messaging that relates to your audience right now I think this is where people probably had the biggest takeaways in the training this week so Whenever there’s a time of year an event a shift that your audience experiences this means there’s an opportunity for your messaging to change because your messaging is the connection to the frustrations problems and desires that you’re gonna leverage to connect with your audience and get them to take action. Whatever that action is, sign up for your webinar and download your lead magnet. Buy your product book a call, fill out an application right? You’re speaking to frustrations, problems and desires to get them to take that ah that action. So it’s how you speak to your audience in every area of your marketing so that could be your landing pages your ad copy your social media your content and if your audience has different problems frustrations and desires that come to the surface in the summer or maybe become more obvious or maybe they’re brand new problems that happen in the summer that is an opportunity for you to connect deeper with your audience and therefore get them to take the actions you want them to take so I did this this week. That’s what this content is right I know that my audience struggles with a summer marketing strategy I know that a lot of my audience struggles with sales slowing down in the summer so I created a specific training specific content to connect with people around that problem and serve them and provide value I used it as an opportunity to connect and serve so here’s a couple of scenarios that I have seen it with our clients. We have a client whose dentist targets dentists and their practice slows down in the summer. Opportunity to help them is that moms who are home with their kids don’t have as much time to work out as they normally would, people who are traveling, they want to stay healthy. They get off track. How do you help them? The idea I had on the training yesterday was okay if that was my audience I’d be coming up with a meal plan or a meal guide or a grocery list for traveling. That could be a freebie that could be a bonus to your offer. But it’s a way for me to serve you based on what you’re going around on right now. Maybe it’s business owners trying to hit their annual goals realizing they’re halfway through the year they’re not hitting them now. Their kids are home from school and they’re spirally you can serve them with that I can guarantee that every one of you is listening to this. Your audience is somehow impacted by the summer. Maybe it’s big, maybe it’s small, maybe it’s good, maybe it’s bad but there is some way you can connect to them based on what they’re going through right now and that is how you create better content and better freebies. Better Trainings Webinars and marketing strategies that actually create opportunities for you to do even better in the summer than you would without it. part. 4 of 5 is making adjustments to your offer. So this is not for everybody but in some cases, there’s an opportunity or a need to adjust your offer. Or even maybe create a specific offer to cater to your audience during this time. Most of the time what this looks like is a specific bonus or addition to your offer that solves your audience’s problem right now. So I just said that bonus about the meal plan that would be an example of something that you could add to let’s say your fitness membership. Um, to support them with right now if your offer is not going to sell in the summer like there’s a huge objection to that because what’s happening why aren’t we making sales in the summer it’s because there’s more objections people have less time. They’re traveling more and their kids are home right? that creates objections to offers which sometimes creates lower sales. So you have to counter those objections with additions or adjustments to your offer. Maybe not for everybody but maybe and so if you know there’s going to be so many objections to selling your offer or your product right now you need to make some adjustments to it so that it will sell. So taking the list that you create when you look at. Okay, what are my audience’s problems and frustrations and desires in the summer ask yourself could I solve this with an additional bonus or an element or component to my offer. Or could I solve this by creating a new simple offer that then leads and creates ideal customers for my core offer once fall comes or maybe you could simply solve this by talking about your offer differently or focusing on specific things a little bit differently. This is super customized. And this is where having an expert support you and like what we do with clients is really important because you can mess this up too like you don’t want to just go create a new offering, get totally distracted and derail your business. But maybe that is the right fit for you like I have had clients where we create like a four or six week experience specifically for the summer And then those people graduate and move into their core offer but this is very customized so you have to look at if I was to create a new offer or change my offer is it going to take away from what’s most important to my business right now. But if your offer isn’t going to sell you might have to make some adjustments big or small. For a lot of you guys. The only change you might need to make is the way you talk about your offer. Maybe you can highlight different problems a little bit more different desires. A little bit heavier than you normally would at other times of the year which will help overcome those objections and sell your offer. Okay part 5 of 5 is having a strategy tailored to the summer and your audience’s experience. So finally, we can move to strategy which is all of this is strategy but this is like the actual funnel strategy you can consider now your customer journey and ways to create an experience for your audience based on what they might be going through differently in the summer so this might look like maybe a new lead magnet that would solve a specific problem for your audience in the summer or help them achieve a specific desire in the summer maybe it’s a training like what I did or a live experience that would address a simple problem that they have right now and that’s more prevalent right now. Maybe it’s a customer journey that needs to be shifted. That’s tailored to the fact that your audience has less time. I’ve had a few clients where we did a private podcast series this summer because a webinar was going to be harder to convert. They don’t have as much time I am not saying no webinars are going to work in the summer But you have to be aware of your audience and the objections they’re going to have to taking any action you want them to take and then you counter that with your marketing and then maybe it’s a promo. Maybe it’s a launch with an extra bonus to your offer that you added in that helps them in the summer and it intrigues people to buy. Maybe it’s just as simple as you’re going to put out some specific content on social media that has to do with their problems, frustrations and desires. They’re going through in the summer. Maybe you do a series, maybe you do a content series that addresses those problems. That’s the simplest thing you could do and everybody can do that. So for some businesses this might mean coming up with a brand new strategy or a brand new funnel or a live launch idea for others. It might mean taking your existing strategy like I had someone on yesterday or existing like an evergreen webinar and just talking about it a little bit differently getting some fresh ad copy. Getting some different angles that you can leverage based on summer specific problems and desires. Whatever you do make sure you have a strategy that will be consistent in building your audience and your leads all summer long because this is crucial, not just for the summer but for the rest of the year and that’s like the biggest thing I want you to take away from this is if you pause your marketing now you’re going to be paying for it for the rest of the year I promise you so those are my 5 steps To creating that marketing strategy in the summer I hope I convince you to not fully pause and the other thing I want to say about this that I did mention in the training is this does not mean at all that you can’t go on vacation I said this the other day in a podcast episode but I am not saying you have to work extra hard in the summer that’s the beauty of paid ads Is if you get them working, You can go for a vacation for a week and your ads will keep bringing in leads and sales which is essential for any business that wants to have that sustainability that is so so important so go on those vacations take those trips. And get your marketing so that it’s bringing in leads. It’s bringing in sales. It’s growing your audience even when you’re gone because if everything stops when you go on vacation. That’s a very dangerous place to be in a business because then what if you get sick what if something happens to you. Alright I hope you guys found value in this and at the end of the training I did announce something that I will share on here. So if anybody fills out their application and signs up to work with our team in either. Essential which is our done with you offer that has done for you components or elite which is our full done for you offer I’m gonna be doing a private workshop training in July where I’m gonna show my marketing strategy behind the scenes I’m gonna show how I Overcome my slowest months um and like June is on track to be our biggest month like I’m going to give you the real behind the scenes of that I’m also going to show you how I do my projections in my business to hit my annual goals. So this is a 7 figure marketing strategy kind of plan. And goes beyond just marketing. It’s really like a business development strategy. So I’m doing that for all of our private clients if you’re an existing private client. You will get access to it. You can attend and you can ask me questions. It will be live in July um, so if you get your application in and end up signing up for either elite or essential before June Twenty seventh then you will get to come to that training. Um and that workshop and so I highly recommend you guys. Just go to helpmystrategy.com which is going to have our simple application. It’ll walk you through the different ways we can support people and we have different options based on what your budget is in your marketing. Um, and what type of support you need and our new essential done with you offer has a two week wait list right now and so if you’re considering getting that support I wouldn’t wait at least booking an application and getting your name kind of in the lineup. The reason it has a waitlist is because in all of our offers We do a deep dive 1 on 1 strategy call where we create your marketing strategy from your funnel to your messaging to your ad strategy to your projections all of it for you Regardless, what offer you come in and so that obviously takes a 1 on one call which we can’t do over an amount per week and so that’s why we have a waitlist so helpmystrategy.com will take you to our application you have that kind of push to get in so you can come to that workshop with me next month which is going to be really fun. And I hope you guys found value out of this. Thank you so much for tuning in.