Marketing when you’re Busy
How often does one feel like they are running to stand still, I am looking at the pros and cons of marketing when you’re busy. The order book is full, stock is running out, it’s Christmas and you literally cannot keep up with demand – what do you do?
It’s a constant problem we face here at NCompass. We can usually tell the state of the economy based on our workload. If we’re busy the economy is doing badly, if everyone is happy – we’re quiet, every now and again we feel like the 4th emergency service, I won’t take that title away from more deserving causes, but within the Information and Technology, we might as well be.
It’s all human nature, so we’re not really worried about clients that only market when things are quiet for them. We’re more concerned with making sure busy periods like Christmas are covered. Will you have done enough marketing to reap the benefit of your target audience?
The Cons
We may as well start with the negative effects of marketing when you’re busy, the obvious problem is that you are busy. No time to write a blog post, no time to think about Instagram or an Advert. We really do get caught up in the moment of it all.
However, this is precisely the time you should be looking at marketing and assessing what is working and what isn’t. If organised some pre-planning will have taken place. Are those plans going according to the plan?
You can lose track very easily, especially with complex strategies, what is or isn’t working. It is also easy to think something is working and throw more money or resources at it, but usually, this is a mistake.
The biggest ‘con’ to any marketing strategy during peak seasons or ‘good-times’ is a lack of planning. This is the moment when something gets out of hand and suddenly it costs you more than you realised. And we have plenty of examples of clients actually losing money during their busiest periods.
Planning planning planning
The Pros
The money is rolling in and the planning and strategies are working, awesome. But you’re still flat out and that is annoying.
Now is the time to look at ways to spread the load. What steps can be taken to get people to buy earlier, or extend the season. The absolutely best thing about marketing, when you’re busy, is to follow up customers later, collecting information, preferences and likes is super important.
For example, you can follow up on abandoned carts, start people subscribing to newsletters, encourage repeat business, and generally allow people to get to know your business.
So much of the ‘Pros’ can be done through automation, and even better don’t have to be of a ‘sales’ nature. If you’re busy you can really concentrate on building your relationship with your customers.
Automate automate automate
Continuity
Often understated, continuity allows you to take your eye off the ball with marketing in a risk-free way, if you keep doing your established, tried and tested marketing it will only contribute to the overall picture. Let’s assume you are writing a bi-monthly newsletter… if you skip one because you’re busy, customers will notice that effect, sending random newsletters only when you have the time to do it looks bad, it’s psychological, but it is also proven.
You need consistency and continuity, customers will come back to products and services when they know them and understand where to get them from.
In fact I would go so far as you suggest that it’s becoming harder and harder for a customer to have confidence in a website for the first time, these days. Instead, customers will flock more and more to websites they know.
Not good for someone trying to break into a marketplace, but equally not helpful if you’re super busy. In fact you might only expect it to get busier.
Spread the load
One way to properly deal with marketing when you’re busy is to spread the load. Take some avenue of marketing, from writing content on your website to Google Ads and experiment with what you can off-load to another employee or 3rd party service.
Shop owners have done this since time began, shop assistants, waiters, waitresses, and cinema attendants all represent their company owners. the same has to happen for your website.
By all means, set things up the way you want them set up – but once in place, delegate.
Conclusion
- Plan – get ahead of the game, know when you’re busy
- Automate – think about what tasks can be automated, what will help with consistency and continuity
- Delegate – if it works someone else can do it. That’s what should ultimately make you less busy.
Marketing should be a constant and ongoing process. ‘Sales’ is about the here and now, but ‘Marketing’ is about the future, if you stop marketing when you’re busy especially if you are short-handed, you will be liable to end up in a cycle of busy and quiet times. If you do not market for the quiet times they will only get quieter.
I suspect it has been said before, that many businesses go out of business during these quiet times so therefore you should always market for the quiet times. It will be the bread and butter of the business.