How to Avoid the Summer Marketing Slump

Summer. Summer. Summertime. With the increase of temps sometimes comes the decrease in motivation to work. You know how important it is to market your business all year round, but you’re not really looking forward to putting the effort in during the warm summer months. If anything, the only thing on your mind right now is spending as much time outdoors as you possibly can.

And it’s not just you that feels this way, either. Your customers do, too. With the ability to be outdoors in a safe setting, your clientele will be spending much less time in front of their computers, regardless of whether they’re working in an office or remotely, and finally enjoying access to their family and friends.

So what’s the point of even trying? Should you even bother investing in marketing during the warm summer months?

Yes! The answer is a resounding and simple yes.

Remember, any marketing efforts you put in will not only serve you in the present, but also the future. Your prospects may need many touchpoints to even move toward being a lead, and you can’t take an entire season off if you hope to have business all year round.

Part of avoiding the summer marketing slump involves having realistic expectations. Acknowledging that you may be less motivated and your prospects may be paying less attention is the first step to a successful summer of marketing your business. Here, we’ll explain the rest of what you should do to achieve results — even if you feel less than inspired.

1. Prepare in advance.

While summer is on the horizon, you still have an opportunity to prep in advance. What can you do right now to save yourself some time and stress later? To avoid the summer marketing slump, consider writing and scheduling out social media posts or blog content to publish over the next 13 weeks. Think: if you’re currently publishing weekly, that’s only 13 posts you need to create to last you all summer long. If you publish more than that, just work as far ahead as possible and set a date in your calendar for a week or two before the content runs out to publish some more.

2. Publish less.

If you’re already predicting a slump this summer because you experience it every year, why not embrace the slower marketing season? Sure, it’s important to market all year round, but that doesn’t mean your marketing cycle needs to be exactly the same every single week of the year. New offers, product launches, holiday cycles, and other factors influence how marketing content drips out. 

Depending on your business needs, summertime might simply be a time for you to publish less content and instead ideate and plan for future campaigns.

3. Share strategically.

When it comes time to market yourself or your business over the summer, make sure what you’re sharing is strategic and aligned with future goals. This is especially the case if you’re producing less content and campaigns over the summer months. 

Wondering what makes strategic content? Well, that depends on your immediate and future needs. You might choose to focus on attracting leads, client retention, launching new products, or other avenues of marketing, such as sponsoring a local baseball team or hosting a networking event. The key here is understanding that you don’t need to do it all at once. Choose what your immediate goals are and then buckle down on those.

4. Promote something.

One way to get a return on your marketing dollars is to pay for advertising, versus simply creating and publishing organic or manual content. Are there any recent campaigns that you can promote? Do you have any summer opt-ins that you can advertise on social media? Choosing to put an ad budget behind your marketing content can get more eyes on your campaigns than sharing manually, creating a bit of slack in your marketing efforts.

5. Take a manual approach.

Forget about the blog posts, social media videos, and other types of wide audience outreach. Get on the phone, send emails, or attend networking events. Basically, just get out there and connect with prospects on a personal level. If you’re feeling the summer marketing slump, one-on-one connection may revitalize you.

There’s no perfect approach when it comes to dealing with a slump. It happens to everyone (and every business) at some point in time, and recognizing this is a seasonal factor is the first step to putting in the effort to avoid a slump.

And one final tip: Try to keep some of your marketing content evergreen so you can avoid next summer’s marketing slump by reusing it then!