Key Takeaways:

Understand the importance of continuing your marketing efforts and campaigns over the summer. 

Equip yourself with practical suggestions and tips for maintaining your brand’s social media presence and cultivating customer relationships during vacation season. 

Summer is peak vacation season for many people. And, while everyone needs an occasional break from the daily grind, don’t let your marketing take a break (or your business will suffer the negative effects!). Here are 4 elements of your marketing that you should never press the pause button on. 

1. Regular Website Updates

Your customers may be on vacation, but Google isn’t. Their algorithm is still going to prioritize sites that are consistently adding valuable, quality content.

Even if search volume is seasonally down for your industry in summer, doing the following things will put you ahead of your competitors when things start picking up:

• Ensure that each page has an SEO title and meta description.
• Make sure that SEO titles and meta descriptions are optimized for your desired keywords and there are no duplicates.
• All of your pages should have a single H1 tag and all images should have alt text.
• Pages delivering 404 errors should be redirected.
• Clean up other technical items on past content.
• Publish fresh content on your website.

Another advantage of regular site updates is an improved user experience. If it’s been a while since you revamped your website, or you have yet to switch it to a responsive design that is mobile-friendly, now is a fantastic time to do so. According to a recent stat from wpbeginner, 61% of internet users have a higher opinion of companies with a responsive website design and people on mobile devices account for about half of the web traffic worldwide.

Site load speed is another factor to consider when tending to your business’s website. A survey from Digital.com indicates that half of customers abandon their shopping carts if a business’s web pages aren’t loading fast enough.

2. Digital Ads

Summer is a great time to build your email list before the busy holiday season. So, driving to a landing page with an email sign up form or using a pop-up form on your website can help you use your ads to capture subscribers now when they are less bombarded (and ad costs are typically less competitive).

Another thing to look at with your ad game this season is frequency. This is simply the average number of times an ad has been served to the same person during the campaign period. If your frequency hits or exceeds 2.5, you’re likely experiencing diminishing returns and it’s time to refresh your ad creative.

3. Social Media

Regardless of what social platforms you use, you reap rewards when you’re active on a platform. For instance, the higher engagement one of your Facebook posts gets, the more likely that it’ll be boosted by Facebook’s algorithm. This, in turn, increases your post’s visibility to further enhance your engagement ratings. When you take a break from social media for your business, you miss out on these potential spikes in engagement.

Engagement ratings aren’t the only thing you’ll miss out on, though. When you take a siesta on your brand’s social platforms, you risk losing leads and conversions. Small business success on social media necessitates a consistent presence on the channels that you use. Regularly interacting with your current and potential customers helps contribute to a steady flow of sales, whether you’re a product- or service-based business.

We recommend having a consistent posting schedule this summer, to avoid losing momentum during these slower months. This can also be an opportunity to test a new type of content like Reels. (Then, review the data to see what’s resonating with your audience and work that into your strategy for Q4!)

4. Email Marketing

Summer slowness can be a great opportunity to level up your email marketing. Use downtime to segment your audience to deliver more targeted emails. As we’ve mentioned before, today’s customers expect personalization in marketing.

Send at least 1 email per month to stay top of mind with current customers. Since this is an audience that has already engaged with you in some capacity, you want to make sure you cultivate those relationships instead of letting them stagnate.

Need some extra motivation to tend to your email campaigns this summer? The ROI is typically higher for email marketing than for other marketing channels. Omnisend reports that businesses can expect a return of $40 for every $1 spent on email marketing, on average.

Position Yourself for Growth This Summer

Technology Therapy Group is here to keep you motivated and focused this season. Make sure to dive into this roundup of resources to further bolster your marketing and elevate your business’s success!