Dog Days Of Summer:
Business Pause

It’s the lazy, hazy, dog days of summer. People go on vacation, business slows down, and you take a moment to catch your breath especially after the year we’ve all had.

Many businesses are doggy paddling through this seasonal lull. So we came up with a few marketing & communications suggestions to make the best of the pause.

Refresh Your Messaging

Last year, many companies focused on work from home or quarantine-related campaigns. While that may still be some customers’ reality, it is time to develop hybrid marketing messages that reach the full spectrum of your consumer base. Sometimes your business may require revisiting your Message House. The Message House determines your key message(s) and how pieces of your story work together to express that idea. It will be the starting point for any future work and the measure by which ideas are validated. The message house will clearly articulate a value proposition to potential and current customers that is differentiated and meaningful.

Update or Create a Content Calendar

Use the Summer months to create a Content Calendar for the remainder of the year. Your calendar may be organized on a weekly, monthly, or on a six-month basis, depending on your marketing needs. The main benefit from having a content calendar is that planning ahead saves you time, energy, and money in the long run. 

When planning your content calendar, you need to:

1. Identify content that reinforces your message house
2. Identify relevant and timely topics that are directly related to your company’s messaging goals
3. Assign specific topics to specific months over the coming year for greater impact

Next, establish the type of content you want to publish. This may include:

Then – schedule, schedule, schedule!

Clean-Up Your Marketing Database 

This is not a fun or glamorous project, but it’s one of the most important and most frequently overlooked aspects of an effective marketing communication strategy. The slower pace of business in Summer provides a great opportunity to clean up / improve your database of clients, prospects and referral sources.

The most obvious groups of contacts that you need to get rid of are your unsubscribes and bounced emails. You should take a look at engagement metrics to decide whether bounced emails deserve to stay within your database. There are many reasons for emails to bounce: mistyped emails, bogus emails, very strict spam filters, etc. Each of those reasons requires a different solution. 

Lastly, you have to identify and merge duplicate contacts within your database. People don’t like to be targeted twice for the same offer, so merging duplicates will help improve the experience of your prospects through the nurturing process. 

Doggone it.. now you are on your way!

If you need support creating a Message House, Marketing Calendar, or building an effective Email Campaign, be sure to reach out to the Tribe at Yalo. We’ll help you to make this time a pause that refreshes.