How can you maintain your lead flow during the summer?

Summer is traditionally a quieter time for businesses. At least it is for some businesses, because the world keeps turning! B2B businesses prepare for September and optimise their strategy: work continues, except perhaps during the first two weeks of August. For B2C businesses, consumers remain clients even when they’re on holiday. Developing visibility during the summer is a good way to strengthen advertisers’ branding, credibility and reputation. And there are lots of ways to maintain your lead flow. Examples.

Manage your website

Even if your teams are on holiday, your website shouldn’t be. Not only should it be accessible and up-to-date, it should also be optimised for your summer visitors. It’s important to update your website’s content, to publish news on a regular basis, to highlight special offers and, above all, to ensure that your website remains active. The worst thing you can do? Leaving information on the website about events which have already happened, offers which are no longer valid and products which are no longer available.

Summer is also a good time to work on optimising your website with A/B testing tools. By creating two versions of the same page, you can work on various adjustments which will make your tools more efficient and more effective.

Automate your lead generation strategy

A well designed online advertising campaign can work almost automatically. Once your visuals have been created and your campaigns set up, the leads arrive on a specially designed landing page. Use retargeting to follow up on leads which aren’t converted. Leads which are converted then enter processes of automation and scoring with personalised content and an approach which adapts to their behaviour. In this way, the most active leads will be approached automatically. All of this is done seamlessly and without any human intervention to maintain lead flow even during the summer.

Prepare original content in advance

With inbound marketing, you make clients come to you. The secret to success: content, well-defined target audiences with well-developed personas and an optimised customer experience. To do this, you can prepare newsletters in advance which will be sent at regular intervals. You should also create blog articles: published throughout the summer and shared automatically on social media.

In the summer, nobody wants to read the kind of content which is published during the rest of the year. It’s not unusual to change things up to create summer edition content. The idea is to take a step back and to focus less on the operational details. White papers and applications which have been specially designed to be read and used in summer, with fewer details and more interaction (games, quizzes, tests, etc.), are relevant for people at the beach, on planes or by the pool.

Don’t overlook social media

People take their smartphones on holiday. Of course, smartphones are synonymous with social media. To maintain your reach, you need to ensure a continuous presence on social media. In summer, you can play with newsjacking, using publications with a more playful tone and content which is easy to reuse and recycle. It’s what we call evergreen content.

What’s more, advertising on social networks remains a safe bet when it comes to expanding your audience. All the more so given that you can use geolocation to geographically target tourists who travel to your area. It’s always useful as part of a web-to-store approach for retailers who have bricks and mortar stores. Depending on your location (sea, mountains, city, etc.), you can adapt your offering to these visitors’ needs. Lastly, social media is useful for publicising competitions and attracting potential clients.

Business is done differently in summer. With the right tools and a little creativity, it’s not too difficult to maintain your lead flow. Focus on people and techniques which can work on your behalf, including automation. Try influencers and affiliation marketing, for example. If you plan ahead, your business can continue (almost) as usual, even while you’re relaxing in the sunshine! If you have any questions after reading this article, contact our Kwanko experts!