How to Market Your Products or Services in the Off-Season

If your products or services are seasonal, you might wonder how you can leverage your marketing to bridge the gap between seasons. Below, we’re sharing some ideas for how you can continue to connect with your current and potential customers during your non-peak times. 

• Make use of Holiday Purchasing Power
• Engage With and Thank Your Online Reviewers and Referrers
• Expand Your Geographic Reach
• Educate Your Customers
• Host Your Own Sales, Specials, and Giveaways
• Create A Dynamic Digital Marketing Plan
• A Partner In Any Season

Make Use of Holiday Purchasing Power

Several holidays are now associated with sales. Not only are the winter holidays thought of as big buying times, but Memorial Day, Labor Day…even the Fourth of July have sales associated with them. Amazon went one step further and created its own mid-year shopping event, Prime Day, that several companies now plan promotions around. 

Even if your products or services aren’t typically used around the time of these sales, it still could be a great time to provide a deal, promote it to your customers, and have them planning ahead for when they can use your offering. 

Engage With and Thank Your Online Reviewers & Referrers

In the busy season, you might have received an influx of online reviews you didn’t have the time to reply to. You can use the off-season as an opportunity to reply and thank people for sharing about and recommending your business.

If you have a way of tracking referrals, you might also decide to reach out to them individually and thank them for their support with something as simple yet impactful as a handwritten note. 

Or, if you’re not receiving online reviews or social engagement, you might take the off-season to plan for how you can better encourage reviews and referrals, as these are important to customers! 

Expand Your Geographic Reach

Your geographic region might be in the off-season, but one question you can ask is – does my product or service still work for someone in a different area?

For instance, if you run an outdoor retailer focused on ski gear and the ski season has finished in your area, you might ask – is there a region that’s still active I can target with online advertisements?  

Depending on your offering, you might find you’re able to extend your season simply by broadening your geographic reach. 

Educate Your Customers

The off-season is a great time to create educational content for your customers that you might not have the opportunity to make during your busier seasons.

Here are a few thoughts to spark ideas about what educational content might be right for your customers: 

• If you find people are asking a question repeatedly about one of your offerings, you might create a video explaining your answer and include it on the product/service page.
• If you run an adventure tour, you might share what the area you take people to looks like during the off-season, and how you know when it’s the right time to begin running tours again. 
• Overall, create content around areas where your customers naturally look to you to be an expert. Some ideas for this would be: choosing gear, finding the right hiking trails for your fitness level, how-to’s on camping, animals and wildlife spotted in your area…the list goes on! 

In short, you know what your customers are interested in and what they want to learn more about. Find ways to educate them and become their trusted partner in the off-season so when the time to buy is there, they choose you. 

Host Your Own Sales, Specials, and Giveaways 

Don’t want to wait until the holidays to keep customers purchasing? One option is to host your own sales, specials, and giveaways. 

You can use sales (such as buy-one-get-one-half-off) to encourage purchasing now. Plus, sales give you an exciting reason to communicate through email and social media with your customers. You might also decide to host these sales and specials around a theme – maybe it’s your company’s anniversary or a countdown to when your busy season hits. 

Giveaways are another great way to keep customers engaged. You can host small, monthly giveaways on your social media platforms to encourage growth and engagement. You might also partner a sale with a giveaway. For instance, book your trip now at 25% off and be entered to win a free extra night. 

You can also use this time to figure out which of these creative sales/specials is best at converting your potential customers to real customers and keep them buying during the next off-season. 

Create a Dynamic Digital Marketing Plan

A digital marketing plan keeps you accountable during any season.

But specifically, if several of the above ideas sound appealing, a plan will keep you focused on what needs to be done in order to make it happen. In addition to the ideas we’ve mentioned, you might also use other methods to market to your customers. 

Some other ways to ramp up your digital marketing might include: 

• A monthly newsletter that goes out no matter the season. 
• Increasing your social media using the content your customers generated during the busy season. 
• Planning and publishing blogs on your website about company news, new products, and more (like educational content.) 

A final thought – your peak season marketing plan should complement your off-season plan. 

As a quick example, in your peak season, find a way to grow your email list. Then, in your off-season, leverage those new emails to keep top of mind. 

The two marketing plans should support each other and support you in getting and keeping your business right where you want it to be. 

A Partner in Any Season

If you need help thinking through your digital marketing plan, whether you’re in your peak season or your off-season, we’re here to help. 

Hi – Katie McNamee, Founder of Elevate Online, here. We can help you with everything from the strategy and approach you’re using for your marketing to assisting you in creating your content marketing and more. 

If you’d like to schedule a free consultation where we talk through your unique needs, click here!