It may be January, but every business owner knows how quickly time flies and warmer seasons will be upon us before you know it. For many independent businesses, Spring is a busy season, bringing in more interest and customers after a Winter lull. But this Spring bump isn’t guaranteed–you need to be marketing your business effectively in order to take advantage of the seasonal opportunity.
So when do you start? It’s easy to think of Spring marketing as something “over the horizon” when your current focus is on getting through the snowy Winter, but you can’t let your strategy be something that exists only in the distant future. You need to at least be thinking about Spring now, as we’re entering the new year, so here are some aspects to consider when plotting your Spring marketing plan.
Does your marketing require a long lead time?
The first thing to consider when marketing for not only Spring but any season is how long it takes to put your plans into action. Some marketing tools have lead times of only a few minutes, while giant global marketing campaigns can take years of planning. If you’re producing a television ad, you’ll probably need to be scripting and filming months in advance, whereas firing off a quick tweet can take just a matter of minutes. Odds are your marketing plans fall somewhere in the middle of those extremes, but if you aren’t sure, now’s the time to start paying attention–the last thing you want is to invest tons of money or time into a marketing tool that can’t even become active until after your target time period has passed!
If you do nothing else right now, you should be creating a calendar for your marketing plan. Plotting out exactly what tools or strategies you’ll be utilizing this Spring, knowing exactly how long they’ll take to implement, and working backwards from the date you want everything in place will help you work efficiently and with minimal stress.
Big events need to be marketed sooner rather than later
Of course, “Spring marketing” is pretty nebulous. Odds are, you aren’t plotting an entire campaign to launch on the Spring Solstice (if you are? That’s pretty cool. We’d love to see the plan!)–you likely plan your business around certain events, dates, or date ranges in the season when you know you’ll be seeing more customers and sales. If you’re a restaurant, Easter, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day are probably some of your biggest revenue-driving days of the year. Memorial Day sales are often a cornerstone of retailers. And if you’re an event space, mid-May is often when you begin to see all sorts of graduation parties and weddings.
Just like how different tools have different lead times, these sorts of seasonal events have different appropriate marketing timeframes as well. Mother’s Day brunches might get planned a few weeks in advance, and you might not need to market that until the middle of Spring. Memorial Day sales ads are usually run just in the lead-up to that weekend; a pretty short lead time. On the opposite end of the spectrum, families looking to plan graduation parties are probably seeking spaces right now as the final semester starts, and if you host weddings, you might be already marketing for Spring 2023! Knowledge of these sorts of events, how they impact your business, and when you’ll need to start marketing them will be crucial as you work to fill out your marketing calendar for the Spring season.
Set a plan in advance
Regardless of the specific lead times on your various Spring marketing efforts, it’s never too early to begin thinking about your marketing plan for the season. As the old alliterative saying goes, “prior planning prevents poor performance,” and that holds just as true with marketing as it does anything else in life. If your business sees a lull during the winter, that means it’s even more important to begin thinking about Spring now–the more time you can devote to pre-planning marketing efforts now while things are a bit less chaotic, the more time you can devote to running your business effectively once the business starts picking up. This saves you from stress, headaches, anxiety, and burnout, so use your time wisely and start planning now!
Creating an effective marketing plan takes a lot of work and plenty of detailed knowledge, and even during the Winter, not all businesses have the spare energy or time to devote to that. If you need help creating your Spring marketing plan, Skol Marketing’s team is here for you. If you’d prefer one-on-one guidance or would like to discuss how we can help make this Spring a successful season for your independent business, please don’t hesitate to contact the local marketing experts at Skol Marketing.
