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As a business owner, you understand that at certain times your business will be slow. Instead of looking at this slow time as a negative, you can do proactive things when your business is slow that will help your business grow in the future. In this article, we will list some of the items we think every small business can focus on during slow times.
Reach out to existing clients
Take advantage of this slow time to reach out to existing clients. Take a few minutes and just check in with your existing clients. A simple email asking how their business is doing goes a long way. This is also a good opportunity to let your clients know of any products or services that might help their business. Your existing customers already know and trust you, so it’s much easier to sell to them rather than a brand new lead.
You can also take this opportunity and ask for testimonials or Google reviews. While we recommend you ask for reviews or testimonials after each project is complete, we completely understand that sometimes it’s easy to overlook this process. If a past client hasn’t written a review, reach out and ask them for one.
Revise your marketing plan
It’s important to think about your marketing strategy throughout the year, but if you’re busy, marketing becomes less important.
When times are slow, this is the perfect time to focus on your past/existing marketing results. Take this time to analyze and document your results. Marketing strategies vary depending on the business, but here are a few things that we focus on.
- Are our sales up, down, or flat?
- Are there significant changes in our industry affecting our business?
- Are we getting the new clients we wanted?
- Are we getting the referrals we anticipated?
- Are we ranking in Google for the keywords we are targeting?
Look at statistics and metrics to get a better idea of what to focus on.
Create Content
Now is a great time to sit down and batch your content. While we’re big fans of creating blog and video content, content creation doesn’t have to be limited to just that. Check out the list below for other sources of content that you can create:
- Landing Pages
- EBooks
- Infographics
- Podcasts
- Quizzes
Evaluate your expenses
Slower times are the perfect time to evaluate your expenses. First, list out all of your business expenses. Make notes of when products or services expire and anything that is set up for auto-renewal. Then, determine if you actually need the product or service or see if there are better alternatives.
If you run ads for your business take this time to look at your analytics and figure out if keeping ads will benefit your business moving forward. If ads don’t seem to be working for your business we recommend revising your ad strategy or looking into SEO instead.
Contact us today for an SEO Audit of your website
Learn Something New
Now is the perfect opportunity to learn something new that can help your business grow. There are so many different online tools and services you take advantage of nowadays. Here are some of our favorites:
Free: YouTube, Vimeo, Podcasts and Webinars
Paid: Lynda, Skillshare, and Masterclass
Online learning isn’t the only way to learn something new. You can always use this time to get out of the office and go to events that can better help your education. We recommend looking at Meetup.com & Facebook Events for places that might be hosting a workshop or conference near you.
Slow times will happen over the course of running a business, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. You have to look at it as an opportunity to grow as a person and business owner. If you use your downtime to your advantage your business will grow and you will dominate in your industry.
