So we are in the summer right now, we are in July, it’s a lovely month, I’m telling you where the summer because if you could see the sky in the background, this is England, it doesn’t look like we are in the summer.
I am in the garden, I am in a T-shirt but it’s still a bit nippy and I wish I was wearing a jumper or sweater as my lovely friends in North America love to call them. So, the seasons.
So, seasons, you know, winter, summer, autumn, fall etc. and spring. Marketing for me is really getting in front of people, getting your message across to people.
And for that you need to have pretty much any excuse to speak to somebody; and by speaking, that can be face-to-face, that can be by video, that can be via audio like a podcast, it could be via e-mail, it could be via handwritten letter, it could be via a typed letter, it could be via a card, a hand written card, it could be via text.
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You may be using WhatsApp groups, you may be using Snap chat, anything like that.
No matter what, the more that you communicate with your potential audience, the more they’ll get like you, the more the more they will get to like you, the more they will get to know you and the more they are likely to trust you, as long as you are not banging on with offers all the time.
So, in your business, are you using the seasons? For example, when it comes up to winter, most businesses of any type will have something different than needs to be done in the winter. So tell people about it.
And you’re going to think “Well, it happens every year, they know.” Just assume they don’t.
Look I live in the UK, every single year, if it snows, it’s like a complete and utter shock to us as if it’s never snowed before.
If we have a really big snow dump, it’s like a shock as if it’s never happened before. It’s all over the news.
In America, tornadoes, for those that happen same time every year, for those that live outside we think “Why would you live there?! You are going to be destroyed by a tornado.”
But that happens every year and it’s still on the news and people still warn people about it, these things just need to be talked about , there’s always someone who is interested, so don’t assume anything.
Now, in your particular business there may not be anything that needs to be changed. For instance, you may be a letting manager so you manage rentals and lettings of properties and so on.
There’s nothing different for you; however, what about your landlords? What about your tenants? Yeah, think slightly wider.
So for instance, the time of the year when they need to think about getting a plumber in to check their heating system before every single other person calls a plumber.
So don’t wait then to wait until October, tell them to do it in September when plumbers don’t quite have anything to do yet. In October, they’re going to be working their socks off and queuing up and charging full price.
Think about what changes for Christmas in some businesses, think about what changes new year, then you’ve got Valentine’s Day, you’ve got people’s birthdays.
In Fire Protection Online, every year my birthday is August 23, if you’re wondering, if you wish to send presents and gifts, just look on the Fire Protection Online website, the bottom of every page there is an address there, you can send them there.
Make sure they’re not too big and make sure they will fit in my car when I go and take them home, thank you very much.
But it’s August 23 , so on that day my marketing team will usually send out a good discount voucher that’s valid for twenty four hours because it’s the boss’s birthday. I have nothing to do with that, they do that every year.
There will be things that they can talk about coming up to the summer, such as people go on holiday on vacation around Europe and they may take the car across on the ferry or on the tunnel, so they need to know what are the regulations for driving overseas.
What’s that to do with fire protection? Well, one of the things they may want to consider is taking a little fire extinguisher, or the fact that we sell some of the other bits.
We actually do sell the kits entirely, but we can advise, why not? It’s an excuse. Why wouldn’t we tell them? We want to communicate, we want to seem helpful, we want our customers to think we are wonderful, we are a resource. You can do that as well.
In the spring, people who are in campsites or anything to do with marinas, they suddenly start to open up everything that has been frozen up over the winter; spring is when people start go on holidays again, they start using their boats, they start using their caravans or their RV’s and things like that.
And then at the end of the summer, they start to pack things away. So think in your business or in a related business, how you can communicate in the seasons.
Now once you get that, you can plan ahead because, this is why I’m talking about this one, this may come as no surprise to many of you, but it would be the summer next year as well at the same time.
So that means in January, if you do your planning in January for the year, you can design editorial calendar like magazines have; because did you know magazines know in advance what they are going to talk about at certain times of the year?
And they can then contact their advertisers to say, in the winter , or in the autumn, or in the fall of this year, October, we will be talking about this and you can be pleased to, if you’ve got products that are related please advertise in them.
Yes I know you down in the southern hemisphere it’s all back to front, but you know when your autumn is. So think ahead, plan ahead and then it’s not hand to mouth and you’re not running around for things of ideas of what to do.
And a lot of these seasonal tips, a lot of these things you can talk to people about, you can talk to them in exactly the same way next year.
Now you might think “I can’t say the same thing.” But hey, look at Cosmopolitan magazine, every single month on the front cover there will be so many sex tips and things like that, there will be a star and something.
Look at the front covers of Cosmopolitan magazine, they are the same every single month, pretty much, they repeat it every month, I’m sure you can repeat it every year if you think that many people are reading and taking every word you say to heart, that’s fantastic.
But honestly, repeat, repeat, repeat. Successful stuff works, that’s why the news always talks about the weather stuff in America.
Unfortunately, the always talk about gun crimes stuff and they always talk about celebrity stuff because that’s what sells. Find what sells, find the seasons and just go on about it every year, that’s half your content done.
Anyway, I am sure you have got the gist.
Drive Time Podcast
So, it is a Thursday and that means we have a drive time podcast. I like the little drive time podcast, it’s about time we have some ladies on the show.
So today, we are featuring a couple of ladies for the Being Boss podcast. Now I enjoy this, it’s Emily Thompson and Kathleen Shannon.
They have a website but they have two types of show and they seem to alternate them. They have a chat one, sometimes they interview sometimes they chat with themselves.
The one I was listening to recently was talking about their own method for getting things done, called the chalkboard method. But they have a good rapport, they don’t sound forced, they sound like genuinely good friends, they have a smooth style, very easy listening to.
And the other ones they have are mini sodes, do they call them like episodes? Which are little short ones which are sort of eight minutes, the longer ones, thirty, forty minutes, the short ones, five to eight minutes, something like that. But it’s well worth a look.
If you can’t find it, just go to iTunes and just put in “Being Boss” or just go to Google on any device and just enter “Being Boss Podcast” trust me, Google is dead smart, it will find it for you and get to it.
Better still, just go to our website and find it there okay?
I’m going to be back tomorrow with a weekend challenge for you.
