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Rhythmic Marketing Strategies for Businesses with Seasonal Demand

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A Guest Post By Isabella York

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In this day and age of uncertain times, more and more people are looking for a point of stability in their lives with regard to income. These fervent searches have proved fruitful in the form of capitalizing on certain skills or native products, turning them into moneymaking ventures that last years or, unfortunately, fizzle and fade into obscurity. In an effort to stay fresh and original, personal business ventures have taken on different forms, one of which being the seasonal business.

A seasonal business can be rewarding for those who have the ingenuity and drive to see it through, even with its numerous pitfalls that can lead to its downfall. Amazingly productive only during a certain time of the year, seasonal businesses quickly lose their profit-generating capabilities during a period called the off-season. Unfortunately, off-season periods for a seasonal business can encompass most of the year leaving a very small margin for the moneymaking process.

In order to combat the dreaded period of slow income, seasonal business owners have to continuously innovate and market their products and services. This entails constant promotion and the use of a number of techniques that will help turn a profit when times are tough. It also calls for strategic planning and timely intervention, knowing when to push a sale and when to hold off or where to allocate funds to produce the greatest amount of positive change.

When it comes to marketing, no rules are set in stone, especially so with seasonal businesses, much of it is touch and go. By taking initiative and combining personal strategies with these tried and true methods, seasonal business owners can definitely last longer than the dismal projection most others set for them:

  1. Thorough Analysis and Planning

    Make sure to take a look at the calendar at the beginning of every fiscal year. Take note of important occasions and events and try to see how your products or services can be incorporated. Give yourself a trial period and map out your initial progress through a specific time period. Analyze trends and apply this knowledge to your sales approach. Try not to restrict yourself to the limits of your seasonal business but go beyond and see how you can move further. A good example would be modifying summer pool covers to fit the demands of the season. Another instance would entail offering tropical themed Christmas trees that could serve as summer time decor.

  2. Innovative Advertisement

    It is a known fact that customers are attracted to seasonal products and will generate a lot of income during the peak season. To this effect, seasonal business owners would do well to advertise their products far and wide. Reach as many people as possible through the latest communication avenues and create a system of feedback that allows you to talk directly with your customers. Study the latest advertisement techniques and use them to the optimum effect.

  3. Excellent Customer Service

    Establish an excellent database of loyal customers. By doing so, you generate a stable source of income even during the off-season. Create updated surveys every sale period and get customer responses personally to build rapport. The web with its wide array of tools is an effective way to generate and manage surveys. You can also draw on customer ideas to generate new advertisement and marketing schemes. Consumers can have great ideas too.

  4. Off-Season Strategizing

    Marketing practices need not be confined to peak-season. In fact, business experts claim that the most effort a seasonal business owner must exert is during the period of low income. However, an important point is not to exhaust one’s income and to prioritize what needs the most attention. For example, either do an advertising campaign or push for store renovations and product updates. Never take on too many projects as this may tip the fragile balance of peak season income and off-season demands.

  5. Diversified Approach

    Branch out in terms of market groups. Never restrict your campaigns and services to one market as this also limits the amount of money you can make. See about reaching different people from different countries. Try to go global and tap into the different seasonal strategies of business owners from other countries. Not only do you build a wider customer base but you are also opening yourself up to potentially useful knowledge you would never know otherwise.

Be willing to take in one step further. Look beyond the strategies presented here and see how you can build and improve on them. The consumer market is vast and constantly changing, requiring you to stay on your toes and keep the ball rolling with regard to coming up with new and more attractive marketing schemes. The most important thing in business, seasonal or otherwise is to take the first step. It’s all about initiative. With constant innovation and attention-to-detail you can start and maintain a successful seasonal business.

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Isabella York has been in the business world her entire life. Having seen business cycles ebb and flow, she knows a thing or two about developing strategies for changing demands, however her job with a purveyor of Artificial Christmas Trees (http://www.balsamhill.com/Artificial-Christmas-Trees-s/1.htm) and Christmas Trees (http://www.balsamhill.com/) has catapulted this skill set to a new level.

Thanks, Isabella, for your insight into something we don’t talk about enough!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Should You Dish What You Take?

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By Terez Howard

One of the editors that I write for usually doesn’t get back with me about my articles until right before publication. That means that I have to scramble to make any changes. She hardly ever responds to my first e-mail, and oftentimes doesn’t “get” the e-mails I send. I’ve had so many issues with this woman, from getting no check at all to getting double on my check, that I’ve contemplated ceasing my business relationship with her.

I love to write. But when I have to deal with someone that doesn’t seem the least bit organized, I don’t want to deal with them. I feel like not responding to her e-mails or only doing half the work I’m asked to do. I know that’s a horrible attitude that will make her feel that I am unworthy of writing for that publication.  That attitude would get me bad reviews from a higher up.

No matter how angry and wronged I feel, I tell myself that I have to maintain a professional demeanor.

When you’re wronged

Do you pay in kind? Or, do you turn the other cheek?

In the blogging business world, you might feel that paying in kind is a necessity. With your blog, you have a means to communicate your unbridled ideas and opinions with the world. You might feel that it’s your duty to be brutally honest.

Personally, I agree that a blog should keep it real.

On the other hand, perhaps you are more of a turn the other cheek person. It’s not that you aren’t being true to yourself. Being yourself just means avoiding confrontation. You actually just might not care about an issue one way or the other. You might prefer to ban ranting from your blog.

That’s OK, too. Once again, be real.

What about a personal level?

With a blog, you don’t usually get more personal than comments and e-mails. What are people saying about what you write? What are people saying about you?

You can choose to take offense on a personal attack and dish what they serve, or you can choose ignore ignorance, or do something in between.

The in between approach is best. When you deal with a confrontational reader, you have to always be tactful. Just because a person is rude to you, does not mean that you have to be the exact same way. Say how you feel as professionally as possible.

Be careful when you choose to ignore a person. That individual, while agitated, might be expecting a response from you. If that is the case, do so in the same tactful spirit I mentioned before. If you still just don’t want to deal with it, you can still let a person know that you are not going to respond to that type of negativity and leave it at that.

What will I do?

I’m still not sure what to do about writing for this editor. I try to be a very organized woman, and when that organization is dramatically disrupted time and time again, I have a difficult time rolling with the punches. I probably will not dish what she serves. I probably will not try to approach her again about these issues. (Yes, I’ve already made some attempts to smooth things out).

What would you do? Do you dish what people serve?

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Terez Howard operates TheWriteBloggers, a professional blogging service which builds clients’ authority status and net visibility. She has written informative pieces for newspapers, online magazines and blogs, both big and small. She regularly blogs at Freelance Writing Mamas. You’ll find her on Twitter @thewriteblogger.

Thanks, Terez!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Why Your Request for Help Isn’t Getting A Response

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New Culture, New Thinking

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Whether you’ve been on social web from the beginning or you just got here and whether you work for yourself, for clients, or an employer, if your goal is to grow your business or cause — and if it’s not, why isn’t it? — being able to spread your positive message is critical.

Social business and social media can business development, brand awareness, and marketing so much easier because of the people-centered, networking nature of the tools and culture. What drives social media and social business is the idea that people like to connect with and talk to other people.

The messages we share are important and vital to the causes we care about. Often they’re urgent and vital to the success of the projects and campaigns that we’re working on. Yet we need the help of our networks — our communities of colleagues and friends — to get them out, hopefully to take them viral.

So we put together an idea to spread, a call to action that our advocates and evangelists might talk about and share. The problem is that everyone is trying to be subject of the hour as much as we are and true advocates and evangelists are few. So we reach out further to find volunteers in hopes that they will help us as well.

Why Your Request for Help Isn’t Getting A Response

The problem is that we can get so wrapped up in the value of the “goodness” of what we’re doing that we can forget to pass that goodness on it with our request for help. We use the time to detail the “ask,” without letting the people we’re asking know how and why it’s about them to follow through on it. As a result, the request to help us with our cause, our launch, our contest, and sound selfish and leave folks wondering why they should take time to do it.

We can’t ensure a message with take off like wildfire, go viral, with certainty. It’s a combination of timing, connection, resonance, and a perfect match to the audience. Here are three reasons why a request won’t get much attention at all…

  1. “Buy my stuff” / “help my cause” and “tell everyone” broadcasts. No one has time or resources to do something just because someone asks. It would be silly to do so and we’re not doing our work if we think just saying “buy now,” is enough. These days people get asked so much that lack of a compelling reason to act is enough to be an excuse to say “no.” And passing it on means that we’re only passing more “buy my stuff” noise to our friends.
  2. “Do this because I / we / need you” to share this messages. Research shows that using “because” will raise your odds. But will that raise your odds enough? We’re bombarded by “calls to action” that are really “calls to help” so much so that the nonprofit world has a term called donor fatigue. Our response to such messages is directly proportional to our relationship to the person, business, or the cause that is asking. We can’t give our everything to everyone, can we? And you can’t keep asking every week.
  3. “I’m shameless to ask / feeling guilty to ask / begging, so won’t you share this?” messages. Asking for a favor is a friendship action. If you feel shameless for asking, then you shouldn’t ask. If you don’t, don’t say that you do. Saying you’re shameless is asking me to be shameless with you. If we have a relationship of trust, you can tell me what you need and let me decide.

All three messages stop short. They literally leave out what’s need to connect in way that resonates. If we want the potential to go viral, we need that connection in a human to human way.

These messages ask the receiver to choose between helping out and interrupting, nagging, possibly irritating their own network of friends. That’s pressure that no one enjoys and it often backfires on the sender who may have had the best of intentions.

Very often when I get messages like these, I wonder whether the sender has considered me at all in what they’re asking. I want to reply with “Why should I promote yours and not the other ten I just got? I can’t spent my time or bother my friends promoting all of them.”

As they stand all three messages are missing one powerful piece that is crucial to taking a message viral – a connection to the person we’re asking to pass it on. To make it much more likely that your message will get a chance a long and viral run make the act of doing what you need about the people you ask not about you or your cause.

Be a hero by pitching in $1, http://hero.link [someone will sleep in a warm bed tonight]. Pass it on to heroes you admire.

When you make it easy and help folks like heroes for helping, they more often do.

How often do help and RT requests that make you feel proud to pass them on?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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Tailoring Twitter: The ROI of Curating Content on Twitter

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What You Share Defines You

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Last year, I started experimenting with curating content on Twitter. I had three good reasons. I realized that

  1. Twitter was no longer an extension of blog, but had become it’s own thing. Like a new summer home where I met a new neighborhood of people, many of them didn’t know my background, my skillset, my expertise, or my interests. A twitter bio doesn’t do much to fill in that.
  2. The weekly link post on my blog “The SOB Business Cafe” wasn’t as useful today as a filter as it once had been. Not every great post is evergreen enough to wait until Friday for sharing. And a single post collect such things needs to be targeted and niched well with a title that brings home their value. Rearranging that slot in that way would be turning it into a totally new thing. I had other ideas about using that space to feature members of the community.
  3. Becoming a blogger had given me a way to keep up the writer’s discipline of writing every day — a habit that had built my skills and served me for decades. The idea of curating great content would give a way to keep up the writer’s discipline of reading great content every day — a habit that would build my skills and keep me current in an ever changing business environment.

To say it paid off would be an understatment. While reading for articles to share, I found new thoughts to consider and new ideas to write about. And like blogging, curating content on Twitter taught me more about relationships, social skills and building a network than I might ever have expected.

Here’s how I did that …

Build a Stronger Network by Curating Content On the Go

Don’t think for a minute that I’m exaggerating about the “minutes a day” part. I curate content during commercials on TV and while I’m waiting for people to meet me in a restaurant. At the risk of sounding like Dr. Seuss …

I curate in the morning.
Breaking out save articles without warning.
I curate on a break.
I curate eating cake.
I curate near the lake.
Sometimes I save an article to read and curate while I wait
for a meeting, a phone call, an appointment, or blogger date.
I curate especially during commercial breaks …

Two Ways to Curate on the Go

Actually, I’m not quite as obsessed as all that. But I do curate in the minutes that I used to just sit. Here are two ways I do that.

  1. When someone shares a great article on Twitter that I don’t have time to read right then, I send the that article to my Instapaper account. When I find I have a few minutes to read a bit, I have a queue of articles that already have my interest waiting to be read. I share the ones I think serve my audience interests and needs.
  2. I also have a list of publications — standard publications in my niche, writers who say thought provoking and useful things, and outliers who connect ideas in interesting ways. I’ve collected them into sets of bookmarks. About once a week I visit their websites to see what they’ve been talking about and share what I find to be the most useful of their content.

Sometimes I tweet what I find at that very moment. Often I schedule the content I curate so that I don’t binge tweet. I also think about when an article might be most useful to folks. So I try to post articles that require more reading time at night, how-to and building articles or on the weekend, and ways to perform better at work during the week. [I use Tweetdeck to schedule these curated tweets and the only tweets I schedule are curated tweets.]

The ROI of Curating Content on Twitter

The discipline of reading regularly and curating what I prized had more ROI than I’d ever have guessed. Naturally I got closer and more up-to-date with great content, but the return was far more than that. Here are the direct benefits that were a result of investing a few minutes whenever I had the time.

  1. The content I curated defined me more clearly and differently to the people who follow my Twitter Stream. This single reason is huge. Don’t just be the “sales guy” be the “sales guy who’s up on the latest news and issues.”
  2. That content began attracting people who want to read the content I curate. I am pre-selecting the Internet for them. Twitter used to be the back door to my blog. Now that new audience sometimes starts at Twitter and then goes to my blog to check out what I’m about.
  3. When I keep what I curate consistent in content and quality, I find people share it often with comments and RTs.
  4. When I credit the Twitter name of the person who wrote the article — rather than the magazine or blog — it often starts a relationship between us that wasn’t there before I tweeted that person’s work. Some of those relationships have now moved offline to collaborations. A couple of nice interviews have resulted and some upcoming coverage for an event is happening because of those relationships.
  5. Offering great content from 8-12 other sources a day also makes it easier to share what’s good on my own blog without seeming a self-promotional jerk.
  6. I’ve become far more familiar with the “personality” of the publications in my niche. I developed a good sense for each publication’s strengths, standards, and content preferences. i’m still surprised to find how infrequently some of the huge publications on the web update their content.
  7. Curating content has kept me from staying stuck in the conversation fishbowl that can happen when we only talk with our friends. I’ve learned new points of view, new tools, new techniques, and new strategies from the articles I’ve read.

The ROI of curating content on twitter is the influence gained from incrementally staying in sync with the tools and the culture while still listening to the mainstream point of view. Those bits and articles that we take in from Twitter bring the latest from the self-sorted group. Those we seek out from traditional media bring the outside view. On the edges of each and in between them is where the new thoughts come through.

Curating content gets us to listen too.

The more we listen, the more we know. The more we know, the more we notice. The more we notice the more we can use to figure out what we need to know next.

How can you curate content to tailor Twitter — to make it faster, easier and more meaningful — for the folks who follow you?

Be Irresistible!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Related
Tailoring Twitter: Does Your Twitter Profile Attract the Right People?
Tailoring Twitter: Building a Powerful Network that Fits You Perfectly
Tailoring Twitter: Get Busy Folks to “Get” Twitter in 2 Minutes Flat!

When people steal your ideas…

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by Patty Azzarello

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Look at MY great idea…

It’s really frustrating when someone steals your ideas or work.

1. You say something in a meeting, no one reacts, but then later someone else repeats the exact same thing and suddenly gets all the credit.

2. You achieve a breakthrough or invent something, share it with others, then find that someone else is presenting the idea as their own.

3. You deliver a bunch of great work to your boss, the he puts his name on it and doesn’t mention you when presenting it to others.

It’s at a minimum super-annoying, if not downright unethical.

So what do you do about it?

I am an advocate of staying on the high ground. I have done this in my career when someone else absorbs my work with no credit to me.

1. Take advantage of the difference between talking and doing

When someone re-packages your idea and gets all the glory, it is my experience that they are now out of moves. People who have to steal good ideas don’t typically have the capacity to do anything about them — they max out at recognizing and repeating a good idea.

It can be fun to ask them, OK, so what will you do next to make this happen? While they are giving a shallow, hand-waving, “we’ll need more input, or put it to committee” kind of answer, just take control of the next step.

You be the one to develop the idea to the next level and take decisive action on it. Create a communication plan around the action and the outcomes.

You will get known for the important part – doing something. And the moment in the meeting when he stole your idea will fade into the background. Also take some comfort in the fact that others recognize this idea-parroting behavior too.

2. You are supposed to make your boss look good

I remember the first time my boss absorbed a big project of mine. He put his name on it and the CEO thanked him for the amazing job. I was invisible. I was crushed. This was early in my career.

Later I recognized that you are supposed to make your boss look good.

But you need to make sure that between you and your boss, it’s clear the work was yours.

Write up a case study of what you did to be included in your next review. Document how things were when you started, what you did, and what the outcomes were. Document the benefit your boss received.

If it’s all true you are not doing anything controversial. You are just letting your boss know you are happy for him to have the glory publicly, but expect him to acknowledge your work, and not walk all over you.

Sometimes this is inadvertent, and your boss is actually happy to give you the credit publicly. Ask your boss if you can join him and do part of the presentation. Ask your boss to keep you visible. Tell him that this visibility with his peers will help you deliver the next set of outcomes that he needs (that will also make him look good).

3. Don’t confront in public

Whether it’s your boss or your peer that stole your work, don’t do the confrontation in public. If it’s a peer have a private meeting where you say something like:

I am pleased that you were able to run with my idea. I have documented my work for my boss and his peers in other organizations, so that they may also benefit from this idea.

Let them know that you have let other people know behind the scenes where the work really comes from. They will be less likely to continue to advertise their ownership of it, when they realize that lots of people other than you know the real story.

4. You can’t stay invisible. You need to talk about it.

One big reason I see that people get their ideas stolen is that they are not comfortable talking about them.

I know one person who was repeatedly given opportunities to share an invention, and because he did not enjoy public speaking, he didn’t do it. Someone else stepped in to do the presentations and ultimately the idea became credited to the person doing the talking.

Communicate about your work

You need to stand up for your ideas, your work and your team. When you do something good, you need to make sure that you create positive visibility for that work with the people who care about it.

By staying invisible you are just inviting your ideas and your deserved recognition to be stolen by others.

What about you?

How do you share your ideas? What do you do when some takes credit? Please leave your thoughts in the comment box below.

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Patty Azzarello is an executive, author, speaker and CEO-advior. She works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. Patty has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at Patty Azzarello’s Business Leadership Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello. Also, check out her new book Rise…

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Leadership … It’s All in Your Head!

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The theme of SOBCon this year, The New Leaderrship and Loyalty Businesss, has me thinking, why do we work so hard to do what we do? … and how much of our success and leadership is in how we see ourselves?

It can’t be solely economic. We could find easier ways to put in a good day’s work for a good day’s pay.

It’s not just political. We can raise our station in life and our job roles by trying less visible, more traditional ways.

It’s a reaching out to leadership. Leaders are givers. Leaders give their learning, their loyalty, their love to build something lasting and solid with others that no one person can build alone.

Why do we choose the road less traveled, the rockier road that’s bound to be just that much harder if only because it’s not paved? In the end does that make us leaders or victims of the route we’ve chosen to take? At it’s core, it’s the “what” or even the “how” of what we do that makes a leader, but the “why.”

Leadership … It’s All In Your Head

Still, the calling to build something lasting and solid is simply a calling without the leadership thinking to fuel the “what” and “how” of making that vision a reality. To attract those other someones who help build that solid something a leader has to have the right “why” working. the right “why” is leadership thinking. Leadership is really all in our heads.

Did you ever notice that what people value most is what they give away?

Leaders understand that giving to others won’t get us what we not given to ourselves.

I have a friend who is a promiscuous truster. He extends his trust almost immediately to everyone he meets. He NEEDS to trust other people in order to get their trust back. His need to feel trusted gets filled that way. He’s often the victim of untrustworthy types find him attractive and find it easy to take advantage. He often burned, sometimes badly. My friend’s problem is that he doesn’t trust himself first.

The “why” he’s doing it is because he NEEDS to be trusted that is what undercuts his leadership.

Suppose that he decided (killed off all other options) to find himself trustworthy first?

That would simply be a change in thinking — all in his head.

He would move from possible victim to leadership.

If he found himself trustworthy, he wouldn’t NEED to trust other people almost immediately but he still could.
Now he would be doing it from a position of strength. Now he could trust almost everyone until he got to the untrustworthy takers. Now, because he didn’t NEED their trust (which he wasn’t getting anyway) he could smile and leave them alone.

Leaders own what they give away.

Doing that is all inside our heads. How is the leadership inside your head going?

Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

See also:
Top 10 Ways to Start Living Your Life