Over the next week many of you will have some “free time.” Time away from the office or the field where you are spending time with friends, family or just some well deserved “alone time.” Use a little of that time to prepare for the year ahead. I’m not talking about the typical new year’s resolutions where you go on a diet or exercise more even those are good things to work on. No, I’m suggesting you think about the year ahead and create a calendar of events or focused services or even marketing campaigns that will help you prepare and prevent times of unexpected lower income throughout the year.

Each season and month has it’s own special set of needs and it’s always good to prepare and start letting others know anywhere from a month to three months ahead of time. For example I’m working on calendars for my photography, web and other services I offer. How about your blogging calendar? Yes, you want to write about up to date topics but does your industry see different themes during different times of the year? A time of the year businesses (other than the travel industry) go a slump is the summer. That being said they are concerns you could address for the summer months (You may want to address these in the spring at least) For instance a company that builds garages might want to focus on security features to those who will be away from home for an extended period of time, A person in wedding services may want start reminding people in the early part of the year to start planning for that June wedding and while a chimney sweep company may have good business in the late summer or fall as people prepare for the winter they may want to think about selling fireplace accessories during the holidays.

We have had or have customers in the above industries but what I have written is just examples of what they could or might be doing. They could in fact have a great year round marketing calendar already in place. What times of the year have you experienced slumps in business? Do you have a successful calendar strategy that helps bring in business all year? Feel free to leave a comment and promote your business. How can we help you with your web, print and portable media marketing throughout the the year?

This entry was posted on Monday, December 24th, 2007 at 7:17 am and is filed under Organization, Tips, blogging, marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.