As we negotiate the Easter and Anzac Day period, a common question from business owners is whether it’s worth it to continue marketing to customers when many people are away on holidays.
For consumer-focused industries such as food, beverage and retail, the holiday seasons are a significant part of the marketing calendar. But is it worth continuing your marketing activities if you’re a financial planner? Unfortunately, the answer isn’t black and white.
The care factor
“Will my prospective clients care?” is a common question. During holiday periods, many people tend to switch off and focus on family and friends. Particularly around this time of year, when Easter rolls into school holidays and through into the Anzac weekend.
April is often a business dead zone where many people have booked leave. This period is fantastic for commuting to work but not so good for business. However, it’s not necessarily a bad thing if your clients are taking some down time – particularly in consumer-focused industries such as financial planning.
Unlike at business-to-business companies, where it’s harder to put your message in front a client, a holiday period can work well for business-to-consumer firms, such as those in financial planning. For example, prospective and existing clients might take some time to examine those items they usually put off, such as their finances.
So, keeping your marketing program going and tailoring the messages to the time of year isn’t necessarily a bad idea.
If in doubt, tone it down
Even if you don’t think your clients will respond to marketing during their holiday breaks, I wouldn’t necessarily put your tweeting, public relations, and content marketing on hold for three weeks. If there is some doubt about the value you’ll get in a holiday period, you can always consider just reducing the volume.
Take your content strategy, for example. Over the summer, or either side of the Anzac Day holiday, you might reduce your output or stop it entirely. Another option is to re-purpose content you’ve already produced, perhaps boosting a post you had some success with previously, looking to give it a second life.
There’s always something you can do
One of our favourite options is to use a holiday period as a marketing checkpoint. We’ve just seen off the first calendar quarter, so you can use this time to assess and revisit the effectiveness of your activities. Look at your performance and see how it’s tracking against your plan.
Alternatively, take a look around at what other businesses are doing that you deem to be innovative or that is achieving results. There’s always something you can learn from other industries and companies.
