by anthonycaliendo
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31 Summer Sales Tips for Small Business So You're #FitToSell

• Digital Marketing Tips by Syed Balkhi for Business .com  https://www.business.com/articles/5-digital-marketing-tips-to-drive-summer-sales 

• Take advantage of summer holidays. Take advantage of the holidays that your customers are looking forward to this summer. With Father\'s Day, Fourth of July, Back to School and Labor Day coming up, there are many opportunities for your business to stir up interest with new marketing campaigns and promotions. 

• Create fresh content. Publishing new content consistently on your blog, using targeted keywords, can drive traffic to your site and convert readers into customers.

• Use Facebook and Google retargeting. The average customer makes nine visits to a website before purchasing. This is where retargeting really comes in handy. Retargeting is a great tool that allows you to engage with visitors even after they\'ve left your site.

• Rev up your social media. Facebook released a study stating that posting to Facebook on mobile increased 26 percent during the summer. You can take advantage of this summer trend and raise your engagement levels by amping up your social media presence and catering your posts to your summer audience.

• Mobilize your marketing. Your customers are always on the go during the summer months, but that doesn\'t mean they\'re disconnected. Facebook has said that 92 percent of summer-related conversations take place on mobile. This is why you want to make sure your marketing campaigns are mobile friendly. 

• Tips to Make Your Summer Sales Sizzle by Susan Solovic for Constant Contact   https://blogs.constantcontact.com/making-summer-sales 

• The summer of social media. Create a thread that will carry through your social media campaigns. You might use a “road trip” theme on Facebook, for example. As you “travel” to different states, highlight something about the state that relates to your product or service. If you are a retail establishment, create killer displays in your windows and throughout your store that are totally Pinteresting. Find ways to dovetail summer visuals with your business.

• Nostalgia is what it used to be! Summertime is nostalgia time. We all think about summer family vacations. Have a sale with throwback prices. Again, grab the visuals of a previous generation’s summer memories. 

• Vacation and recreation giveaways. If you can swing it, have a summer vacation sweepstakes. If you need to scale that idea down, try tickets to a nearby summer hangout, like a water park or the county fair. How about a drawing for a summer picnic basket complete with food?

• Go where your customers go. Summertime is a season of festivals, community events, Little League games and more. Be there, or be square. If you can’t set up a booth, be a sponsor and hang a banner. If you can’t sell, hand out information. 

• Temp up, prices down. To get people out of their homes when the heat wave hits, try offering a $10 discount on purchases over $100 when the mercury hits the 100-degree mark—double it if the humidity also hits 100 percent! 

• Take me out to the ballpark. Entertain your best clients by treating them to a classic summer event, like a warm evening at the ballpark. Another option would be to rent a pontoon or houseboat for a day of cruising and barbecuing. 

• Celebrate special days. There is a “day” for everything, check out this calendar of special days. Find some fun days that you can transform into a “hook” to get people to your business. One cousin eats free on Cousins Day, for example. By the way, I’m celebrating Penuche Fudge Day on July 22 whether or not your small business figures out a way to take advantage of it…   

• Marketing Tips To Increase Sales from Innovative Global Vision  https://www.igvinc.com/summer-slowdown-5-marketing-tips-increase-sales 

• Ramp Up Your Social Media Efforts Social media doesn’t slow down in any season. We recommend that you use this slower sales time to improve your social media presence. Reach out to influences in your niche, engage with followers, post more content. If it is appropriate, consider a contest or a social campaign through Facebook. These are powerful strategies to increase your presence and attract attention and leads for your brand. Try a new social network. For example if you only have a Facebook business page, consider Twitter or YouTube. Getting more active on social media will naturally create more leads and opportunities.

• Try Something New Currently around 100 million people watch videos online each day. Video Marketing is one stream of marketing that has recently gotten so popular that 64% of marketers are expecting that video will dominate their strategies in the future. Has your business used video as a marketing medium? Maybe now is your chance! Taking advantage of this time to try new things with your business can help your business become more versatile. You have the opportunity to see what works for your business and what doesn’t.

• Do Some Housekeeping Does your blog or website need revamping? When is the last time you went throught your email list? Delete old or invalid email addresses, and if you really want your email list to reach its full potential, segment your list to be sure the right content is getting to the right people. Clean up your social media profiles, making sure that all your information is current and your brand imaging is consistent across all online platforms.

• Sales And Promotions A fun promotion or special offer is one way to cure suffering sales in your business. But you don’t have to panic and start giving everything away. Remember, seasonal dips are temporary, for things will get back to normal before you know it. One easy way to implement a promotion is by using Constant Contact’s Coupon feature which provides an easy way to generate sales with a timely offer.

• Prepare for the Busy Season It’s never too early to start planning new product releases and marketing campaigns. This is a great opportunity to learn, to experiment, to test out new marketing tips and to strengthen relationships with loyal customers. 

• Summer Retail Marketing Tips To Heat Up Sales by Marcia Layton Turner for Forbes  https://www.forbes.com/sites/marciaturner/2017/06/30/13-summer-retail-marketing-tips-to-heat-up-sales/#695c5278463b 

• Host a summer event. Just as friends host barbeques and pool parties, come up with your own in-store promotion to give shoppers a reason to stop by. You might schedule an in-store demonstration by one of your suppliers, set up a silent auction to benefit an area charity, or give prizes to the first 25 attendees through the door, for example. Serve lemonade and crank up your air conditioning to keep shoppers comfortable and lingering longer by your merchandise. 

• Reward your travelling customers. Incentivize your customers to talk about you on social media. Offer a decent discount coupon if they share a photo of themselves on summer vacation wearing or using one of your products and tag you in the photo. Images always attract more attention, so you can gain followers by encouraging your customers to talk about you online.

• Take the time to say thank you. During slow periods, take a few minutes to hand write a heartfelt thank you note to mail to your customers. Letter writing is so rare these days that you’ll definitely get their attention. Thank them for supporting your business – nothing else. Don’t make it a promotional message, just sincere appreciation. Not only will this deepen your relationship with your customers but it may also spur them to stop by and shop with you again. 

• Hold a closet sale via Facebook Live. Even if customers aren’t walking in your door, you can reach them at home or the office using Facebook Live. Announce a date and time for a sale and then spend 30-60 minutes selling off new inventory and leftovers. Invite all your social media followers to join you. Darlene of Suits, Heels and Curves and Sandra of La Precosa Preciosa hold regular closet sales at their Facebook group, Blogger House Curvy Closet Group, to clear out clothing, shoes and accessories they’ve amassed as part of their plus-sized blogging work. Not only are they making space for new inventory and generating sales, but their social media followers are also consistently growing. 

• Partner with a complementary business and co-promote a sale. Pick a retailer that is geographically close to you or that serves the same audience and create a combined sale, event, or simply join forces on a mailing to both your customer lists. Offer a discount for shopping at your partner store, just as they offer a discount to their customers to shop at yours.

• Create or stock a limited edition product for the summer. Take Starbucks’ Lilly Pulitzer water bottles as an example. The bottles flew off the shelves as soon as they were available this past spring. While you may not be able to partner with Lilly Pulitzer for your own special product, you can certainly design something through CafePress or Vistaprint that will appeal to your shoppers. Or have a contest and ask your customers to submit designs to be featured on limited edition merchandise. 

• Conduct an in-store class to draw buyers in. Brainstorm activities your shoppers might be interested in, and that you have space for and then announce one or even a series of one-hour classes. A sewing shop might have quick crafts classes like Michaels does. A bookstore could have a journal-making workshop. A wine shop could have a course on wine pairing. 

• Launch a loyalty program for the summer. From now until Labor Day, invite shoppers to sign up for a program that rewards them for shopping with you. You could give a percentage off after they spend a certain amount, which you track, or after a certain number of store visits. 

• Push your store outside. Catch shoppers’ eyes by setting up display tables or racks out in front of your store, if you have space on the sidewalk. Consider having a special sale section and note the bargain prices in big, bold numbers.  

• Make a bundle. Everyone loves a bargain, so consider pairing a number of related products in a box or bag bundle at a special price. Stores like The Body Shop and Bath and Body Works offer holiday bundles of several products in a bag at a discounted price if the customer spends a certain amount. You could copy that approach. 

• Hold a contest. Everyone loves the prospect of getting something for free, so create an opportunity for a customer to win big in your store. You could set up a simple raffle, asking simply for names and phone numbers and place them in a big fish bowl. Or you could host it online, asking shoppers to share a specific Facebook message or tweet with others in order to qualify, or even ask shoppers to tell you in a certain number of words what they love about summer. Keep it easy to enter and fun and you’ll connect with new customers and reconnect with current shoppers. 

• Pursue local publicity. Lean on your local media for help in promoting your store. That means providing them with information that will be of interest to their readers or listeners. So send out press releases containing tips related to your products and services, for example, announce any industry honors or awards you’ve won, ask for upcoming events to be added to the community calendar, or make contact with the reporter who covers retailers and ask how you might partner on a future story. 

• Go to where your customers are. Many cities host summer festivals, markets, or events where local retailers can set up booths or tents to sell their wares. If there’s an upcoming event in your town or neighborhood that would be a fit for your business, ask how you might be included. View it as a way to make potential customers aware of your store and your products and services. 

• Anthony Caliendo The Sales Assassin    http://www.thesalesassassin.com/sales-blog/5-tips-to-beat-the-summer-sales-slump.html

• Hire a Sales Coach Improve your sales skills and hire a sales coach to take your career to the next level. Many top professional athletes hire their own personal coaches to work their weaknesses and improve their skills, even though they already have coaches and trainers provided by their team. If your goal is to increase your sales success, invest in your future with targeted performance training by a professional sales coach. 

• Checkout more of my resources, tips and checklists for sales success: http://www.thesalesassassin.com 

This checklist was created by anthonycaliendo

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