9 tips for making the most of B2B content marketing in the summertime
There are over 2600 different recordings of the song “Summertime”, but the lyrics remain the same: “Summertime and the living is easy.”
That’s why the summer, especially in countries and states with four seasons, it’s no wonder why people go into vacation mode in their minds, anxiously awaiting the end of their work hours.
As marketers, we need to realize that the summer is a time when people pay attention to the content we write in a completely different fashion than the rest of the year. It’s not just us, even the stock market takes a dip during these months. Summer is the beginning of days when people start to mind working late, value their weekends more, and want to get the most out of their free time.
B2B companies especially, have a hard time marketing their products and events during the summer, which is why it’s so important to start promotions for a fall event during the spring before summer lag has set in. And once the summer begins to dwindle, it’s the time when marketers need to get customers excited to get back into gear for the fall.
Remember, most of us only went to school for nine to ten months out of the year. We’re practically programmed to care a little less in June and start caring a lot more in September. Is it any wonder why yearly calendars tend to start some time in September?
[text_ad]
To ramp up your content schedule for this year and the following year, remember these things:
- Start aggressively promoting your fall events in the early spring and again at the end of the summer.
- Keep webinar times to the early afternoon.
- Remember that people are thinking about leisure and packing as much into their workday as possible, in order to get out “on time”. So either spend more time making your blog a leisurely read, or spend more time getting straight to the point.
- You can’t control when people take vacations, so accept that website visitors, email open rates and event attendee numbers may go down.
- Come up with creative seasonal reasons to have sales on your products.
- Repurpose old content in order to make time for developing new products for the fall, when people are paying more attention.
- Update old books, white papers and materials and re-launch in the fall.
- Get ahead for the fall – stock up on blog posts, new products and event plans.
- Host an event – is there any reason you can’t invite all your social media tweeps to an outdoor networking Tweetup? Free and outdoors is a lot more likely to succeed than expensive and air-conditioned.
Care to share your own summer marketing ideas in the B2B space? We know it’s not easy, so let’s discuss in the comments!
