How To Beat The Hot Summer Weather And Hustle While Your Competitors Snooze

Heat Up Your Summer Growth Strategy

While it's tempting to scale back, take a vacation and hit that snooze button during these hot summer days, why not instead use the last month of summer to plan how fast you can grow your business this Fall?

Summer is typically a slow season for many businesses. Your customers and competitors are in a vacation mood, more relaxed and not in the “office” mindset.

Here are some ideas to jumpstart your growth before the Fall season comes calling:

Be Creative And Boost Your Engagement

   What to do when the number of prospects or the urge to do business is really low during the slow days of summer? You have to focus on engaging your customers even more and expand your relationships. Remember, an engaged customer could become a loyal customer for life.

   Here are a few unique ways to boost your customer engagement: 

Quick Polls

Ask your customers what they are doing this summer, what places they will vacation, what are their favorite activities, what are their weekend plans, what are their favorite restaurants and more. Keep the polls brief and at high level. After your customers respond, start the conversation and keep it going.

Social Media Contests

Get some fun going! How about holding a simple contest to generate some buzz and cool vibes among your audiences. You can begin by asking customers to submit ideas, stories, photos or videos of what's going on and also mention you. The best story gets some reward and also some recognition. 

Cool #Hashtags

#Hashtags are everywhere now. Do you see branded posts with unique hashtags such as #keepgoing #getgoing #whatsgoingon #ogoing and more on oGoing, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and even LinkedIn ;-) National or local, big or small businesses are innovating and creating memorable #hashtags for one simple reason: your customers just want to explore by clicking on these hashtags. Why not create a unique and fun #hashtag to explode your customer engagement!

Get Involved

Do you love going to summer events? Whether it's an engaging business owners roundtable or meetup, the exciting fairs, local sports league or a great cause, your business benefits by going out and becoming involved in these community events. Championing and sponsoring local events, professional or consumer-focused, is a great way to showcase your community involvement. Raise awareness for your brand while also finding your why. Your employees will love to help and give back, and you will create deeper relationships with local communities.

What do you all think? Do you find new ways to engage with customers during the summer months? I would love to hear your ideas. Why not share your ideas on oGoing? 

Engage Your Customers

The Business Owners Roundtable on July 18

How To Market Like The Pros On Mobile

Many business owners shared their stories, the state of business in 2018, and their specific needs for success at our Business Owners Roundtable on July 18. Little did we know that July 18th is also the birthday of Nelson Mandela, former president and activist of South Africa who helped end apartheid, cultivate a culture of friendship, and became the global champion for human rights. He would have been 100 years old. I love many of his quotes, but this one is my favorite:

"It always seems impossible until it's done." - Nelson Mandela

We enjoyed the fun atmosphere, yummy pizza, engaged networking and learning. I shared key marketing apps during the Roundtable that businesses need to use today to grow their online presence, increase website traffic and generate new leads... 

Here are the apps your business should consider:

Social + Business Networking Apps - LinkedIn, oGoing, Facebook, Meetup, Groups

Email Marketing Apps - MailChimp, Constant Contact, iContact, Pardot

Local Advertising Apps - Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, Yelp Business, Google AdWords Express, Instagram

Social Sharing Apps - Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Snapchat, oGoing

Social Media Management Apps - Buffer, HootSuite, Sprout Social, TweetDeck, eClincher, Sendible

Local Networking Apps - oGoing, Meetup, Facebook Local, LinkedIn Groups 

SEO Marketing Apps - Google My Business, Yelp Business, Facebook Pages, Bing Places, oGoing

Social Media Content Apps - Adobe Spark Post, Adobe Spark Video, Apple Clips, Photoshop Express and Mix, Canva, Over

If you would like to learn more about these apps, just shoot me a reply, and I would be happy to help!

Our Next Business Owners Roundtable

Start Your E-Commerce Business

We have an exciting Business Owners Roundtable scheduled on September 19 evening at 6 pm in Irvine. Get ready to learn about selling on Amazon and online through your website.

What does it take to create a thriving six-figure to seven-figure e-commerce business? 

• Why even sell on Amazon? Statistics about market size, opportunity, competition and more
• Tools for product research (JungleScout, MerchantWords)
• Finding a trusted supplier (Alibaba, ThomasNet)
• Why you should private label
• Benefits of Amazon FBA

We have a great speaker who is helping customers launch their myriad of products on Amazon and making them successful. Do sign up early and save! Roundtable date: September 19 at 6 pm.

 Sign Up Now

One more thing.

We celebrated our daughter Suhani's University High School Graduation earlier in this summer. We really enjoyed the ceremony with my parents who flew from India to attend their grand-daughter's graduation. We are indeed blessed by their presence. Thank you Puppa-Mummi for being such a great influence for both our kids and being a constant source of inspiration to my sisters and me. I love you! Suhani is looking forward to starting at the University of Washington in Seattle this Fall, late September. She will be the first Husky in our family ;-) 

Happy to help.

If you are struggling with any aspect of online marketing - SEO, Search Social, Advertising, Mobile, Reputation, Email, Website and more - please do contact me. I would love to help you grow your business. Have a great rest of the summer. - Sanjay