From tourists to entertainers and holidaymakers, summer presents small businesses with a wealth of opportunities – in which mobile is playing an ever-increasing part in the marketing mix. With a few tweaks of your mobile-first marketing strategy, you can make the most of it!

Summer is here! For many of us, this means time to wind down, go travelling, or simply park yourself in a shady spot for as long as possible. For small businesses, summer is a massive opportunity to find new customers, retain loyal ones, and build your customer base for the year ahead. With a few small tweaks to your marketing strategy, you can make it happen.

Attracting the summer set

Today’s travellers have done away with extensive pre-planning and taken a more ‘on-the-go’ approach to holidays: 85% of tourists don’t decide on any activities until arriving at their destination, while the Google search term ‘near me’ has increased a whopping 92x since 2011 (over 80% of these come from mobile).

What does this mean? You need to make yourself findable, and fast. Start with a profile on Google My Business – a direct Google listing where all your business details are available at the search of your name. If you don’t have one, now’s the time to sign up! If you do – you will need to update this regularly to reflect the finer details for a summer audience – think directions and proximity to local landmarks, pricing, and holiday trading hours (‘tis the season for last minute gift giving!)

Surprisingly, Pinterest generates the most mobile leads from its social network with 64% of its referred traffic coming from mobile or tablet devices; around five million Aussies log into Instagram monthly from their mobiles; and YouTube gets over fourteen million unique viewers every month. Once you’ve nailed the content side, using the above targeting techniques will make sure the only people who see your messages are the people most likely to respond.

Measure it up

Finally, be sure to constantly measure your actions and take any learnings from it. This data could be some very usable audience feedback on social media, through to successful campaign stats on Google Analytics, and could even point to some things that could be improved. Any learnings can be adapted for more seasonal messaging in the future (think public holidays, winter, or any big events), and can help develop new products or messages.

5 questions to ask before the summer season begins

  1. Have you set up a Google My Business listing with updated summer hours and imagery?
  2. Have you used Facebook / Instagram geo-targeting tools to advertise to your local area?
  3. Have you made your business info (website / social pages) easily accessible by those from out of town?
  4. Are you using seasonal messages and content to drive sales?
  5. Are you measuring the results for future learnings?
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Tanya Phull

Tanya Phull

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