How to Manage a Seasonal Business: 3 Practical Tips

If you own a seasonal business, you are probably used to riding the "feast-or-famine" roller coaster. But what many seasonal business owners don’t realize is that the roller coaster can be avoided. In fact, the most successful companies in traditionally seasonal industries are no longer just seasonal businesses. They have put strategies and systems in place to ensure they’re busy enough to carry them through the slower periods.

The following tips are simple, yet profound ways on how growth-oriented business owners can successfully jump off the seasonal roller coaster. Put them into practice in your own business and they may inspire you to come up with some of your own creative ideas as well.

Tips for managing a seasonal business

1. Never stop marketing your seasonal business

One of the biggest mistakes any business owner can make is to slow down or stop their marketing activities. During the busy season it will occur due to a lack of time and resources, and in the off-season because many business owners assume there's no point advertising when their products or services aren’t in immediate demand.

On the contrary, failure to maintain year-round marketing is detrimental to seasonal businesses. Why? Because you’re already facing a natural lull in the off-season. And if you cut back on your marketing efforts during your busy season, you’re basically asking for your slow season to be completely dead.

Most marketing is a long game. Common marketing strategies include The Rule of Seven, which says you need to hit your prospects at least seven times before they'll notice you and take action. This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, especially if your work includes emergency repairs or service calls. Generally speaking, however, it is true—the average consumer isn’t going to want or need your services the moment they’re exposed to your marketing message for the first time. But, if they see your logo, scan your online ad, and see your branded truck driving by over and over again, you’re more likely to get their business when they do want and need your services.

So, make a long-term marketing plan and set aside the time and resources to carry it out consistently throughout the year. Since you’re likely to have more time on your hands in the slower months, that’s actually a great time to step things up. Arrange for the more time- and labor-intensive marketing activities to take place during your slow season, and take advantage of automation and established tools and systems to put the program on autopilot when you’re at your busiest.

Over time, as your marketing stays consistent, the number of new customers coming to you will become more consistent as well.

2. Keep them coming back

Of course, business success requires more than just bringing in new customers. It’s actually faster, easier, and far more cost-effective to earn repeat business from an existing customer than it is to find and convert a new one. Research supports this as the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60 to 70%, while the probability of selling to a new prospect is 5 to 20%.

So, what are you doing to retain your existing customers and encourage them to do more business with you? Here are a few recommendations you should definitely consider:

Set up a loyalty program. Incentivize repeat business by offering loyal customers valuable discounts or special perks for working with you over and over again. This can be as simple as a punch card that earns a free coffee after a customer has bought nine of them, or it can be more involved. The point is it needs to clearly provide enough value to counteract every consumer’s natural inclination to jump ship when the next shiny object appears on the horizon.

Upsell and cross-sell. It’s easy to view your existing customers in a two-dimensional way: they originally hired you to do X, so all they’ll ever need is X. But, in reality, those same customers may very well get a lot of value from service Y or product Z if only they knew you offered them. Make sure every customer is exposed to your full range of products and services in a practical and non-pushy way. You can even build it into your loyalty program and get double the power out of both strategies.

Reward referrals. A referral from a satisfied customer is one of the best kinds of marketing you can ask for. It’s free and it drops a brand-new customer into your lap. However, there is another side to it. When your existing customer refers someone else, it means they were thinking about their experience with your company and those memories were positive. That’s a perfect time to “strike while the iron is hot” by getting in touch with them. If you can offer a sincere thank you, that’s great; even better would be some sort of tangible gift that shows your appreciation, such as a deep discount on your services or a chance to win a free service of their choice.

Stay in touch. Sometimes, all it takes is a quick email, text, or snail mail postcard to jog your customers' memory and get them on the phone to order something new. We’re all busy and we procrastinate a lot. Combine that with the fact that a personalized note makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and you have an almost effortless formula for gaining repeat business.

3. Change things up

Professional investors have long recognized that diversifying their portfolio of investments offers security against the inevitable ups and downs of the stock market. Likewise, diversifying the portfolio of the products and services you offer can provide stability throughout the year that’s hard to come by if everything you do takes place during the same season.

Seasonal businesses have been doing this forever, and for good reason: it works. For example, it’s very common for landscapers to buy a heavy-duty plow they put on the front of their trucks so they can offer snowplowing services during the winter months. Construction companies that specialize in outdoor construction projects during warmer months may switch to interior remodels and the like when the weather turns cold.

It’s not difficult to come up with new ideas you and your staff can do to bring in revenue during your traditionally slow season, but it does take commitment and a willingness to push the new offerings until they get established. After all, what you’re essentially doing is starting another business entirely. While you’ll certainly want to offer your new services to existing customers, there’s a good chance there will be some disconnect between what you’ve been doing and what you’re trying to start up. Expect it to take some time and make sure you give it the time it needs.

Once the “new business” is sustaining itself, you’ll want to apply all these same tips to that business as well. Over the long term, your full portfolio of offerings will lend stability to your annual schedule.

Get off the seasonal business roller coaster

Again, these three tips are just basic, but time-tested principles that have proved successful helping business owners in seasonal industries to smooth out their annual cash flow and to support growth. Add your own ideas to the mix and start jumping off that seasonal roller coaster today!

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