A Seasonal business is one which operates only during fixed periods during the year. They either operate during fixed seasons, or some of those are operational only during festivals like Summer, Winter or events like Christmas, Halloween, Diwali, etc.
Seasonal bookable businesses face a unique challenge of collecting good revenue within a short period of time. Its nature is challenging but rewarding.
There are loads of examples of seasonal bookable businesses, from rental costume stores especially for Halloween to snow plows making money removing snow.
Some seasonal businesses suffer fluctuation in revenue due to changes in weather conditions. Examples of such businesses are lawn care service, snow plowing services, etc. While some seasonal businesses face fluctuations due to changes in seasons. Hotel bookings, vacation rentals, tour bookings, ticket bookings, etc., are ideal examples of these type of businesses.
It’s a big problem for these type of businesses to continue getting revenue even after peak season has passed. However, you can still promote seasonal bookable businesses during the off-seasons.
For that, you have to think creatively, understand the needs of your customers from their feedback/reviews and implement new ideas. This downtime of your business should always be utilized to develop new marketing strategies and finding new customers.
Let’s discuss 4 ways to promote seasonal bookable businesses during off-seasons and keep your business on people’s minds all year round.
1. Collect the List of your Existing Customers while the Season is still on
It is obvious that during the peak season your website will be a buzz. So while everyone is around, you can start creating a list of your customers. You can also get the list of people who visits your site and are interested in being your customers by booking your services in future. Make sure your website have various ways to keep in touch with people by subscribing them via emails or blog.
List of customers can be easily collected from the various pages of the website of your seasonal bookable business like your homepage, your product page or in your social profiles. From this database, you can sort out the customers who regularly visit your website and also the customers who book your services frequently.
Your repeat customers are actually the best source of additional sales. Hence they are valuable to promote seasonal bookable businesses during off-seasons.
2. Gather Online Customer Reviews
Gather your customer’s online feedback and reviews all year round. Particularly ask them their review/feedback when their booking have just come to an end.
It is important to ask for review/feedback online at that point of time because the experience is still fresh in their mind. You will get accurate reviews that are more detailed and personal as the experience is still fresh.
In Tyche Softwares, we have the practice to ask our customers to write us a review on our social media channels like our Facebook page, on Twitter or on Google+. You can see that our Facebook reviews speak a lot about our plugins & our customer support.
Also, make a survey of customer satisfaction to find out what new improvements are expected from your services and where your business stands. You can also ask them their expectation or needs of new services which your business can provide.
This would help you to identify new opportunities for your online business growth. Customer feedback plays a vital role to promote seasonal bookable businesses during off-seasons.
3. Stay Social All Year
It’s important to stay in contact with past customers throughout the year. Think of social media websites as tools to engage customers with your business.
Actually, your customers don’t disappear during the off-seasons. Even if your customers are not visiting your website during the off-seasons, they are certainly reading news on social media like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, etc.
You can always share the new content on such social media sites. It can be anything like new content publishing, run contest, offer special discounts and generate hype for the next season.
Being social all year round is also a very good idea to promote seasonal bookable businesses during off-seasons.
4. Generate Off-Seasons Excitement
In the off-seasons, the demand for booking your services is obviously going to slug down. To attract customers to come and book your services during the off-seasons, you have to give them special offers with good discounted rates.
Special offers given to your customers should be with validity date, which they can redeem during the off-seasons. This will help you to increase revenues in the off-seasons.
The rewards program is also a great way to encourage repeat business. You should reward your regular customers with a gift on the basis of the level of loyalty they have reached. Make sure your reward program is date specific that will help you to promote your seasonal bookable business during off-season months.
Marketing and offering discounts through text messages for customers who have provided a mobile phone number can also be helpful in getting bookings for your services.
Conclusion:
The nature of the seasonal bookable business is definitely challenging when compared with other business that operates very well all year round. But you can always promote seasonal bookable business with a creative way of solving the problem and by giving some attention to the above-mentioned 4 ways during the off-seasons.
The above ideas can be very much useful for getting online bookings of your services during the off-seasons and achieving success. One important thing you should always keep in your mind that your off-seasons should not be wasted.
