where to focus when business is slow
When the business is slow, it’s easy to panic and to get distracted by shiny new ideas, such as launching new passive income revenue streams. We recommend that you spend your down time working on your current business rather than starting something new. We all want a quick financial reward, but we’ve learned (sometimes the hard way) to stay true to our brand and trust that the business will come. When we have some slow pockets, here are some areas where we focus:
refresh marketing materials
We try to keep our branded marketing materials up-to-date with relevant staging statistics, updated pictures and current awards and news articles. We distribute hard copy marketing materials to clients during our staging consultations, as well as provide them to our agent partners. High quality printed materials can get expensive, so we definitely spend time and energy to get it right. During slow periods, particularly around the holidays, we comb through our materials to make updates and adjustments. Canva is a great platform to use for marketing materials. They have both free and available-for-purchase templates, which are very easy to update with brand logos, fonts and colors.
update website
Similar to marketing materials, we focus our energy on our website during slow staging periods. While we try to keep most of the website content evergreen, we periodically audit each page to make sure that we have current pictures, as well as accurate pricing and service descriptions. We use Squarespace for website management and find that the platform is both easy to update and highly customizable. While we can't predict the next big social media craze, we will always have ownership of our website so we think it’s important that it is an accurate reflection of our brand and our business. Small website updates can make such a big difference, but if your website is feeling particularly stale, maybe it’s time to consider a new platform. While this is a significantly larger undertaking, there is no better time than when you have some gaps in the staging schedule.
develop social media content
Social media can often feel like a second job, so we try to regularly batch our content. In a perfect world we would plan our content calendar, then create and batch our content months in advance. However, the unpredictable nature of staging (um, can you please fit us in tomorrow?!) often prevents us from staying consistent with our content creation. During slow periods, we hunker down and knock out tons of content. As an example, for Instagram reels, our strategy is to block off a few hours, brainstorm ideas for content and actually record videos in one setting. We’ve found that if we plan ideas but don’t execute them immediately they never see the light of day. We set up a board in Trello to house our content calendar, then use Planoly to schedule Instagram posts in advance. Both systems are easy to navigate and help us get ahead with social media.
engage with clients
There is never a bad time to engage with current clients and reach out to potential clients. While we’re in constant communication with our clients and partners for day-to-day staging projects, it’s important to prioritize our time to nurture our client relationships beyond the day-to-day. Regardless of our efforts on social media or with e-mail marketing and online reach, referral and repeat business is the biggest driver of our revenues. During slow periods we review our analytics to see what agents and teams are driving our sales and which teams have potentially fallen off our radar and we plan accordingly. We reach out via e-mail, schedule one-on-one coffee meetings and plan office tours and lunch-and-learns. Typically if we are slow so are our agent partners, so it’s a great time to get on their calendars and talk about the market and how we can better serve them and their clients. If you do nothing else during slow periods, reach out to your clients!
Do we stress out when things get slow? Absolutely! Do we freak out and try to start a new branch of the business? Not anymore. If you have a slow period, take advantage of the time and really work on your business. Continue to have faith in your brand and your product and know that business will pick up. But in the meantime, we recommend that you refresh your marketing materials, update your website, get ahead on social media, and engage with your clients.