Building Your Customer Base In the Slow Holiday Season

The holiday season can either be a boom for a business, or it can be a slower time of the year. For retailers, the months between October and December are often the peak sales time, while for service industries, they are the lowest. 

There are some simple solutions to boost your business and even add new customers, even in the slow holiday season. The key is in being creative and offering new information and ideas to customers to place your business in a position of being a reliable authority in your industry. 

Offer Service Packages at a Discount

Even though a service company doesn’t offer a lot of sales, discounting service packages for annual system maintenance and inspections is a great way to not only provide a needed service but also to have your technicians interact with your potential customers. 

Offering a 10 or 15 percent discount on annual service contracts can be a great way to bring in business. Tying it in to preparing the air conditioning system for spring use and checking the heating system and boilers halfway through the winter season is always a wise decision. 

This is also a great time to check sprinkler systems and fire suppression components in residential homes. It is also an ideal time to approach commercial and industrial customers about these types of maintenance contracts and to at least get the chance to have a personal conversation with the business owner or the maintenance department head. 

Create a Hashtag Awareness Campaign 

Fire safety, energy efficiency, limiting environmental impact, and other similar types of hashtag campaigns on social media platforms can be very effective at this time of year. By creating a movement or a focus, new customers in the area will see the message multiple times, all coming from a local business account. 

This not only creates awareness in the specific area of safety or maintenance you want to promote, but it also provides a powerful branding message. Linking these messages to the holiday season helps them to be shared and posted across a much wider audience than your direct contacts on your customer list. 

Start Blogging 

Blogging that is informative, relevant, and of interest to your target audience is a good idea throughout the year. Keep in mind; people tend to be more active on social media during the holiday season, so link your blogs to your social media posts to reach a more extensive customer base. 

Blogging on other sites as a guest blogger, or using sites like LinkedIn for B2B service and sales can provide a new target audience and also keep your brand front and center with your current customer base.