It’s almost September. If you’re looking at the goals you set in January and thinking, “Well, that didn’t quite go according to plan,” you’re not alone.
Maybe you wanted to get more consistent with social media. Maybe you planned to update your website, generate more leads, or finally get serious about email marketing.
Or maybe you actually had a great year. Business has been steady, customers are coming in, and now you’re wondering what you can do to finish even stronger.
Either way, here’s the good news: The year isn’t over yet.
You still have time to make progress. But that doesn’t mean trying to squeeze everything you planned in January into the next few months. That will only leave you overwhelmed.
Instead, take a look at where your business is now and decide what makes the most sense for the months ahead.
First, Stop Thinking You’re Behind
This is something I think business owners need to hear more often. Plans change. The business changes. Customers change. Priorities change. Sometimes you simply get too busy to do all the things you thought you would. That doesn’t mean you failed.
Maybe the marketing goal you set in January isn’t even your biggest priority anymore. Maybe you discovered that one service is doing much better than expected. Maybe you learned that your customers respond to certain types of content. Maybe you realized that spending hours trying to manage every social media platform isn’t worth your time. That’s useful information.
Before deciding what you need to do for the rest of the year, look at what you’ve learned so far. Your original plan was based on what you knew in January. You have more information now.
Decide What Still Matters
You don’t have to finish every goal you wrote down at the beginning of the year. Pick one to three things that can still make a meaningful difference to your business.
Ask yourself:
- What do I want more of? More leads, more sales, more bookings, or more customers for a particular service?
- Where are my best customers coming from? Google, referrals, social media, email, or somewhere else?
- What service or product do I most want to grow?
- What marketing has actually produced results so far?
- What can I realistically maintain through the end of the year?
If your goal is to get more customers, your marketing should support that. If you want to grow a particular service, focus your marketing around it. If you’ve been relying heavily on referrals and want to bring in more customers online, improving your website and local search visibility may be a better priority than posting more often on social media.
Keep it simple. Choose one to three priorities and let them guide your marketing for the rest of the year.
And don’t be afraid to let go of what isn’t working. You don’t have to keep doing something just because you started it.
Look at What’s Already Working
We’re often told that we need to try something new to improve our marketing. I’m not always convinced.
If something is already working, focus on that first.
Look at where your inquiries are coming from.
- Which services are getting the most interest?
- What topics get people to respond to your posts?
- Which pages on your website get the most attention?
- Are people finding you through Google, social media, referrals, or somewhere else?
You don’t need complicated reports to start answering these questions. Sometimes you already know the answer because you see it in your day-to-day business.
If customers keep asking about a particular service, that’s a clue. If a certain type of post consistently gets people talking, that’s a clue, too. If people are finding you through Google, take a closer look at the pages and services they’re searching for.
Good marketing doesn’t always come from doing something completely new. Sometimes it comes from doing more of what you already know works.
Think About What’s Coming Next
For many businesses, September can be a natural time to reset marketing priorities. Customers may be settling into new routines, and before you know it, the holiday season will be here.
Depending on your business, the next few months could be some of your busiest of the year.
You may have seasonal services to promote. You may sell products that people purchase as gifts. You may have holiday events, special offers, gift cards, or end-of-year services.
You don’t need to start talking about Christmas in August. But if the holidays are important to your business, you also don’t want to wait until November to start thinking about them.
Give yourself time to decide what you want to promote, how you want to present it, and how you’ll get the word out. And holiday opportunities aren’t limited to retail businesses. Restaurants, salons, service providers, professional businesses, and many other local businesses can have seasonal opportunities.
Think about what your customers will need in the coming months and how your business can help.
You Don’t Need to Do Everything
This is probably the most important part. It’s easy to read an article like this and turn it into another long to-do list:
- Review your marketing.
- Update the website.
- Create more content.
- Plan your holiday promotions.
- Post on social media.
- Send emails.
- Check your Google Business Profile.
Before you know it, you’ve created another job for yourself. And you already have a full-time job.
You’re running a business. You don’t need to personally handle every part of your marketing for it to work.
You may need to provide the ideas, expertise, and direction, but the day-to-day work can often be handled by someone else. Creating and scheduling social media content, keeping your online presence active, updating profiles, optimizing your website, and repurposing content are all ways to keep your marketing moving without taking up your time.
If you’ve been putting off marketing because you simply don’t have the time, that doesn’t mean marketing isn’t important. It may just mean you need some help with the workload.
Start With Three Simple Steps
You don’t need a complicated marketing plan for the rest of the year.
Start here:
- Look back.
Where did your best customers and leads come from this year? - Choose a priority.
What would make the biggest difference to your business between now and December? - Make a realistic plan.
Choose the marketing activities that support that priority and decide what you can realistically maintain.
That’s it. You don’t need to catch up with everything you didn’t accomplish earlier in the year. You just need to make good decisions with the time you have left.
Make the Most of the Months You Have Left
Whether this year has gone exactly as planned or not, there’s still plenty of time to make progress.
Take a realistic look at where you are. Decide what still matters. Build on what’s working. Think ahead to the opportunities coming this fall and holiday season.
Most importantly, don’t make the mistake of thinking you have to do all of this at once.
You don’t need to catch up with the year. You need to make the most of the time you have left.
And if marketing has been sitting on your to-do list because you simply don’t have time to manage it, getting the right support can make a difference.
At Social Speak Network, we help small businesses keep their marketing moving through social media content, local SEO, and ongoing online marketing support.
Not sure what your marketing should focus on for the rest of the year? Let’s talk about it. We can look at where your marketing stands, what’s worth focusing on, and how we can take some of the work off your plate.
You still have time to make this year count. Let’s make the most of it.
