When you are on vacation, you can feel very cut off from your business, even if you do have your mobile device/s and even a laptop.
You may worry about promoting your business while traveling or vacationing. It’s not quite the same popping in and out of the internet once every couple of days or so, as it is being an active presence and managing your business’ online marketing.
The key, however, is to become adept at mastering remote marketing, which is part of promoting your business while traveling. Being on vacation doesn’t mean you have to take a complete break from any aspect of digital marketing.
Sometimes, it’s about anticipation and planning: make sure everything you need to promote your business through digital marketing is in place before you even leave on vacation. The key to all of this is to make sure you have strong SEO strategies in place, and to follow some tips about promoting your business while on vacation or traveling.
Be Prepared For Vacation Season
Make Sure You Have A Digital Marketing Plan In Place
The most important thing to do if you want to manage your digital marketing when you are traveling is to make sure there is a strong strategy for digital marketing in place. This is what should drive all your marketing online – and should work hand-in-hand with your overall marketing plan.
If this strategy is strong enough and carefully directed, then you’ll be able to put in place everything you need to ensure you are promoting your business even when you are on vacation or traveling.
Use of CRM
Another thing you should make sure you have in place on your website, before even planning to go on vacation or take a workation, is at least some customer relationship tools (CRM).
CRMs enable businesses to store and manage all the customers’ data, which can be used to look for insights about the business and to automate marketing. It can also forecast future sales and help to enhance relationship with customers.
With this in place, your staff will be better placed to be able to manage the business and make sure they keep on top of the online marketing and any business that it directs towards your website.
Have Effective Marketing Messages On Your Website
Whether you’re on vacation or not, your website should speak for you and your business. It’s the place to which visitors come, so make them welcome. Ensure there are pop up ads that emerge on your site and related locations.
Schedule marketing messages and newsletters to go out regularly while you’re away, to keep promoting your business.
Manage Your Business’ Presence On Social Media
A lot of traffic can be brought to your website via social media, as you build an organic presence online. You can’t afford to let this slip when you are away on vacation. There are a few things you can do to ensure your business remains visible on social media.
The most important thing to do is to keep posting: on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook (and any other platforms you inhabit). You should post quite regularly from your business’ profile, so you let people know you are constantly engaged.
Keep Your Blog Running
Depending on your holiday commitments, you could keep your blog running by posting pieces about topics that are relevant to your business. The only thing is that you will have to have guaranteed Wi-Fi quite regularly.
Another option is to write a few blogs on topics related to your business, but which aren’t dated, and to schedule their release weekly, or however frequently you usually post online.
Perhaps an even better option is to delegate someone on your staff to write the blog posts for the time you are away. This, of course, if you don’t have a resident writer.
Manage Your Email
You can make use of the Gmail ‘out of office’ message, which will inform people when you will be back at work. However, you may not want your customers to know you are away, as they may assume your business isn’t operating for that time and go elsewhere.
You can direct the ‘out of office’ message only to those in your contact list. However, a better option is to have an automatic message on your company email saying you are open for business – and directing the traffic to one of your colleagues.
Schedule email marketing runs for a date after your return, so you can keep tabs on them and follow up as necessary.
Train Someone To Handle Queries
You should train your staff, or a colleague, to handle email queries. It is even possible to give them ‘model answers’ that should cover most queries or FAQs.
You can also do this for telephonic queries. Another alternative is to engage a telephone service, because the operators are experienced in handling calls according to set answers and are also great at making sales.
Did we cover everything? Do you have a strategy that you use to promote your business while traveling that isn’t on our list? Share it in the comments if you do!
Author’s Bio: Lucille Adams
Lucille Adams is a researcher and writer in the area of personal and business financial management. Her core focus is covering sound, conservative cash flow and investing strategies that unlock long-term value for small business owners, entrepreneurs, families and retirees.
