EP. 17: GET SET FOR SUMMER - Successful Septembers are made in July
What’s this episode about?
This is the first in a 3 part series to help parent and baby brands use June & July to get prepared, including automating key processes to keep the business working (even when you're not), decide your key goal and make sure you know exactly what you are doing when you start back in September.
In this episode we look at 3 things you need to do *right now* to kick off your planning and get clear on:
how much time you currently have to work on your business over summer and how much time you need - how do you bridge the gap?
what your goal is - maintain sales or keep this business active to build a warm audience for Sept
what are the non negotiables you need to get done over summer - and what happens if they take longer than you have
KEY LINKS:
FREE PLANNER:
To help you work through the actions in the episode, and make a plan for the summer holidays, I have created a workbook and schedule planners:
NEED SOME HELP?
Know that you need support getting ready for summer? If you are done with doing everything on your own, are ready to invest in support and know that September through to Christmas is going to be a key sales time for you - make sure you book a free 20 min Mini Marvellous Marketing call and I will help you look at your quick wins to see what you need to get in place for summer *right now*.
Book here: Mini Marvellous Marketing call
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Read the transcript:
NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Hello, and welcome to growing pains. The marketing podcast for parent and baby brands who want to grow and get more consistent sales, but without the overwhelm of feeling like you have to be online 24 7, I'm Sophie, your host, and a Facebook and Instagram ad strategist who specializes in parent and baby brands as well as a mom of two.
Join me each week as I alongside some wonderful guests, she had practical tips and advice about how you can use and combine marketing strategies to get more impact for your effort.
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of growing pains. Massive. Thank you to everyone who has messaged me and emailed and signed up to find out more about the balloons and marvelous marketing academy. It's been so lovely to chat to so many of you about it. Just a quick one. Before we jump in to today's episode, I am now offering a limited number of many marvelous marketing [00:01:00] calls. They're 20 minutes and their chance for you and me to jump on a call and have a look at your marketing. The most popular topic I'm looking at at the moment is how you can get yourself sorted over the next few weeks. My five to six weeks maybe before summer. So that you can actually enjoy the summer holidays and not let it stress you out.
Now the next three episodes are going to be all about getting set for summer. But I know we can often listen to these things and think, oh, okay. That's all very well, but I'm not sure how that works for me. And that's where the free calls come in really handy. You can jump on a call with me for 20 minutes. We will unpack it and make sure that you come away with three clear actions that you can take so that you have a better summer.
Now you can book these calls or using link in the show notes below I'll go through to my diary and you can pick a slot. When there's lots of full, the slots are full. So make sure you don't hang around.
Right. Let me talk to you about these getting set for summer. Episodes. I am going to be doing [00:02:00] three of these episodes because there's quite a lot to cover. And that doesn't mean that there's a lot to do. It just means I want to spend some time digging into some of the three core actions you need to be taking.
Now the episodes are going to be released. So today is Monday. This one will be released. The next one will be on Wednesday and then the final one will be on Friday. So if you're listening to this in real time, rather than back to it in the future. There won't be an interview episode on Thursday this week. We will pick them up next week as normal. Right. Okay, let's get started. This episode is going to be all around. The theme of ignorance is not blessed.
I think for some of us, especially for me. So Eliza, I only started school this year, so this is my first like school summer holidays I did have some holidays for the last two years because of COVID and changes to nursery and that sort of thing.
So I am reasonably experienced in juggling work and summer holidays, but this is my first official school year. And I think it's something [00:03:00] that and to be honest, I know quite a lot of people where summer holidays have been the tipping point in going into working for themselves because juggling your annual leave allocation.
And commuting into London and all the things you need to do to carry on a job where you're working for. Maybe a corporate or a company is really hard to do when you've got children at home for six weeks and needed. I felt guilty for shipping them off. Putting them into childcare or from not seeing them as much as you want to. So a lot of, for a lot of people, the summer holidays are quite a big reason why they ended up working for themselves. And I actually sent an email out to my list last week.
Slightly controversial declaration. I don't want the whole summer holidays off with my children. Now, I know some people do want that, and that is like a big target in their business. And I totally respect that. I think that is brilliant. And there is a lot you can do to move towards that.
Now for me personally, if I spent six whole weeks with both of my children with no work, it would [00:04:00] drive me bananas. I love my work. I love the space. It gives me, I love using my brain. I love working with my clients. It's just not something that I at the moment want to do.
So I, will be reducing my working days. So at the moment I work four days a school hours. And in some holidays, I will be working three days. Maybe slightly longer hours some weeks. But essentially we've set up childcare so that I have three days a week. And just in case anyone was interested, we've got a range of grandparent help, the school of running a couple of days of like clubs. She's going to an activity camp. She's going to a dance camp.
And mostly I'm talking about Eliza cause Ashley actually will remain in at nurseries throughout summer. I surely does three days out anyway. So yeah, so that is kind of where I'm at now. Reason I'm telling you this is because the first action that we really need to do when we're thinking about it and getting set for summer.
Is working out what you want to do. So, whether you want to work one day, four days evening's only, or, you know, when the [00:05:00] kids are chilling on the safer for an hour. If you're going to be with them 24 7. And you just want to try and work when you can. That's absolutely fine.
If you're going to have some dedicated time or you want some dedicated time. How can you make that happen? You know, can you do childcare swaps with other parents at school? Can you get you. Will they go to an activity camp? Are there any locally, can you get them either the grandparents around whatever it is.
Think about how much time and how many days you want to be able to work throughout the summer. Last year, I actually made myself a tracker. So it's a six week plan and I literally blocked out when I was going to have time and how much time I was going to have. I'm actually going to share that with you all as well, because I think sometimes it's really easy just to use something someone else designed. So I will put a link to that in the show notes, and you can grab that, download it, print it off, whatever. I have a look at it and fill it in because it will really start to get you thinking about how much time you're actually going to have over the summer, how much time you want and what you need to do to get that [00:06:00] time.
So that's the first step. So number one is really. Looking at the summer, looking at how much time you want, how much time you've currently got and how you can get more time if you need it. Now, the second thing we need to do is have a look at what you want to achieve over the summer. So I did a poll over on my Instagram, actually to find out what people wanted to prepare for over summer. Like what it is that they wanted to make sure that they were ready for. And these were the four options. The first one that they wanted to prepare for being away on holiday, like away from home. I think that's a big one. If you're going abroad or you're actually going on holiday, it's really important that you can totally switch off. And I think that needs a bit more prep compared to I'm not working or I'm working in the evenings or I'm juggling working.
But I am around if something urgent happened. The second one is I want to prepare to avoid being on social media too much. And that's a really common one because for me anyway, I get really distracted when I'm trying to do my social media around the [00:07:00] kids and it becomes this really horrible dynamic. So that's something I really try and avoid, especially when I'm with them for long periods. The third one is to maintain sales. So not having like a massive drop off in sales, making sure you're prepared for that. And then the last one is to build a warm audience for September. And this really comes back to the fact that you don't want the business to drop off so much that when it comes to September, you need to spend quite a lot of time building it back up before you then really can take advantage of like the September boom, when traditionally a lot of sales happen.
So looking at the votes on the poll. Maintaining sales, I'm building a warm audience for September where the two highest results, which I thought was really interesting. The next one down was avoiding being on social media too much. And then the last one was preparing for an actual holiday. So it's really, really interesting to see what people want to actually do over the summer holidays. And I think that's really what needs to drive your actions.
Over the next few weeks. So, if what you want to do is build a warm audience, [00:08:00] Ava summer, you're going to be taking very different actions to if you want to maintain and drive sales over summer. And really those two things are what I'm going to be covering in the next two episodes to help you really understand what actions you need to be taking and how you take them for today. I just want you to acknowledge what is that you want to do. Start to think about in the time that you now know you're going to have over summer. Realistically, what are you actually going to be able to get done? So start to think about what actions and tasks you might need to do.
The next step is to think about your non-negotiable work over summer. This will vary quite a lot between different types of businesses. So for service-based businesses like me, for example I have monthly Facebook ads management clients, and say my absolute minimum is I know I need to work for X amount of time each week on each of my accounts. So straight away. I know that that time has to be time blocked for that. The other things would be, I want to make sure that I still send out my weekly email to my [00:09:00] list. Now at the moment, I actually sent two emails a week.
Over summer, my minimum is going to be one a week. I'm going to reduce the amount I send emails, partly because I want to remove the pressure on myself. And partly because I know that my audience, you guys are probably not going to be reading so many emails because you are going to be distracted and with the kids as well.
So I'm going to reduce the amount of emails I send, but I do want to time block some time to be able to send one email a week. Over the summer. The next thing that I will be looking at is my social media. So what is my minimum amount of posts that I want to do every week? Now for me, that's probably two or three. That's not a minimum, is it to, I guess it would be the minimum. But two or three posts for me feels about right over. Overall ghost. I won't be launching anything. I won't be building up to anything. I won't be driving any strong messages. And to be honest, my content will probably change. I'm not going to be doing hardcore sales content. I'm not going to be doing lots of info. How to content. I will probably be doing more relatable.
[00:10:00] I'm juggling my life content. I will be sharing some normal tips and that sort of thing. So I will be thinking about the type of content I'm going to be sharing. I might also be thinking about the number. Do I want to be making any reels, maybe if they're really easy to do so again, I will block time in my diary every week to be able to create that social media content. So for me, my monthly Facebook ads, clients, sending out my email and doing my social media. Are my three absolute non-negotiables every week. Now you can see how much time you're going to have a week. You can block in your non negotiables and for some of you like econ businesses that might be packing and.
And sending orders.
At this point, if you're looking at it and thinking, well, the trouble is that the amount of time I'm actually going to have to work on my business is so small. That even my non-negotiables like the absolute basics I need to get done. Nevermind the maintaining sales or building a warm audience for September.
My absolute bare minimum, isn't going to get done. That's what I'd really [00:11:00] encourage you to look at delegating outsourcing wherever you want to call it. Even if it's temporary, even if it's over the summer now is the time to start thinking about it, to find someone who might be able to work with who could maybe do some of these tasks for you.
So, whether that is packing up your orders and sending them out, whether that is creating your social media content for you, whether that's Writing and scheduling an email for you each week. Whether that. For me, if I was going abroad, I would be looking at getting another Facebook, my ads manager to run my ads because there's a bit of a risk. If you log into an account abroad, then it can lock you out because it thinks it's being hacked. So that is actually a top tip. If you are running your own ads and you go abroad, don't just log in to check how they're doing. Find someone who can go in and check for you within the UK, because you don't want to be looking yourself out of your ad account.
By accident. Those are the, so those are the three things that we're going to be looking at today. The first one is get really clear on how much you want to be working over summer. Whether you've already got that [00:12:00] planned in and you've got covered the hours that you want to be working or not.
And whether you need to do anything. And your action from that is to think about what you need to do to make sure that that is all set up. The second thing is to think about what you want for your business over someone. So do you want to maintain sales? Do you want to be building a warm audience for September? Do you actually want to wind it down? This is not something I mentioned earlier, actually, but do you actually want to wind it down a bit? Like, do you actually want to close your shop frequently?
Especially if you're e-com do you actually want to close your shop and tell customers that you won't be sending orders from this date to this date? And you need to think about how you actually do that. And I'm going to cover that in future episodes. In terms of when we really dig into how you can achieve your goals over the summer, whether that is achieving a goal of not working at all, or achieving your goal of building a warm audience or maintaining your sales. So once you've decided on a map, so you've decided on, so you know what time you're going to have, you know, what your goal is for the summer? The final piece of the puzzle is to then write out your non-negotiable [00:13:00] work over summer. Now I have created a little workbook for you to keep you on track with these questions. They've got some prompts in it. It's got some space for you to kind of brainstorm different things. It's also got that weekly.
Tracker. So you can go into it and block out the times you're going to have to work so that you really understand what time you're going to have and what you can achieve. So if you would like that work book and the planet, then just head to the show notes. There's a link you can just pop your email address in and it will get automatically sent over to you.
If you're already on my list, I normally send my email out about 11 o'clock and you will get it then. So that is the first episode. Second episode is going to be on Wednesday when we're really going to dig in achieving your goals over summer. And the third episode is on Friday
As always. You can find me on the underscore social. Underscore pod over on Instagram.
And remember if you want my help with getting set for summer I'm doing a limited number of 20 [00:14:00] minute calls, many marvelous marketing calls. And you can put those using the link in the show notes. And once they're gone, they are all gone. So make sure you don't hang around with those.
Have a lovely day and I will speak to you on Wednesday.
Thank you so much for joining me this week before you go, make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you can receive new episodes, right when they're released. And if you ever enjoyed these podcast episodes, I'd really love to ask you to leave a review in apple podcasts reviews are one of the major ways that apple ranks their podcasts, and it only takes a few seconds, but really does make a massive difference to new people.
Finding me. Thank you again for joining me, Sophie, in this episode of growing pains, see you next time.
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EP. 18: GET SET FOR SUMMER - Automate August!
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