Time off over summer? Tips for B2B marketers on leave

Whilst you’re indulging in a staycation, make sure your digital lead generation campaigns keep working - even when you’re not.

AdWords Campaigns

If you have Google AdWords campaigns running, download the Google AdWords app (not AdWords Express). This handy app gives you top-line campaign information including:

• Stats

• Bids and budgets

• Real-time alerts and notifications

Also, to ensure you don’t overspend on your media budgets, use AdWords handy budgeting tools. You can set daily and monthly budgets and if your business is seasonal, have a look at last year’s summer stats to make sure set appropriate levels of budget so your competition doesn’t get the edge while you’re away.

Re-marketing

Re-marketing is a great way to stay in touch with your already engaged prospects (and stakeholders) while you’re away. Google, Facebook and LinkedIn all provide opportunities for staying in touch with B2B prospects using display re-marketing.

Take the opportunity to refresh your ad copy and creative before you leave; think about directing them to some evergreen content or a post-summer event. Also, consider the frequency of your re-marketing ads (no one wants to be stalked by your ads all summer). And finally, remember that brands search ads in conjunction with re-marketing make for a positive experience for prospects ready to reengage with you.

Schedule your content

Not all of your potential customers will be on holiday, so don’t let your content go stale while you are away. You can schedule content for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media platforms. There are loads of tools you can use, including HootSuite, Sprout Social, ContentCal, Buffer and TweetDeck.

Also, make sure you’re promoting an appropriate CTA - don’t encourage people to call you if the phone lines won’t be properly staffed, or offer a free trial if your pre-sales team are mostly on holiday when you are.

Using Facebook

With Facebook Pages you can view and respond to comments and private messages from your phone, and Facebook Adverts Manager allows you to edit your ads and budgets, get notifications of when ads are finishing and keep an eye on your spending.

(LinkedIn, if you’re listening, we’re still waiting for an app version of the Campaign Manager!)

Still send emails

Now that you’ve cleaned your email lists following the Great GDPR Scare of 2018, don’t forget to keep your customers and prospects engaged over the summer.

Most email platforms will allow you to send emails scheduled for a specific time. Marketing automation platforms also allow you set up automatic email sends based on user behaviour.

Take the time to put a content plan in place that aligned with your social posts and re-marketing campaigns and with a little luck no one will ever know you were away!

Think about your website

As with email, most content management systems (CMS) have an option to schedule content. Nothing screams ‘I’ve gone on holiday and don’t care about you right now’ like outdated seasonal content on your site.

If your website CMS doesn’t have a schedule function, consider putting your best performing content on the homepage whilst you’re away, or at least don’t leave up information about an out-of-date event during your time off.

Analytics

Google has a Google Analytics app which is reasonably good for basic monitoring and will allow you to at least get a high-level view of your activity, especially useful for answering ‘quick’ questions from your MD whilst you’re away.

Again, keep in mind seasonality and remember many sensible people like you will also be on leave, so volume (though hopefully not performance) may dip.

Finally… Check in with your sales team

Make sure there is a plan in place to deal with inbound leads. If you have a small sales team who are also taking holiday, make sure someone will be monitoring the group email address and the phone won’t be going unanswered.

If unfortunate scheduling means there will be days when no one can manage calls from prospects, or customers for that matter, consider enlisting the help of a call-handling agency to get you through the summer months.