By Debbie Gregory.

The dog days of summer can often be a slower time for small businesses, unless you’re in a travel-related or back-to-school related business. Not every small business has an audience that can use its products and services year-round. But slow times are a great opportunity to catch up and revisit your long-term marketing goals or revive some unfinished marketing projects.

The slow season is also a good time to take a look at the big picture of your marketing and sales process, and make corrections and improvements. Evaluate what part of your business you think needs the most work and allocate a majority of your time to enhancing it.

Here are a few proven strategies that can be done during slow times that will serve you well year round:

• Review your website and purge outdated information and broken links.
• Make sure your website has plenty of calls-to-action (CTAs) for people to stay in touch with you by subscribing to an email list or a blog. If you haven’t hopped on the blogging bandwagon for your business’s marketing, don’t worry, it’s never too late to get started.
• Make sure your contact information is up-to-date.
• Make sure your marketing materials both print and digital, are not only up-to date, but also consistent.
• Keep an eye on your analytics to fine-tune your online marketing, landing pages, and calls to action.
• If you have good customer relationships in place, the slow season is also a good time to follow up with your existing customers to see how they’re doing and ask for referrals, remembering to reward them accordingly.
• Tell customer stories and get testimonials that are detailed and personal, and use the person’s full name if possible.
• Create compelling content that will speak to your target audience.
• Stay in touch via your website, email and social media.