It’s assumed, and often correctly so, that August is the most uneventful month for European B2B companies. While there may be truth in the assumption, we can turn this around by giving August a debatably more important purpose: Growth Focus.
In the middle of the busy workweek, there are countless occasions where we find ourselves thinking “this could be done better” or “this would be a great sector to explore” yet feel that client work trumps our own company’s growth. Now is the time to prioritize and nurture goals that you have been putting off. You can look back on the year and consider it a job well done, or you can look for what can be improved to stay ahead of the curve.
The recent Blackberry movie covered the formation of the “first smartphone” company and its eventual demise. The film emphasizes the inability of Blackberry’s executives to adapt and leverage their huge early-to-market advantage, while their competitors were working on the next great thing: the iPhone.
While this is a poignant example, I don’t think that it hits too far from home. What are you busy doing while your competitor is working hard to gain market share? To help give you some inspiration, I’m going to cover some of the areas that may be stagnating in your business, as well as some areas where you could go looking for gold.
Your Tools
Take advantage of the extra time you may have to do some cleanup of your business tools. Maybe there’s a flaw in the software you are using for project management that is causing your team to miss deadlines.
There are so many options for tools now that there’s no reason to settle. If you take the time to research your options well, it can be a good investment that prevents you from needing to transfer all your information to a new platform. Consider assigning a summer project to members of your team to evaluate promising new AI-based platforms.
Your Processes
Project planning, strategizing and execution all contain many smaller processes within them. The communication between departments in your company can be a point of stress. For example, there are many people involved in the sales process from targeting to outreach to conversion. Unless you have been able to successfully convert all of your leads then you may be missing a step in your process. And the people who are most likely to know what’s missing is your team.
Your Branding
Do your prospects know what you are uniquely positioned to offer? Having a clear message about your value proposition and how you can relieve customers pain points can be the difference between being overlooked and being contacted. Your B2B Marketing specializes in simplifying your message, eliminating the fog in the buyer’s journey.
Your Website
How you appear online is how people perceive you. B2B business owners say that website appearance affects their buying decision. You may be doing great in sales now, but how much could you improve with a website that better conveys to your customers that you understand their problems and are able to offer a solution?
Your People
You may want to expand but fear over hiring. Now is a great time to hire if you’re willing to look at the whole world as your talent pool. There are many remote workers across the globe that are going to match the exact skill set you’re looking for and be a fraction of the price you would find otherwise. The number of North American companies with remote workers in Central America and the Caribbean, for example, has grown 300% between 2020 and 2023.
Your Measurement
How are you measuring? The answer is probably not enough. To improve you need to know where you fall short. You may be looking at your sales but are you looking at marketing KPI’s from the top of the funnel to the bottom? Are the tools you are budgeting for giving you the ROI you expected? What’s your email open rate, conversion and website bounce rate? Not all metrics are necessary, but it always pays off to be thorough in your assessment of investments.
Looking Beyond
August may be the least anticipated month of the year, but it can be great for looking down the road and setting a clear goal for expanding to a new country or region. Your B2B Marketing specializes in US market entry for B2B companies in Europe. If this is on your horizon, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.
The challenging thing about the month of August is that as soon as it’s over, we are sucked into the back-to-school season and, before you know it, you’re already in Q4.
Make the most of your summer holiday this year. Check out a couple forward-looking business books and consider what you need to do for new market entry. Then you may be able to spend next summer on a beach in an entirely new country.
