Utilize slow times to tackle tasks you've always wanted to but couldn't due to busy schedules. This is the time to plan, strategize, and execute growth-oriented projects.

Rebel Marketing's Yasmine Robles and Izzy Dadoski share their expertise on tackling one of the most challenging times for businesses – the slow season.

Izzy emphasizes staying calm and using the slower periods to undertake projects you couldn't handle during busier times. Yasmine suggests conducting thorough marketing audits ahead of the slow season to create a robust roadmap, ensuring you are prepared rather than overwhelmed.

They also provide actionable tips like focusing on content creation, maintaining an active social media presence, and making sure your brand's messaging is consistent and reflective of your goals. And, of course, they highlight the significance of customer reviews and feedback in shaping your marketing strategy.

3 Hot Takeaways

Leverage Slow Periods for Big Plans: Use the downtime to implement the projects you've been postponing. Evaluate your marketing goals, consider new strategies, and perhaps reach out to marketing firms for that extra boost.

Audit and Analyze: Conduct a thorough audit of your current marketing efforts. Assess your website, SEO, social media, and email marketing to identify what's working and what's not. This provides a clear roadmap for improvement.

Content Creation and Customer Engagement: Focus on creating valuable content for your audience. This is also a perfect time to gather feedback from past customers and adjust your messaging accordingly. Engaging content and positive customer interactions can drive brand loyalty.

Key Moments

00:00 Embrace Slow Periods Proactively

03:48 Conduct Marketing Audit Before Slow Season

08:58 Optimize Email and Social Strategy

13:19 Batch and Share Event Photos

15:07 Survey and Respond During Slow Seasons

17:42 Learning Moment - Brand Blunder Over Mac & Cheese

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Submit your question ahead of time or grab the mic live. It’s bold, it’s unscripted, and it’s built for small businesses ready to grow.

Copyright 2025 Rebel Marketing

Thank you so much for joining us on another episode of Market Like It's Hot, where we bring you all of our amazingness and knowledge about marketing and tackle your questions. And with me oh, my name is Yasmine Robles. I am the owner of Rebel Marketing and, here in Ohio, and Izzy is here. Izzy, introduce yourself.

Hi. I'm Izzy Dadowski, and that's it.

You could you could say you could you are the Izzy.

The Izzy Dadosky. Yeah. The Izzy Dadosky. So

Connect with the Izzy Dadosky on LinkedIn. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm an influencer now.

The true the true brains behind Rebel Marketing because mine has been flying away as the years have gone by. Alright, Izzy. What are we talking about today?

We're gonna talk about effective marketing during the slow seasons, cough cough, January. We're at right now.

I guess it depends on, on your business though. Right now I think my accountant is like not excited.

Fair. It's all up in the air per industry, but, yeah. I mean, I'm sure the snow plowing industry is doing great right now in Ohio and Kansas. So

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It depends on climate change. But, yeah, whatever industry you're on and whenever you're listening to this, it might not be snowplow season. We all experience these slow slow areas of our business and what we can do to really strategize our marketing around them. So, Izzy, if I am a business owner if I am a I am a business owner. If I was a business owner, and we are experiencing or we know when our slumps are.

Because usually as business owners, we're like, okay. These are the typical time frames when it's slow. What can we do? What's the first thing that we should even start thinking about before we hit the panic button?

The first thing you should do before you hit the panic button?

Well, other than, like, the shot of tequila, you're probably gonna have to take. But yeah.

I would probably say, 1, don't freak out. 2, it's just your slow period, so it's fine. And then 3, what can we do during this time that we typically wouldn't have time to do throughout our busy season or different things that we've wanted to accomplish before, but didn't have the time or the resources to do it. So with that, I know a lot of people are, like well, especially when they come to us, when it comes to marketing, they're like, oh, like, we've always wanted to do this, but we just haven't had the time. Okay. Like, maybe now is the time to start branching out to, like, marketing firms or if you're going to do it yourself or then figure out that. And then what are the costs and the planning that go along with that? Because that will make you very busy, but at least you're also accomplishing something that can help your business. So, I mean, that's just especially, like, if it is the beginning of the year for these slow seasons, a lot of companies are reevaluating, like, what their budget and different things will be and how they see the new year going.

And that's typically when people make decisions on if they are going to do something like that. So for us, let's say, like, if we know this is kinda coming up for us and, like, maybe we're projecting a busy spring, this is when we would be like, okay. When how can we pivot? How many more clients can we take on? What are the steps that we wanna put in? Are there any other, programs that we need to add that we're not using right now? Different things like that. So unless I'm I think I'm probably missing 50 things if you wanna hop in here, Yasmin.

So I would say, I guess, it depends on how much how much change your business has experienced or how new it is. But if you do know or foresee that there is like, in the neck next quarter will be slow and you're currently busy, I would say that would be a great time to depending on your budget, to at least get some kind of audit done of your entire marketing. So for us, like, we have different tier levels, but we have the smaller marketing audit, and that can look at some of the SEO, some of the websites, social media. We have more of a mega one where it'll look at more data analysis, but, really, some kind of checkup right before you your slow season because as soon that will give you a road map. And as soon as your slow season hits and you have less meetings, less client work, that's a perfect opportunity for you to tackle a lot of that strategy. Let's say you've been wanting to record videos for a for onboarding your clients or if you have a membership site and you've been wanting to revamp some of the perks on the membership site. Anything that pertains to or graphics or a photo shoot brand photo shoot and you just haven't had time for that, that your your slow season will be the perfect opportunity so that you don't feel like you're swamped. But you won't know that unless you do an audit of what you've been doing, what's been working, what hasn't been working.

And that, unfortunately, would be around the time that you're still busy so that you step into the slow season pre fully prepared instead of panicking. I still recommend a shot of tequila, but at least it's for happy reasons and you're not crying while you're literally chugging it out of the bottle.

Mhmm. Yeah. And then another thing is it's like, I would focus on content creation and what you're trying to highlight throughout. If you're even using socials, that would be 1. Are you using socials? And if you aren't, why not? And then go through and see, is my social posting even, like, showing off my brand's identity, different things like that? Is the tone that we're using correct? Are we going for the right target audience with what we are posting? Just different things like that, and then try to pivot, like, what you have been doing and see if it changes. So

Yeah. Check your email newsletters as well. If you do already have a welcome sequence and haven't looked at it in a year, just review it, see if it's still up to date, see if you have to if you're like us and you change the name of the company and I forgot about it, then well, we didn't forget about it because Izzy tackled that, but I would have forgotten about it. But if you anything that has shifted or just maybe you stopped using a specific graphic or maybe on your website, you still have which that's why I don't recommend a lot of images with tech because you might have, like, a flip phone. I don't know if you do. But it it's not like a retro thing. It's like because that was your phone and you put it on a desk and you took a picture of it, and now that's the background on your site. If that's the case and it's not for, like, a wink, wink, funny thing, then maybe it's time to at least do another brand shoot.

So that evaluation will help a lot. And then taking a look at your metrics, I know people hate to look at their numbers a lot. I hate to look at my finance numbers a lot. But taking a look at who like, back to what Izzy said, the numbers of people coming to the website, where they're coming from. Like, for us, do are we getting an uptick of people from Europe and they're not bots? Like, what? And strategizing around your ideal client. You could also, if you have the funds for it, take previous clients or potential clients, people in your target market that you wanna work with, out to coffee, lunch, ask them for a virtual chat or something, and then get to see how they view your brand and what marketing pivots you could do. Because they're they're bound to be most people are very helpful. And and although they're nice, they sometimes will, you know, tell you, hey.

Maybe your website with that weird flip phone. Was that supposed to be a funny joke, or do you still have a flip phone?

Yeah.

Although now, a side note, I did go to the mall recently. I had to take my kid, and there was a teenager, and they had a CD player. And I was like, what? Like, the c yeah. Like, is it and I was just like, is this are you making fun of me? They're trying to work with me back.

It's like the record players.

Is it a purse? Like, what? What do you you know if I bump into you, it's gonna skip.

Cordless like, not cordless earbuds either? Like

There's a there's a thing called a phone, but I don't know. I was just like I thought they were making fun of me, but I was like, I had one of those. Anyway, so if you yeah. I would recommend the some kind of marketing audit. But if you do have a budget, is he if that business owner does have a budget, or they have a marketing coordinator or some or a marketing team with them and it is slow season, what are some things that they should be asking of their team?

Well, it kinda depends on, like, what you're wanting to accomplish. But, basically, the first thing I would say is is, like, going off the email marketing, who is actually opening your emails? Like, are there anybody opening your emails? Are we getting to the people that we want to? Is it turning into anything for us to be sending out these emails? If the answer is no, it's probably time to go in and, you know, change some of that and make sure people are opening your emails. Social, how many times a week are you wanting to post on it, and how much time are you giving your team to actually establish a calendar? And what do you want them to be posting? Is it video content? Is it static content? Is it a pull? Different things like that. Are you wanting to collaborate with other businesses? Are you going to events and you wanna highlight that? What are you trying to highlight throughout your business? Just different things that maybe you hadn't considered before is what I would try to make them do in the new year. But then again, it's a lot of work, so give them some time and leniency.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's this is really just know that as your marketing partners, just let them know, hey. This particular quarter is always my slow season. Can what can we do to well, ahead of time to re make it not as slow, but also what kind of content? What what items do you need from me? I know a lot of business owners, they might need, for example, a brand video on their website or an introductory video on an email because that's part of their welcome series, or they might want to kick off some webinars. If your marketing team knows, then they can plan for that and plan all of those recordings, all of that during the slow season, work on them, get your approval, and then you're gonna hit the ground running. Yeah. Utilize them.

They're there to help you. Just don't tell them that you need it tomorrow.

Because that usually does not end up well for either party. Mhmm. But

Yeah. What about content? Oh, go ahead.

I was just gonna say if, like, you're selling a product, especially with if it's in the New Year, those different sales and stuff that people put out, honestly, I wait till January to shop. So I am your I am your target market. But, yeah, that's all I was gonna say. What were you saying?

What about social media content? So I am not it's slow season. I'm not going to as many events. You know, it might be during the holidays or whatever. There's just a slump, and there's no events. Usually for us, it's the events slow down around July time frame because everybody's on vacation and kids are out, and so usually events don't happen. What do we even post? Do we hash stuff?

I think it depends. Again, just like what your business is, of course. But I would start making content that, like, is more personal to you and your brand, especially if you're a small business. Or it's time to experiment and see if there's anything else that you can change within your content. Because especially, you have the time to track the analytics and everything on that if you're going to be making new content. So, another thing I would do if you already kinda have down, like, what kind of content you're putting out there and different things, I would try to start to make content just in case you don't have time during those busy seasons. So then you can go through and post, and you're not worrying about, oh, crap. I need to make this video this week, and I am in 50 meetings, and I have to show my face 20 different places.

So

Yeah. I would say if you are doing it DIY ing it, make sure to take as many pictures, save them, and batch your content as much as possible. If you do have no idea what you're gonna post, just create content for the holidays, like happy new year, even though it's still summer. Just write create a post for happy New Year. You at least have your holidays down, maybe your business anniversary, things that you know you want to post about, and then just take pictures. I know it's embarrassing, and I always forget. That's why I hired Izzy. She has a brain and can and memory.

And so, like, just take pictures and then save them, and that way you can post them. But really batching the content would be great. But if you have a team, still take those pictures anywhere you go depending on what your business is. But if, let's say, your service based and you go to networking events or you're on a board and you take go to an event, take those pictures, send them to your marketing team, and then they can always I I suggest, like, doing a look back. Oh, just looking back at this event that I went to or this, sponsorship table or, you know, vendor table that we had, and we still gave out a bunch of tequila, and then the owner had to run not speaking from experience, but, like, yeah, speaking from experience. I I did not estimate the right amount of how I did not understand the love for tequila that people would have at that conference. I also don't know if I had to ask for permission to give that away at that

point. Did it anyway.

Nobody came up to us. And you know what? If the staff would have wanted to spin the wheel and get one, they could have.

Yep. Yep. That wasn't a bribe.

It was a friendly gift. Mhmm. Mhmm. Alright. Any final words of wisdom on how not to freak out when it's slow season? What should marketing how can marketing help?

I would also just look at what your past customers have said. If there's been any complaints, what changes do you have to make? Are there any good things that you would like to highlight to show to potential new customers? Is what you're posting exactly what you want. And, basically, your brand is used, so make sure your brand is consistent throughout everything that you use. That is my main thing of advice. So

Yeah. Slow season is a really good time to send out a survey, look at the customer reviews, Google reviews, see if there's anything internal that you have to fix or if marketing maybe has to work on something or on the messaging. Maybe there's something that's not just not working with the messaging. That's going to be a big indicator how you can dive in as when it's when things start to pick up again. And people leave you review. And then how you're responding to reviews because that's still marketing, I feel. It's customer service kind of, but it's still marketing. So if they leave you a review that's not as exact what was your process? Is it from 3 months ago and you never responded?

Here's my fun fact of the day that we forgot to do. This is a great example of reviews are part of the customer experience. Kraft mac and cheese. I don't know if you've heard about this one. Kraft mac and cheese on TikTok. This customer posted, hey, I'm gluten free. I've been buying gluten free Kraft mac and cheeses, but every time I buy them and I bought them from multiple different stores, the cheese packet is not in there. And it's like, she was just posting a video out there like, hey, Kraft.

I think there's like an issue in your production line. Like, none of these have cheese packets. Kraft decides to comment and say, basically, you're lying. We checked everything in our production, and, everything's fine. So yeah. That was definitely not the response you want from Kraft, who you probably just bought 50 boxes of mac and cheese from, who that is your customer, Kraft. Don't make them angry. And they proceeded to just be like, no.

Maybe send her a coupon. Maybe send her free gluten free boxes of mac and cheese that have the cheese in it. That would be great. Or we'll check into it.

The thing was she went to like, the first time it happened, she went to a different location. She got the same it happened again. So she went to multiple locations and spent time and money on trying to get herself some mac and cheese. I think I can't remember exactly so people can comment wherever this is, but, I think she personally, like, emailed or contacted them or something. And they gave her coupons, and that she still couldn't find the one the boxes with the cheese. So she told them she posted and was like, hey. There's some kind of issue. And I think she posted after they responded with there is no issue.

And I'm like, literally, she went this chick went to all of these places. You gave her a coupon. She still can't find cheese for her mac and cheese.

They commented on her TikTok so it was public too. And everybody was like, are you kidding me, dude? Like, one, how much does a box of mac and cheese cost? Like, $3 maybe? I don't know if the gluten free is more expensive, but you're not gonna be willing to, like, send it to her because, like, she's been having this issue. Like, instead you're just gonna make your brand out to the the villain. I know, like, a bunch of gluten free people who are now, like, I'm not buying craft anymore. I'm, like, okay. Well, you just lost a ton of customers because that one interaction. So think about what you're doing or be, like, hey. We just sent you a DM if you really wanna be, like, the craft mac and cheese response to be, like, oh, well, we checked everything and nothing's wrong.

Still probably gonna get posted. I wouldn't recommend doing that, but customer's always right is all I'm going to say. Mhmm.

Well, with that, any any final thoughts?

I think that was it.

Alright. Well, guys, make sure to follow us on LinkedIn. We're on on a bunch of the social platforms. Just search for us. And if you want to download a workbook, it we've revamped our checklist, and that's more of, like, an actual work book with videos and everything. Go to my mark my rebel marketing.com/checklist, and we'll catch you in the next episode.