What To Do When Business Is Slow for Therapy, Health & Wellness or Home Improvement
Today’s post is about what to do when business is slow. Every business has slow periods. At times, your calendar may be fully booked out for weeks or months in advance and at other times, that may not be the case, and you’ll have fewer calls coming in. This is true whether you run a therapy practice, a health and wellness clinic, or a home improvement business. It can be hard to deal with, especially if you usually get a lot of referrals or repeat business.
Instead of freaking out about it, slow times can be good for taking a step back and focusing on your marketing, sales process, branding or service offerings. What you do during slow periods often determines how busy your next season will be.
Evaluate What is and isn't Working
When business slows down, it’s a good time to take a step back and look at your marketing with fresh eyes. Where do most of your inquiries come from? Have those sources changed? Are you putting too much trust in one referral partner or one platform?
This is also a good time to look over your online presence. Google your main services and check to see where you show up in the rankings. Take a new look at your website. Is it clear who you help, what your client can expect from working with you and is there a clear call to action on every page? Are your service pages clear in speaking to your clients pain points? Little gaps in clarity can quietly cost you inquiries. During slow times, you can focus on fixing those problems before they cost you even more lost inquiries.
Become More Visible in Your Area
If your website leads have gone decreased, it might mean that your business needs some online visibility help. This is where local SEO is key. Your goal is to have your website show up high in the search results when someone in your geographic area is searching for the services you offer. Ideally, you will want to show up on page one for your most high value services since the vast majority of people will never scroll past page one of the search results.
Improving your Google Business Profile, your website service pages, and optimizing those pages for SEO can all help you get more visibility over time. It takes time to start seeing results with SEO but with time and consistency, a strong digital profile will ensure stability for your business for the long term. The work you do now can help you weather the slower times when they come around again. If you’re visible in all the places your clients hang out including the search engines, you will see fewer dips in your business income.
For local therapy, health and wellness, and home improvement businesses trust is a really important factor. And clients view companies that show up well in the search engines as being more trustworthy. So, one thing you can do, is ask former and current clients to visit Google and leave a review on your Google Business Profile. And I realize that not all businesses can do this but for those who can, it’s a quick exercise that can produce really great results.
Use the Downtime to Build Momentum for The Long Term
When things are busy, marketing is often put on hold. During slow times, you have the opportunity to put some wheels in motion where your marketing is concerned. Updating old website content, adding location or service pages, improving internal website links, or writing helpful content in the form of blog posts can all help with your search presence.
So don’t look at slow periods as a problem. Look at them as an opportunity to assess and improve things. Instead of falling victim to unpredictable changes in the market, you are building a foundation that supports your business through all the ups and downs.
I offer SEO Services in Waterloo help local service-based businesses that want more stability with their marketing. Businesses that use slow times to improve their visibility are often the ones that feel the most secure in the long run. SEO helps you build that security, so your business doesn’t have to rely on one or two sources of referrals.
If your business is slower than you’d like right now and you want a clear, useful plan for getting more attention, the next step is to schedule a time to talk. Set up a discovery call so we can discuss where you are, what might be missing, and how to ramp things up in the months to come.