Prepare for the holidays!
Carlton Hoyt
November is already underway and if your company sells products or services to academic researchers then you should already be preparing to double down on your marketing efforts and start reaching out to potential new customers now. Many professors and graduate students will be extremely busy in early and mid December with their class responsibilities and will not want to pay attention to anything extraneous (including marketing materials), however important purchasing decisions, particularly larger purchasing decisions, for many university labs are made in early January – after the bustle of finals and the holidays but before classes start up again. Use this to your advantage.
If there is a target market that you want to enter, be sure to start marketing to them ASAP. Again, you do not want to wait until December to reach new customers. They will need to see your marketing message a few times (preferably via different avenues) before you will have enough brand or product recognition for most prospective customers to trust you and your product. You will probably want to have multiple “touches” between now and January to both establish yourself in their minds, get across your full marketing message, and present a compelling call-to-action. There is still enough time to touch
a new prospect four times without being overbearing, but you’ll need to start now.
Also, don’t forget that the holidays are a great excuse to have a special, a sale, or some other call-to-action. While these specials are rarely enough to drive a buy decision on their own (since scientists are very analytical and generally weigh need vs. cost and make a fairly objective decision on those metrics), they can still be attention grabbing and push people into making purchasing decisions now – and those purchasing decisions will be made with your product in mind.
Your small company should be formulating a short-term marketing plan on how to approach academics and increase sales from universities between the semesters. If you sell to universities and you do not have a marketing plan for the next two months, you will likely miss out on a key opportunity to take advantage of purchasing habits and fail to realize a lot of potential sales.