I’ve spoken to several business owners at networking breakfasts this week, plus of course chatting to our clients, and it seems that March has been a bad month for many businesses, but why?
Well, being Salisbury-based, a lot of the local shop owners are putting an emphasis on the Russian nerve agent attack, but with free parking implemented by the Council, I’d like to go out on a limb and say it’s not that.
The reason is, looking at of our office window outside of the city centre; the car park is under half full, and usually people are ‘fighting’ for spaces.
It’s not just that, business owners in Bournemouth and Southampton are feeling the same thing. I can’t say it’s nationwide, but at least around the South it seems to be the trend.
I put this down to a variety of factors; the snow and bad weather making people busy early on in the month, an early Easter coupled with a bout of hot weather towards the end, school holidays, and of course locally our ‘spy issues’, they are all cumulating.
The impression I seem to be getting is that it’s time of holidays and ‘ticking over’ similar to the Christmas period. A lot of the active projects that we have are paused as the clients are either away, or too busy.
On the plus side, we have several clients wanting to talk and get projects started next week. It seems as if we’re going to have to knuckle down and get working hard again.
In the mean time we’ve been working on existing projects, focussing on admin such as the new GDPR guidelines, and pushing our own marketing.
Marketing as always is paramount; when times are quiet it’s when it matters most. It’s not about who necessarily does the best job, or who’s cheapest, it’s about who leaves the best impression.
If you’re struggling at the moment, and your phone isn’t ringing, don’t to bury your head in the sand, it’s time to take action. Speak to a web and marketing agency like us, see what we can do.
We are Webbed Feet, we from Salisbury, but are not Russian spies.