We are all familiar with the impact of bad weather on travel, but have not thought much about how it can have an impact on small business. While weather may not have as much direct impact on small business it does affect them in several ways indirectly. For example, your property may suffer heavy damage during hurricane or your sales may take a hit during a snowstorm when majority of your customers will decide to stay home. There are number of other ways in which weather can have significant impact on your business. Take a look at the rest of the article to find out:
Bad Weather Affects Sales
For many businesses, bad weather means poor sales performance on a particular day or few days. Companies that rely on people walking to their premises and buying things depend on the weather to be kind to them. If it rains or there’s a snowstorm, people are more inclined to stay in their house. They’re not likely to go down to their local store and buy something, they’ll wait for the weather to clear up. If your business depends on foot traffic, then you’ll see dips in sales performance when the weather is bad. This is why it’s important you try and implement other sales methods, such as online selling.
Bad Weather Damages Property
Regardless of what business you run, bad weather can harm you by damaging your commercial property. If a storm comes into town, then your office building or retail space can suffer serious damages that cost a fortune to repair. It may surprise you that the biggest cause of weather damage isn’t wind, rain, or snow – it’s hailstones. When hail smacks down on your property, it can cause scratches and cracks in glass, sometimes even break the panes themselves. If you’re smart, then you bought insurance and can contact a company like Voss Law for an expert hail damage insurance claim review. If you’re not, then you can pay thousands of dollars to repair your commercial property, which sets you back a lot. Plus, your property may be uninhabitable until the repairs are done, meaning your business suffers further. It’s not just hail damage too, you can still suffer weather damage from wind, rain, and snow.
Bad Weather Disrupts Marketing Efforts
Bad weather can also disrupt some of your marketing efforts. Let’s say you want to take to the streets to promote your business and hand out flyers. If the weather is bad, this isn’t possible, and you lose out on enticing potential customers. Likewise, bad weather can ruin an outdoor business event that you spent months planning. Finally, if you have posters or billboard ads, they can get damaged and ruined by bad weather too. Again, like with sales, you need to explore other methods of marketing, particularly digital marketing.
So, now you see that the weather can harm your business in more ways that one. Of course, we’re talking about bad weather here. Good weather can help your business as you may see more foot traffic and can be more active with your local marketing. The point of this piece is to make you more aware of the threat bad weather poses. Furthermore, it’s meant to encourage you to pursue different ideas to help your business when things get tough.
