One objection comes up again and again in meetings in this city: «I don't need marketing, I'm full». It sounds reasonable and it is often true today. The problem is that digital marketing in Girona is not only about bringing in more people: it is about making sure the ones who walk in next month are the ones you want, at the right price.
«I'm full» is a photo of today, not a plan
Being full in March says nothing about September. The cycle we have seen in Girona over and over is the same: flat out, nothing gets done, a new competitor arrives or a big client falls away, and then they want to start. And starting takes time.
Almost the whole business fabric here is small: 10,305 Social Security registrations sit in accounts of up to nine employees and there are 8,330 self-employed workers. In a business that size, whoever does the marketing is also whoever serves the customers, and when you are busy serving, nothing else gets done.
Girona has more people than its population register shows
This explains a good deal of why businesses here run full. Idescat calculates a full-time equivalent annual population, which adds to residents the people who are here but are not registered: 106,476 residents plus 14,078 of seasonal population make 120,554, or 113.2 % of the resident population.
Thirteen per cent more people than the register shows, all year round. That fills terraces, clinics and workshops without anybody doing anything, and it is exactly why many businesses here have never stopped to ask where their customers come from.
Being full is not the same as doing well
Before touching anything it is worth looking at the diary coldly, because «full» hides things.
The four questions the diary answers
- What share of your hours goes to work that does not pay?
- How many slots sit empty on an ordinary Tuesday mid-morning?
- Which prices have not moved in more than two years?
- Where did each of your last ten customers come from? If you do not know, that is job number one.
How to answer the last one is in where your customers come from, which is the starting point for everything else.
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The first job is not filling more, it is filling the quiet hours
A business that runs full is almost never full all the way through: it is full on Thursday afternoon and Saturday, and empty on Tuesday at eleven. Those hours never come back and they cost the same.
Marketing here is not after volume. It is after moving people from the busy hour to the quiet one, which is easier and far cheaper than winning new customers.
The Tuesday eleven o'clock gap
The approach that works best is the simplest: offer something different in that slot only. Not a general discount, which cuts your price in the good hours too, but a specific condition for a specific gap.
And you tell the people who already know you, not the whole city. That needs a list of your own, which is what email marketing for small businesses is about.
Raising your price is marketing too, and the most profitable kind
When no more hours will fit, the only lever left is price. And hardly anybody pulls it, out of fear. Costs, meanwhile, do move: the Spanish consumer price index is published every month and does not wait for you to make up your mind.
How to raise it without losing the good ones
- Give notice. A month ahead and in writing, to your regulars first.
- Raise it where you are full. The service you cannot keep up with is the one that takes the increase.
- Change something at the same time. One extra detail in the service justifies the new number better than any explanation.
- Show the price. Somebody who cannot see it cannot compare it: what happens when you hide it is in showing prices on your website.
Choosing what to say yes to
With a full diary, every job you accept is another one you turn down without noticing. The marketing that helps here is the kind that attracts the client you want and politely scares off the one you do not.
That is done with the copy: describing clearly who you work for, showing cases of the client type you want more of, and saying out loud what you do not do. It filters better than any form.
Your Google listing when you do not want more volume
A lot of people think the listing only exists to get more calls. It also exists to get better ones: real opening hours, services with their proper names, photos of what you actually do, and the usual questions answered before anybody rings.
And reviews, which in a busy business are what lets you raise the price without argument. How to ask for them without being a nuisance is in how to get Google reviews.
What has to stay switched on
The temptation when you are full is to switch everything off. It is an expensive mistake, because whatever you switch off takes months to start up again.
The three things you never switch off
- An up-to-date website, with prices and services that describe now, not three years ago.
- A living Google listing, with reviews coming in and a post or two a month.
- Your own list, the only thing nobody can take away from you.
Your own list is the insurance policy
Of everything you can set up, the only thing that stays yours whatever happens is a list of people who gave you permission to write to them. It does not depend on any algorithm or on a network changing the rules in August.
In a business running full it builds itself almost effortlessly, because customers come through the door every day. You just have to ask properly and keep it somewhere, not in the head of whoever is on the desk.
The month the phone stops ringing does arrive
It has happened with clients here several times: full for two years, then the company that gave them 40 % of the work closes and suddenly they have to go out and find customers. The ones who had kept the website and the list going saw movement within weeks; the ones starting from scratch took months.
That difference is the whole argument of this article.
Content when you do not need to win customers
The goal changes. You are not writing to attract anybody at all, you are writing so that the person about to call arrives already convinced and without odd questions. One article explaining how you work saves you three phone calls a month.
It is the same work we do in our digital marketing services, only measured differently.
We'll tell you in a ten-minute conversation
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Ads: when to switch them off and when not to
If you are full and paying for ads on the thing that already fills itself, you are giving money away. Those campaigns get switched off and only the ones for the service you want to grow, or for the quiet slot, stay on.
What usually happens when nobody reviews them is covered in Google Ads spends and does not sell.
In Girona they compare you before they call
39.1 % of the population aged 15 and over has higher education, well above the Catalan average. You notice it in the kind of customer who turns up: they look at three websites, read the reviews, compare prices and ask specific questions.
With that audience, hiding your price or writing vague copy protects nothing: it just gets you ruled out earlier. The website is the first filter, and how it gets built is in web design in Girona.
GDP says one thing and household income says another
Worth being clear about before raising prices without a reason. Girona produces a lot, with GDP per head of 50,284 €, or 127.2 % of the Catalan average, but gross disposable household income per head sits at 20,608 €, or 99.1 % — the average, exactly.
Translated: there is plenty of economic activity in this city, but households do not have more money than anywhere else in Catalonia. The margin is in working for those who do, not in charging the neighbour more.
What we look at every month in a business that is full
We do not look at visits. We look at whether the diary is better spread and whether better work is coming in.
The four numbers that matter here
- Occupancy of the quiet hours, against the previous month.
- Average price per job, which is where you see whether the increase stuck.
- New reviews and which kind of work they talk about.
- How many arrive already decided, without getting three other quotes.
What digital marketing in Girona costs
Our rates are published on the site, with no need to ask for a quote to find out the price. In prices, Tu Landing is 100 € a month and Tu Web 200 €, with domain, hosting, email and maintenance included. The presence plans, which are the ones that carry the marketing, run at 400, 750 and 1,500 € a month. All plus VAT and with no lock-in.
For a business already running full, the usual route is to start with the middle plan and put the work into the quiet hours and the reviews before chasing new volume.
From Sant Antoni de Calonge, half an hour from Girona
We work half an hour from the city and come down when needed. If you want to see what is going on, the Girona City Council website publishes the local calendar and the trade paperwork, which is more useful than it sounds for planning campaigns.
On Girona we have already written about SEO, custom software and process automation. If you are full and the question still nags at you, write to us through the contact form or by WhatsApp with a typical week of yours. In ten minutes we will tell you whether you are short of marketing or long on one kind of job.
Tell us what you need and we'll give you a price
We reply the same day. No commitment, no sales pitch.