The Quiet Months: What a Lebanese Business Should Do When the Summer Crowd Goes Home

Every year the same thing happens and every year it is treated as a surprise. Through July and August the country is full, the restaurant has a queue, the shop sells out of the thing it never sells out of, the phone does not stop. Then the second half of September arrives, the flights go the other way, and the street empties. Takings fall by something that feels less like a dip and more like a door closing.

The conclusion a lot of owners draw in that first quiet week is that the business is in trouble. It usually is not. What happened is that a large part of the summer's demand was never local — it arrived on a plane, spent heavily for six weeks, and left. That is not a business problem. It is a calendar, and it is the same calendar every year.

What is a real problem is what most businesses do next. The instinct when revenue drops is to cut the things that look optional, and marketing always looks optional. So the posting stops, the ads stop, the photographer is not booked, and the business goes quiet at precisely the moment it has both the time and the reason to be doing the opposite. Then November arrives — the one stretch between now and next summer when people spend money in volume — and there is nothing ready.

Here is a more useful way to spend the next three months.

Understand what you actually lost

Before deciding anything, separate the two kinds of customers you had in August, because they need completely different handling.

The first is the visitor. They were here for a few weeks, they are now back in Dubai, Paris, Abidjan, Montreal or Sydney, and they are not walking past your door again until next July. You have not lost them permanently — you have lost physical access to them. If they can still see you and still buy from you, a share of them will, and for a lot of Lebanese businesses that share is worth more than the entire local autumn.

The second is the resident. They never left, they are still five minutes away, and they are the reason the business exists in February. What changed for them is not location but spending: the summer noise is over, budgets have reset around the school year, and the holiday season has not started yet. They are quieter, not gone.

Almost every mistake made in September comes from treating these two as one group and concluding that "everyone stopped buying." Nobody stopped buying. One group moved, and the other group paused.

The cut that costs the most

If you take one thing from this: do not let marketing spend follow revenue downwards on reflex.

The logic that leads there is sound in isolation. Money is tighter, the ads are not producing the August numbers, so the ads are wasteful and should stop. The flaw is that the season you are cutting in is the cheap season, and the season you will be forced to buy back into — the run-up to the end-of-year discount weekend and the holidays — is the expensive one. You are selling low and buying high, deliberately, every year.

There is a second cost that is harder to see. Advertising in the quiet weeks is not only buying attention now; it is building the audiences of people who watched, clicked and visited that you will advertise to in November, when reaching a stranger costs the most and reaching someone who already knows you costs the least. A business that goes dark in October arrives in November with nothing accumulated and has to pay full price for every single person it reaches. Our Q4 ad budget guide sets out how to phase that across the quarter, and it starts now, not in November.

None of this means spending August money in October. It means keeping something running, deliberately, at a level you can sustain — and deciding that level now, on paper, instead of discovering it by panic in six weeks.

Build the list you wish you had built in August

The single highest-value thing you can do this month has nothing to do with advertising. It is getting a way to contact the people who already bought from you, that does not depend on a platform deciding to show them your post.

Think about what you actually own right now. If your entire relationship with your customers lives inside an Instagram feed, you own nothing — you are renting attention from an algorithm that shows your post to a fraction of the people who chose to follow you, and that fraction is not yours to control. If you have phone numbers with consent to message them, or email addresses, you own the relationship outright. You can reach those people on the day you decide to, for effectively nothing, whether or not any platform cooperates.

This matters disproportionately for the visitor group. The tourist who loved your place in August is unreachable by a shop-window sign and expensive to reach with advertising, but perfectly reachable by a message — and they are sitting abroad with more disposable income than your local customer and a standing weakness for anything that reminds them of home.

The practical version: start collecting contacts at the point of sale, today, with permission asked plainly and a reason given. Get the numbers and addresses you already have scattered across notebooks, delivery slips and old chats into one list. Then use it sparingly and well — a message that is genuinely worth opening a few times a season, not a broadcast every Tuesday that trains everyone to mute you.

If you want the writing and the setup done properly rather than improvised, an email marketing freelancer is priced per campaign on Furrsati, typically $40 to $150 per campaign, which covers the copy, the build and the send rather than a blank template. Our guides to hiring an email marketing specialist and what email work costs cover how to brief one. If most of your customers reach you by chat rather than email — which is the Lebanese default — the same discipline applies to handling WhatsApp and DMs properly, with someone actually answering them.

Keep selling to the people who just left

Physical distance is the obstacle; it is not the end of the transaction. Depending on what you sell, some version of this is open to you.

If your product ships, say so loudly and make it possible to order without a conversation. A Lebanese producer, maker or brand that can take an order from Paris and deliver to a Lebanese address there — or to an address in Lebanon that a family member collects from — has a market that is awake all year and peaks precisely when the diaspora is buying gifts in December.

If your product does not ship, sell the future visit. Vouchers, deposits on next summer's booking, gift cards that a relative abroad buys for someone here: all of these move money in the quiet months against delivery later. Weddings, events and long-planned visits are decided in the autumn and winter for the following summer, and the businesses that are visible during the deciding months are the ones that get chosen.

And if you sell services rather than goods, remember the obvious thing that most Lebanese businesses forget: the client abroad does not care where you sit. That is the entire premise of remote work, and it runs both ways.

Whichever applies, the practical requirement is the same — something a person eight time zones away can look at, trust and act on without waiting for you to wake up and reply. That is a store page or a clear website, not a grid of posts. If you are setting one up this quarter, our Q4 store launch timeline covers the sequence and the deadlines.

Use the quiet weeks to make what the busy weeks consume

There is a reason the same businesses scramble every November: the busy season eats material, and material takes time to make.

The photographs, the videos, the product descriptions, the landing page — these are all things that take weeks to produce properly and days to produce badly, and the difference shows. October is when you have the time. November is when you do not. A business that shoots its holiday content in the second week of November is choosing rushed work at rushed prices, and then wondering why the ads underperform.

So make the list now. What are you actually selling between November and January, in what photographs, with what words on what page, in which languages? Our Q4 content plan sets out what to shoot and when. If the words on your site are the part you have never fixed, a website copywriter is typically $30 to $150 per page — a small number against a page that has been quietly losing you enquiries since the day it went up.

This is also the right window for the unglamorous work you could not touch in August: the books, the receipts, the pile of things that need to be in order before the year closes. Our year-end bookkeeping catch-up guide covers that, and doing it in October instead of late December is the difference between an afternoon and a crisis.

What the quiet season costs to run well

The honest answer is that it costs less than the summer did, which is the point. Some rough shapes, all from Furrsati's own pricing:

Keeping an organic presence alive so you are not invisible for three months: a social media manager is typically $150 to $300 per month. That is for running the presence — planning, posting, replying — not for buying ads.

Keeping paid reach ticking over and, more importantly, accumulating the audiences you will need later: a Meta ads specialist is typically $150 to $800 per month as a management fee, with your advertising spend separate and set by you. On a quiet-season budget the low end of that range with a modest spend is a legitimate choice; going to zero is the choice that costs you in November.

Reaching your own list: $40 to $150 per campaign as above, and unlike advertising it does not get more expensive because the season got busier.

And the one-off work — pages, photographs, copy — is cheaper to commission now than in the second week of November, for the simple reason that everyone good is available now and booked then.

If the budget only stretches to one of these, pick the list. It is the only one you keep.

Hiring and paying safely

Scope this work in small, finishable pieces rather than an open-ended arrangement: one campaign, one page, one month of management. A freelancer who wants a long commitment before showing you anything is asking you to take all of the risk in your quietest quarter.

This is where Furrsati removes the risk. You post your project, compare proposals from verified freelancers, fund a milestone, and release payment only once you've approved the work, with milestone funds held by Stripe until you release them. The service fee comes off the freelancer's side, so only standard card processing is added to your bill, and wallet-funded milestones carry none. Freelancers verify their identity before they can withdraw; as a client you need no verification. Payouts reach the freelancer inside Lebanon by OMT, Whish, bank transfer or USDT.

Compare proposals properly rather than on price alone — our guide to evaluating freelancer proposals and to writing a brief will save you a month. And if your instinct is to find someone in a Facebook group instead, our comparison of that route against a verified marketplace is worth five minutes.

Your next step this week

Four things, in order, none of which take long.

Start collecting customer contacts today, with permission, at every point of sale — and get the ones you already have into a single list rather than three notebooks and a chat thread.

Decide on paper what you will spend on marketing in October, November and December, and commit to not going dark. A small sustained number beats a large panicked one.

Write down what you are selling between November and January, and book the photography and the copy for it now, while the people who do that work are free.

Then send one good message to your list before the season starts — not a discount, just a reason to remember you — so that the first thing they hear from you in December is not an advertisement. When you are ready to do it properly, hire an email marketing freelancer on Furrsati and keep your payment protected until the work is delivered.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does my business slow down so sharply in September in Lebanon?

Because a large share of summer demand arrives with visitors rather than residents. Lebanese summers are heavily shaped by relatives and expatriates coming home, and when the flights reverse in September that demand physically leaves the country. Your resident customers are still here and still buying, but more quietly, and the two effects arriving at once make the drop feel like a collapse rather than a season ending.

Should I stop advertising when sales drop after the summer?

Going to zero is usually the expensive choice. The quiet weeks are the cheap ones to advertise in, and they do a job you cannot do later: they accumulate the audiences of viewers and visitors you will retarget in November, when reaching a stranger costs the most. Cutting to a small, sustainable level is reasonable. Switching off and buying back in during the busiest fortnight of the year means selling low and buying high.

How do I keep selling to customers who went back abroad?

Get a way to contact them that does not depend on a platform — a phone number or an email address, collected with permission — and give them something they can act on from a distance. If you ship, make ordering possible without a conversation. If you do not, sell vouchers, gift cards and deposits against a future visit. The diaspora buys gifts for people in Lebanon through the whole holiday season, and that only works if you are visible and orderable.

What is the cheapest thing I can do this quarter that actually helps?

Build a contact list you own. It costs nothing but discipline at the point of sale, it is unaffected by any platform's reach, and it is the only marketing asset that keeps working when budgets are cut. A single well-written campaign to that list is priced at $40 to $150 on Furrsati, and it does not get more expensive as the season gets busier.

When should I shoot content for the holiday season?

Now — late September or October. Photographs, video and page copy take weeks to produce properly, and the busy season consumes them faster than you expect. A business shooting its holiday material in mid-November is paying rushed prices for rushed work and then running ads against it. The freelancers worth hiring are available in October and booked in November.

Is it worth keeping a freelancer on during the slow months?

Usually yes, at a reduced scope. A social media manager is typically $150 to $300 per month and keeps you from disappearing for a quarter; ads management is typically $150 to $800 per month with your spend separate. The alternative — stopping entirely and restarting in November — means paying someone to learn your business again in the worst possible week. If you can only afford one thing, spend it on building and using your own contact list.