Decking the halls – 4 top tips for successful seasonal marketing

Nearly all marketers agree that a good, year-round marketing strategy should include some seasonal targeted campaigns.
 

It’s a well-known fact that shopper’s habits are affected by events and seasons, and depending on your industry and product, this may be more or less critical to your business. But whatever you sell, and whatever industry you work in, here are our top tips for dipping your toe in the water of seasonal marketing:

Use holidays, themes and events

Seasonal marketing can take many forms. As well as the obvious Christmas promotions, or well-known diary dates such as Valentines or Mother’s Day, there are a host of other holidays, events, awareness days, themes or seasons that your marketing campaign could hook into.

Use resources such as Awareness Days, or for more light-hearted events and themed days, try Days of The Year.

Don’t forget that if you are planning on attending a trade show or event that ties in with a seasonal theme, Marley Haley do a great range of promotional products and low cost banners that can transform the Slook and feel of your stand to tie in with the season without breaking the bank.

Choose carefully

Yes, it might be International Day of the Pancake, but with the best will in the world, if your business sells wardrobes, it might not be the closest fit.

With so many days, events, seasons and themes to take advantage of, pick those that fit best with your products for maximum success.

Sell garden furniture? Then summer season is going to be your peak time for targeted seasonal marketing. Make sure you hook into social media hashtags too in order to increase visibility and drive traffic to your website.

Advance planning is vital

The best marketing campaigns are well thought through and carefully planned, not thrown together at the last minute because some-one in the office has just remembered it’s Faux Fur Friday tomorrow (yes, that really is a thing!)

Consumers often plan purchases far in advance, so marketing campaigns likewise need to be building momentum early.

Christmas marketing really needs to be in place for the end of October for instance.

Use tools such as Google Trends to see when and how consumers use seasonal search terms in order to maximise the success of your campaign.

Allow for increased business

It goes without saying, but if you run a promotion- seasonal or otherwise- your business needs to be equipped to deal with the increase volume of traffic to your website, or increased orders and sales.

A poor experience with this could stop a customer potentially returning in future, defeating the point of all that great marketing.

Make sure everyone in your business knows about the promotion, so that when enquires and orders come flooding in, your new customers have a great experience and are ready not only to return to you in the future, but are happy to recommend you to friends and family too.

Now that’s marketing gold!