Seasonal marketing presents a golden opportunity to market your brand using innovative and creative methods. Whether it’s a Christmas campaign, a Valentine’s Day campaign, or a Halloween campaign, there are plenty of opportunities to latch onto all year round.
Forward planning is essential Often, large companies will be planning seasonal campaigns over a year in advance. Content calendars filled with awareness days, holidays, and other key events can be ideal to help you spot opportunities well in advance. One seasonal event may work more naturally for your business than others, so it’s important to establish this early on.
It’s important to have an understanding of retail exclusivity, particularly in a digital sense. This centres around exclusivity and scarcity when establishing USPs in the market – the end goal is to encourage customers to convert. In practice, this looks like running special offers for a limited time only and creating a sense of ‘FOMO’.
Optimise your website
Once you’ve completed an initial audit of your website, it’s time to optimise it so that any landing pages involved in your campaign will be set up and ready to go. This means ensuring that there are clear call-to-actions, as well as FAQs and other helpful onsite content that aligns with Google’s EEAT guidelines.
If you run an e-commerce website, make sure you add relevant category pages that align with your seasonal focus.
Discounts and special offers
Temporary discounts are a good choice to entice people to make purchases they might not ordinarily have made. You can also add value by offering extras to enhance the customer experience. Simple gestures such as offering gift wrapping at checkout can make a big difference when running special offers with a seasonal focus.
It’s also worth noting that some customers may be time-poor in the run-up to a particular event, whether that’s Easter or Christmas, in which case same day delivery as a perk can encourage people to choose your product over others on the market during that period.
Promote seasonal campaigns on social media
Social media is key to pulling off a successful seasonal campaign.
Digital tools, whether through paid media or email marketing can enhance this and target specific audiences. Communication is everything when it comes to implementing a successful marketing campaign, whether seasonal or not.
Seasonal content is a great way to give a seasonal campaign a clear identity, whether created in-house or by working with influencers. You could use content that incorporates a countdown to instil a sense of urgency. Many marketers create a hashtag to use across social channels to help compile any related content. Another approach could be to let your audience know that members can gain early access to exclusive perks or discounts.
Before you get started…
These concepts should be built into the planning process when designing a seasonal marketing campaign. You should identify a clear audience and set KPIs before launching your campaign so that you can measure its success and learn from any mistakes in upcoming projects. At the same time, you can identify what went well and report this back to the relevant departments.