This time of year is jam-packed with seasonal messaging, sometimes to the chagrin of consumers still recovering from the barrage of Thanksgiving and fall activities. However, when done correctly, product or service promotions that align with specific times of the year can offer your brand a much-needed edge. In this blog, we’ll explain how to execute a non-annoying seasonal marketing campaign successfully.
Is Seasonal Marketing a Fit For Your Brand?
Consumers sense it immediately when a company shoehorns seasonal marketing where it doesn’t belong. In general, it’s better to utilize specific seasons when they’re relevant to your product or service. For example, it would feel incongruent for a B2B software company or highly regulated industry to center their advertising around the Christmas or Valentine’s culture.
If it doesn’t make sense for your brand to capitalize on holidays or seasons, stay competitive by offering discounts and sales in the spirit of the season. Your customers will appreciate the savings and acknowledgment without the pandering.
Preparation is Everything
Planning is the first step in harnessing the power of holiday culture. Starting in the first quarter of each year, select the dates of events or holidays important to your audience and decide what products, services, and promotions you’ll roll out in these periods. Don’t forget to analyze behavioral metrics to grasp what your customers are looking for!
Closer to these events, assume that your website will experience higher-than-normal traffic and ensure that pages load quickly. Design targeted ads and creative collateral with a festive mindset; for example, Christmas ads should be on-brand and incorporate seasonal colors and aesthetics. These methods may seem obvious, but initiating the process ahead of time will make it easier to identify which marketing strategies resonate with your audience so you can re-use them year after year.
Review your Seasonal SEO Strategy
Each season is associated with different trends and needs. That’s why, at Savy, we do robust keyword research a month ahead so our client’s content resonates with new and existing customers. Your marketing partner should do the same by updating meta-tags and descriptions on seasonal landing pages, using long-tail keywords, and launching keyword-rich search ads.
Monitoring keyword performance and staying vigilant about adapting SEO strategies allows brands to connect with their audience, improve their visibility, and build brand loyalty and awareness.
Authentically Appeal to Emotions
If you’ve ever gotten misty-eyed from a holiday ad, join the club. Marketing pros are geniuses at using shared cultural moments to elicit emotions. The way to do this successfully is eliminating the sales element from your content and focus on feeling. For example, a back-to-school ad from a food retailer may feature parents packing their kid’s first back-to-school lunch using the store’s products. But the context would be experiencing the passage of time and watching your child grow another year older. That message is much more compelling than “Buy school lunch ingredients from us.”
A real-world example of this that gets us every time is an Apple Christmas ad from 2021. The ad portrays a family visiting their grieving grandpa for Christmas. The two young girls, aware of the loss that pervades their trip, spend Christmas Eve editing a video on the iPad. The next morning, they play their heartfelt creation, which weaves their family narrative, integrating pictures of their late grandma into current family photos. Although the iPad’s capabilities are featured prominently, they are secondary to the ad’s message, which encapsulates the importance of connecting with loved ones and sharing the burdens and blessings of life with them.
Seasonal changes present an opportunity to resonate with your customers more meaningfully. That means ditching the sales pitch and mirroring relatable experiences.
Add Value to Products and Services
Consumers expect sales to accompany certain holidays. If your brand isn’t adding value in this way, you better bet your customers are flocking to a brand that is. Use this time to offer discounts, packages, social giveaways, and complimentary services like gift wrapping, free shipping, or another amenity. Remember, these deals will attract new customers, so this is your chance to differentiate your business and deliver customer service that will make them return.
Think creatively about what your audience will appreciate. Here are some fun ideas to get you started:
1. Team up with an adjacent company to offer an exclusive and limited-time holiday deal and cross-promote on respective websites and social media channels. Example: A dog food brand teams up with a company that makes dog food bowls and toys. Together, they create a package deal that combines both their products, or they collaborate on a limited-edition puppy advent calendar.
The brands can leverage their collab in many ways. For example: Customers who join their mailing list via their sites receive a discount code to use on their order. Or, they could go the altruistic route by donating a portion of their sales revenue to animal shelters and animal rescue organizations. Depending on their audience, one approach could resonate more than the other. Altruism can go a long way with customers, but so can seasonal savings. Rely on your marketing agency for audience research!
2. Utilize user-generated content on your social media channels to promote some element of your brand. Example: A commercial real estate company sets up a neighborhood ice skating rink in one of its developments. It uses the resident’s videos and event photos for their social platforms.
3. Employ gamification and countdowns. Example: To drive traffic to their website, a homeware company sets up a digital advent calendar and unlocks complimentary gifts on orders over a certain amount.
Let Your Marketing Partner Do the Legwork
Coming up with ideas is the fun part; executing them is trickier. That’s where a marketing agency comes in. Bring them into the planning process as early as possible to get the most from their expertise. Together, you can select the holidays or events that are most relevant for your business and audience.
Communication is key, so share what you can realistically offer, and they can ideate unique ways to satisfy existing customers and attract new ones. Then, their team can develop and implement creative content and monitor engagement and other metrics to make it hit. Meanwhile, you can handle the logistics of responding to the interest they drum up!
Activate Your Seasonal Marketing Plan with Savy
At Savy, we help clients achieve seasonal marketing success with fifteen years of industry experience, data, artistry, and pure gut instinct. This blend of intuition and professional knowledge keeps the brands we work with competitive in an ever-changing market. Let us do the same for you. Reach out and contact Savy today to get started!