As Christmas time approaches, are you all prepped with your seasonal marketing strategy? This is one of the best growth marketing opportunities that you can bank on to increase your sales – if you do it well.
27 percent of shoppers aged 55 years and above spend an average of 1,652 USD in this period, and 18 percent of shoppers below the age of 44 years tend to spend around 1,530 USD. With such a high budget, it is imperative that you understand the dynamics of growth marketing during seasonal events and know how to leverage these opportunities to make your business thrive.
What is seasonal marketing?
Seasonal marketing is the process of marketing your products and services at specific times of the year like Christmas, Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, Halloween, or Easter. The concept behind this marketing technique is to target specific dates and capitalize on them.
Identify the noteworthy dates in your industry that resonate with your business and adjust your online marketing campaigns accordingly. Creating marketing strategies around these dates will help you drive traffic to your website and give you a spike in sales. During the Thanksgiving weekend in 2019, more than 165 million people were projected to shop, amounting to a massive $29 billion in sales through online platforms alone. It is impossible to overlook these numbers, so let’s take a look into how you can make this marketing concept work for your business.
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Choose your seasonal marketing event
To get an idea of how companies create campaigns around the event you have chosen, take a look at some past campaigns from your competitors.
You can also gain insights from the media to see how other brands’ seasonal campaigns are planned and how they market them. This will help you understand how these campaigns fare among potential audiences. Using this information, leverage the media’s reach and understand the buzz they can create for your campaigns. For example, distributing press releases can help establish your business as one of the top industry leaders.
Make your messaging count
The message that you want to your audience to hear is equally important as the marketing campaign itself and to write a good one, you need to consider the following:
Customer journey stage
Knowing which customer journey stage your potential target audience is at is essential. Customer journey stages are segmented into awareness, consideration, decision making, and conversion. Being sure about the message required to help your audience move further along their journeys at each of these stages is important.
Story line
Whether you’re targeting existing customers or new customers, the message will differ from audience to audience. Keep this factor in mind to draft a compelling story.
Emotions you want to appeal to
Based on the season you’re marketing for, your message and story line should evoke those emotions in the audience accordingly. For example, if you wish to market during the Christmas season, the emotions that you need to awaken in your audience need to be in line with it, such as the idea of Christmas, family get togethers, gifting, and more.
Calls to action (CTAs)
Effective CTAs are key for any successful marketing campaign. Your CTAs, or the actions you want customers to take, need to be compelling enough for your audience to take that next step. For instance, call now, request a sample, get a 50 percent discount now, grab your deal, or more are some effective CTAs that you can use based on your campaign. Making these seasonally themed will also help give customers the push to convert.
Know your schedule
Timing is imperative when it comes to marketing your seasonal campaigns. As the adage goes, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. This is why you need to plan your marketing campaign well in advance. The problem with most businesses is they either don’t plan at all in the first place or they plan but fail at the execution. You need to ensure that in addition to planning your campaign beforehand, you also need to work on the execution in a timely manner.
To create the buzz that you’re envisioning, you need to send your content (press releases) to PR sites well in advance. As they are inundated with news coverage especially during peak seasons, you need to have your content prepared and send it two months (a month at the very least) before your campaign starts. You also have to check whether your content has been posted at the right times and if your audience is engaged with it. If you’re reading this and haven’t started planning yet, start now!
Organize your content
Creating a content calendar, designing visual assets, performing keyword research, and scheduling onsite promotion are all necessary for a great campaign launch. However, to usher your seasonal campaign to success, it is important to organize your content thoughtfully for all the stages of your marketing campaign. To get the word out about your campaign, you will have to use the right platforms for the job. Doing this will help you multiply your reach to your audience, boost your engagement rate, and also facilitate effective content flow throughout all platforms.
This will allow your audience to find you easily and helps in easy content sharing among peers and family too. You also need to consider incorporating a content hub for monitoring your entire campaign. Doing this will help you track all your content marketing efforts from one place.
Finally, having a well documented campaign strategy in place will help you see the big picture of everything your campaign contains. This will allow you to organize and distribute your content in a timely manner, and maintain consistency throughout your marketing campaign.
Monitor, measure and optimize
Things won’t always go according to plan, and that’s okay. For a successful campaign, you need to review it at every stage to know what is and isn’t working. At any given time, there may be problems, opportunities and exceptions that arise. So, what will you do in those circumstances? By being agile, you can readjust your marketing strategy where necessary.
To measure the health of your campaign, monitor and measure different metrics such as conversion rate, bounce rate, website traffic sources and more to optimize your overall marketing strategy. Never hesitate to make any changes to your campaign! Always keep in mind that the results are more important than the strategy itself.
Remember to use this opportunity to connect with your audience
Seasonal marketing has always been known to make record breaking sales and generate unprecedented revenue. Businesses that understand the dynamics of this concept have tapped into great potential and have been responsible for some of the most heartfelt, emotional campaigns that truly resonate with the audience. After all, seasonal events are the perfect times to connect with your potential customers and also foster brand loyalty among the existing ones as well. The more you make out of this opportunity, the better your position will be in the industry.
The complete content guide
Content marketing makes the world a more engaging place, and without it, you’re risking incredible engagement and conversion opportunities. Get all of the knowledge you need with our insider resources that’ll tell you how to make the most out of your content production – Content Marketing Made Easy: Your Complete Handbook.
Seasonal marketing is a crucial part of most businesses’ campaigns throughout the year. Many brands bank on seasonality to improve their sales and overall stance in the marketplace. These can be some of the most opportune times to connect with your audience on a deeper level and foster the emotional connection between them and your brand.
Making your business stand out at these times is crucial to your success. Partnering with a growth marketing agency can help you create beautiful campaigns that help your audience choose your brand. Growth Marketing Genie has a team of seasoned professionals that can create your entire marketing strategy from end-to-end helping you take advantage of the opportunities and connect with your audience more effectively.
Is your marketing strategy going to cut it this season? Learn more about how we can help you!
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