Seasonal marketing presents a unique opportunity for businesses to harness the power of timing and tap into the collective enthusiasm of consumers during specific events or holidays. Whether it’s Halloween, Black Friday, Valentine’s Day, or any other seasonal occasion, strategic planning and execution can significantly boost your brand’s visibility and revenue. In this article, we’ll explore the typical events to consider, how to plan your seasonal marketing campaigns, and the SEO and paid media tactics that can help you maximize your impact.
Why are seasonal marketing tactics important?
Put simply, if you ignore seasonality in your marketing then it can have a negative impact on performance and can lead to budget being wasted on promoting the wrong products at the wrong time. From our perspective as an agency, if we didn’t consider seasonal marketing tactics then we wouldn’t generate the results we want for our clients, and that’s not an option in our book.
Considering seasonality and planning for it also makes digital content marketing easier because you can organise your calendar around it. That said, you also have to be flexible within that plan. For example, we will flag to clients if a particular product is doing well or we notice positive feedback around a specific message.
What is likely to change from one season to the next?
In the initial instance what will change from one season to the next will be the messaging, the tone, the language and the products – an obvious example is as we go from summer to autumn, the clothing people buy will naturally change. However, within those seasons things will change from one year to the next, and this will be led by trends, cultural events and maybe even wider social and economic events like the cost of living crisis.
Seasonal trends
Trends change with the seasons, especially on social media and that’s something we have to keep an eye on. Right now, TikTok plays a key role in shaping trends and we often see products scale out of nowhere to have a huge surge in demand. That might be because an influencer or celebrity has done something, so we see a rise in products in that category.
Cultural events
Cultural events might include things like the Barbie movie, which coincided with the incongruous release of Oppenheimer and resulted in the “Barbenheimer” hashtag. Often these cultural events are led by a big brand campaign, resulting in a wider conversation that you can leverage. It can also shift the conversation and change the expectations that consumers have of brands and how they communicate.
Consumer expectations
This brings us onto another important point, and that’s how people’s expectations change with both the literal seasons and other types of seasonality. There may be an expectation for brands to address certain topics. Right now with the cost of living situation, evidence shows that adverts leading with a cost benefit are performing better than other messages. From a digital marketing perspective it’s about thinking of things from a human perspective, acknowledging the challenges the audience might be facing and responding to them.
What can you do to support seasonal marketing?
One of the best places to start when it comes to improving your seasonal marketing tactics, is by following the news and staying abreast of what’s going on on social media in general.
Then you can start drilling down into things that are platform specific. For example, TikTok now offers a content format that wasn’t available a few years ago, and that has permeated other platforms in the form of things like Instagram reels. A couple of years ago that didn’t exist and people didn’t demand this type of content. It’s a change from one platform which has forced other platforms to adapt and consequently forces us as digital marketers to change as well.
Importantly, it’s not just about following trends but selecting them with discretion as well. There has been a rise in ‘leaderless movements’ since the pandemic, for example, often on fairly divisive topics. Some brands might feel they’re not ready to have an opinion on those, and while that’s a decision for brand managers rather than our team at Verkeer, if it’s relevant we can flag if something is trending or if a client’s audience is commenting on it regularly within their social media feed.
For example, sometimes if it’s a big topic like climate change, your audience might request feedback in order to understand your position.
Do seasonal marketing tactics impact some industries more than others?
Typically seasonal marketing tactics have a faster impact on B2C businesses than B2B businesses because the purchasing journey is faster. Companies choosing a supplier typically have a long due diligence process, where B2C customers tend to buy quite quickly.
That said, it does also depend on the product. For example, fast fashion will be heavily influenced by seasonal marketing tactics where something like Apple, where the product largely remains unchanged, will be less affected. Of course, it also depends on the topic – the Barbie movie won’t affect someone who sells tractors, but sustainability will.
What sort of thing should you consider as part of your seasonal marketing approach?
In the initial instance, when you put together your marketing strategy you should account for seasonality and build them into your calendar for the year. Having anything from an excel spreadsheet to a more complex calendar will be helpful. When thinking about the digital strategy, we can then use those to plan for the first quarter, knowing there are key events for business to work around.
Then, you need to think about your content and how it’s presented. You will want your imagery to be different for summer to winter or for Halloween, so make sure you have that lifestyle imagery available – don’t just use stock imagery. Similarly, you need to make sure your copy is seasonally appropriate – think about the audience mindset, the time and place.
Make sure you build in adaptability for what you learn as you go – what works, and what unexpected events crop up in the wider cultural sphere that you might not have anticipated. This will allow you to manoeuvre in response to what actually happens rather than what you expect to happen.
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