Seasonal Marketing Tips for Retailers

In the constant battle for traffic, leads, shares, and sales, many marketers forget to pay attention to one key thing that is trends.

Being a brand you need to constantly think about new ways to market to your audience. People get bored with the same message being conveyed repeatedly in a similar way. That’s where seasonal marketing can bring a spark to your business.

Seasonal marketing is an amazing way to add variety and capture customer’s attention.

Let’s discuss in detail about seasonal marketing.

What is Seasonal Marketing?

Seasonal marketing consists of adjusting your online marketing campaigns to the ongoing events. In other words, targeting important events, a national or global holiday for your industry is called seasonal marketing.

This is an extremely effective strategy to apply. With seasonal marketing you can drive more attention to your product or service in the interest of boosting your business revenue. Nonetheless, seasonal marketing has its substantial advantages and can draw you some special traffic peaks if applied properly.

Is Seasonal Marketing for Everyone?

Seasonal marketing perfectly fits any B2C business, especially an e-commerce business because national holidays provide the perfect excuse for spending some extra money.

For instance, people might spend money on new high-heeled shoes and a cocktail dress for a New Year’s Eve Party; a Netflix package for grandpa for Christmas; or a romantic trip to the seaside for Valentine’s Day.

It gets a little trickier to apply seasonal marketing campaigns to B2B businesses, and it’s even harder when you have an analytical tool in your offer. 

Seasonal Marketing Tips for Retailers

1. Market yourself

While you might be more comfortable advertising through traditional channels like print, radio and television, you should use social media to your benefit. Facebook in particular offers a quick and inexpensive way to reach a highly targeted base of customers. Most of the people nowadays use social media more hence marketing on these platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter can help you grow your sales.

2. Advertise in advance of opening

One mistake that many new seasonal business owners make is to wait until they’re open to start advertising. Take a page from the PR experts advertising concerts and theatrical productions and launch your marketing efforts a couple of months before you open for the season. Advertising in advance creates hype of your product and everyone waits to see what’s coming up to their way. This tends to draw a steadier stream of customers to your retail store more quickly.

3. Know your locale

Whenever possible, sell products which have some kind of local connection. Examples include goods that are locally made, merchandise with local themes and products which have a direct connection to the location where you’ve set up your business. Your trump card should be in carrying items not easily found online or back home.

4. Use sensible hiring practices

You should exercise every bit as much pleasure and carefulness when you’re hiring seasonal employees as you would if you were hiring a full-time permanent employee. It’s better to ask for references, conduct background checks and make sure they’re going to be an asset to your business. Hiring friends can ruin your ability to be profitable.

5. Clear it out

So many seasonal retailers hold onto old merchandise because they feel it never gets old. So, have a big clearance sale while there are still many shoppers in your town, village or resort who don’t wait for the off-season.

6. Pick your products wisely

None of the sales training in the world will help you if you pick the wrong products. Therefore, stick to proven top-selling items as you don’t have time to be patient with slow moving products. Even though they might offer a slightly wider profit margin or you might personally fall in love with them but that’s not people might be looking for. Hence, choose your products wisely that would be in high demand. Successful seasonal businesses thrive on volume.

7. Give shoppers a reason to buy

It’s a well-known fact that people are more likely to spend money when they’re on vacation. Differentiate yourself from your competitors and you’ll see more of that money coming your way. Display a few items thoughtfully rather than filling up the rack of the same thing. Highlight new uses for an older product. Come up with great signs that make customers stop and consider your items. It’s all about mind games.

8. Be diverse

Always look for ways to diversify your business so that you’re not so dependent on the boom-and-bust cycle of the seasonal operation. Can you open more businesses that run in different seasons?

9. Use the off season to your advantage

The most successful seasonal business owners use their down time to recharge and prepare for next year. Clean the entire store. Look for new ways to improve and market your brand. Refocus on your growth strategy. Take sales training courses if you can. In short, improve yourself and you’ll improve your business.

Ideas for Seasonal Content Creation

Seasonal content is often more shareable than regular content, which boosts brand awareness. Hence, here are some ideas to use for seasonal content creation and content marketing. These would help you in marketing your seasonal content and will bring traffic to your website.

• Come up with a concept and design a landing page to show off selected products. For example, products for the perfect Halloween party or to embrace the outdoors in autumn.
• Create a new category on your website that allows you to assign selected products into your new seasonal category. Putting them all in one place makes it easier for you to market the collection and also makes it easier for your customers to find through search.
• Crowd source content from your social media followers, and get them to post pictures related to your theme. Get them to use a unique hash tag, so you can locate their posts and share or re-tweet them yourself.
• Create social media cover images and backgrounds in line with your seasonal sales promotion.
• Remember that a sales promotion doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to put your products on sale. A discount isn’t necessary when curating products on a theme, though of course discounts are a great way of stimulating demand.
• Send a seasonal email to your subscribers with a seasonal subject line and a small selection of the products in your seasonal promotion, with a link through to the main page on your website.

Timing Your Campaigns Correctly

Timing is critical in seasonal content marketing. To maximize your results, your goal is to get two things right:

• The start of your campaign
• What types of product and content you publish/promote and when

You should start your campaigns just before the peak of the season. This makes sure you’re one of the leaders, rather than following in everyone else’s footsteps.

Wrapping Up

Seasonal marketing can be a powerful way to take advantage of people’s natural buying trends. But rather than submerge your audience with “Holiday Savings,” you enter their lives on the same wavelength.

Just remember to:

• Base your content around keywords that you know are trending for that season
• Time your campaigns just before the peak of each season
• Prepare during your slow times
• Use paid promotion to get your product or content out quickly and effectively
• And match the season to your brand