In the annual calendar, you have the obvious dates: Christmas, Easter, Halloween, and Black Friday. For many ecommerce businesses, Christmas is crunch time. But there are also plenty of possibilities that can easily go under the radar, including ones that could be perfect for your business.
Seasonal Marketing: How to Unlock the Benefits
In this guide, we’re delving into why seasonal marketing is so important and looking at how to prepare for seasonal marketing if you’re an ecommerce business.
From the big seasonal dates in the diary to the lesser-known micro-celebrations and awareness days, we’re going to show you how to identify and make the most of micro-seasonal events.
Read on to find out how to fine-tune your marketing calendar, along with some great campaign ideas!
Why apply seasonal marketing to your business?
When you take advantage of seasonal and holiday marketing, it’s a total win-win. You’ll have way more chances throughout the year to get the word out about your products or services. Forget the same old campaigns – every new season is a fresh chance to spark creative ideas and showcase your brand.
Your valued customers will certainly appreciate the appealing seasonal promotions and discounts as well. Providing special offers aligned with popular holidays and times of the year can prove quite effective for increasing engagement and sales. With every holiday-themed promotion you launch, you’ll get more customers excited about your business and more loyal fans to refer you to their friends.
Seasonal marketing can lead to:
- A boost in sales and revenue
- More new and returning customers
- More word-of-mouth referrals
- Higher demand for your products/services
- An emotional connection with your audience
- Fresh opportunities for special promos
Now is the perfect time to get strategic with seasonal marketing and watch your business grow!
New seasons provide opportunities to attract customers. Each year, UK retailers experience around an 18% increase in sales during Black Friday week compared to other weeks in November. Aligning marketing with cultural and shopping events can boost revenue when consumer interest is high. A strategic seasonal approach allows companies to capitalise on significant occasions for their target audience.
How to plan your seasonal marketing campaigns
Step 1: Find out when your products are in demand
Search for the products you sell on Google Trends and you can see when there is a peak in traffic.
Let’s say you’re a stationery retailer or your website sells bicycles and related gear. The Back to School season could be a great time to push your products online. But don’t just take our word for it…
As you can see in this screenshot, the end of August – early September period is the most popular time for stationery searches online.
Searches for bicycles may get the most searches in the heat of summer, but they also appear in high demand during the Back to School season.
Do a quick search on your website traffic, and you may see a correlation with the seasonal trends. Just hop on over to Google Analytics and search your organic traffic data. If you’re not seeing any obvious correlation between your traffic and seasonal patterns, it’s possible you missed some opportunities by not having a digital marketing campaign tailored to different times of year.
You can now start planning some seasonal content and promotions to take advantage of those yearly cycles. A little extra strategic planning can go a long way!
Now that you know when your products are most in demand and figured out why, you can tap into buyer needs to create winning campaigns.
Step 2: Identify Relevant National & International Days
Log on to Twitter or scroll through Google’s trending topics, and it seems there is a special day for everything. Some are just for a bit of fun – a little tongue-in-cheek. Others take a more serious tone, such as raising awareness days. Love them or hate them, these dedicated days can be used to your advantage if you’re an ecommerce business.
Let’s say you’re in the cake delivery business. There’s a hidden treasure trove of food related days: National Tea Day, World Chocolate Day, International Coffee Day – the list goes on.
You can also get creative.
The International Happiness Day might not look like a marketing match at first glance – but think a little outside the box and both your online and offline marketing channels could benefit.
If your product or service has mass appeal, such as a cake box, you could leverage some of these unrelated hashtags to give your brand awareness a boost.
We’re not saying that your marketing should become special-day-centric. But, it can help you fill in the gaps in your calendar and find a smart marketing approach that captivates the right audience at the right time.
To start your search for the perfect marketing dates, you can visit the Days of the Year website, or there are lots of alternative calendars online.
Step 3: Create Your Calendar
Now it’s time to unlock the benefits of a brand new marketing calendar! Enriched with seasonal events big and small, widely celebrated and obscure, you should generate more brand awareness, and hopefully more sales.
Get your creative teams on board to brainstorm content ideas that will entice your audience. Remember to consider all your available channels.
What does a winning seasonal campaign look like?
Your seasonal campaigns should be consistent across all channels. Email newsletters, social media, blogs, etc. Make sure the messaging is on brand and has a call to action – a short, clear action phrase that encourages online shoppers to visit your website and buy your amazing products!
If you want to host a special promotion, new product launch or competition make sure you spread the word in good time.
Conclusion
Seasonal digital marketing campaigns are not just for Christmas! The festive season is one of the most competitive seasons for marketing, and if you’re neglecting to target other seasonal occasions, you could be missing out on valuable traffic and revenue. The beauty of this is, although Christmas is a key period for ecommerce, it is not the only one to plan for. There are many other occasions and events that occur all year round!
We hope this guide will help you identify when your products are most in demand and tap into those under the radar marketing opportunities. Give your ecommerce business a boost with seasonal marketing.
If you would like help with your digital marketing campaigns, speak to the experts at Echo Web Solutions. We’d love to work with you.
