Taking full opportunity of the seasons and events in your local community can help you build a better business, engage more customers and increase your profits.
Here are some of the best ideas to kick start you to remarkable and memorable seasonal campaigns.
Get Creative
Think outside of the box and challenge your competition.
Think of how Google utilizes its web design through Google Doodles to emphasise a momentous day or person throughout history. Try adding leaves to your logo if your business wants to promote Halloween or Autumn products or changing your strapline to incorporate the seasons or holiday.
Over large seasonal campaigns like Christmas, Easter and Black Friday, customers will be swamped with emails, offers and promotions from other companies. The key is to stand out. Create a clever, funny marketing campaign or a compelling, emotive story line that makes your business stand out from the crowd.
Try using a different theme for the season. So instead of a ‘Family Christmas’, change your theme to ‘Advent Calendar’, ‘Countdown to Christmas’ or ‘Naughty or Nice?’
Create your own story
Good customer service is vital to a successful business.
Customizing business to suit your consumer needs is a great way to build rapport and loyalty.
A loyalty program can establish this and ensures customers keep coming back for more. A loyalty card, like in Starbucks or Costa is an example and will make consumers come back for more.
Remember to choose the best seasonal campaigns tailored specifically to your demographic. For example, a jewellery shop would benefit from Mother’s Day and Birthday seasonal campaigns.
Find the right platform
Social media is a fantastic way to engage younger audiences. From Twitter and Facebook to Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat, social media will help your business spread its message and reach more people.
It’s also an opportunity to hold contests or create polls. Examples include photo competitions, questions to the experts of your company, or customers sharing their favourite products, with a branded #hashtag. This helps to create a personal and authentic business brand.
At the same time, don’t forget the importance of emails. Email may seem outdated but it helps business with their seasonal planning and updates customers on the latest discounts. It can also build hype and awareness of your seasonal campaign.
A top tip is to find the best channel that suits your customer market.
Give something back
Incentivize your customers through promotions and discounts.
Coupons are great ways to build rapport and relationships with your customer and ensure that they return and continue their investments. Try offering discounts online or in-store with their next purchase.
Free product giveaways or samples are other ways that encourage customers to return because they can test and try your product which often generates sales.
Either way you choose to approach this tip, incentivization, promotions and discounts are great ways to thank your consumers, build relationships and encourage further investment.
As a small business, embrace locality
Getting local can be your unique selling point.
Before you think big, it’s always good idea to think small and involve your local community into your business. Your local community can help to build a bigger, better and brighter reputation that reaches a wider audience.
If your business is family-owned, why not post videos on social media of your family working together? Benefits of SMBs is that emotional connections to customers are more direct.
You could even reach out to local media such as local newspapers to gain publicity. Student media at Lancaster, such as SCAN, Bailrigg FM and LA1: TV, can really help you with this. Using local influences such as holding a meet and greet with your local politicians can increase engagement.
Don’t forget to plan
Why not plan out a seasonal calendar to map out the seasons you want your business to be involved with?
Planning means you are one step ahead of your competition and can improve and alter your campaign to suit your audience in good time.
This advice may seem too obvious, but there is nothing worse than having to tweak your seasonal marketing campaigns during the season when your focus shown be on operations, execution and excellent customer service. Starting early and planning in advance can save you lots of stress and increase the popularity and profitability of your business during the seasonal campaign.
There’s always a seasonal holiday going on, sometimes you just need to look for them. There’s no need to restrict your seasonal campaigns to the big holiday’s like Christmas and Easter. Seasons are year-round endeavours, so get planning and picking your seasonal campaigns and plan your marketing calendar.
Despite the Easter surge of chocolate, the spring and summer season is always where business slows. So why not exploit this and think creatively? Think about micro-seasonal events that can engage more customers and boost sales, as not many businesses do this. Top events include Mother’s Day, Summer Vacation, and Back to School/Uni.
What now?
An effective business will ensure that all these tips interlink. You can provide discounts and promotions for local attractions, you can creatively build your social media channel and you can leverage social media to emphasise a story through competitions and branded #hashtags.
A successful business finds way to utilize these tips and intertwine them to create engaging and remembered seasonal campaigns that keep customers coming back for more.
