Seasonal marketing can be influential in gaining new customers.
Tis’ the season for the reason.
Every season has its merits and values.
For example, Christmas is known for as a family celebration.
Halloween for horror movies, candies and etc.
Seasonal marketing has been known and used for a long time now.
(Source: Coca-Cola)
Chances are that you’ve seen the chubby Christmas Santa ad from Coca-Cola.
Regardless of where in the world you live in.
Fact is, this isn’t the actual physical form of Santa Claus.
Santa was imagined to look like this before The Coca-Cola Company got involved.
(Source: WikiPedia)
Pretty handsome, right?
Well, unfortunately, a guy that looked like a lumberjack doesn’t make sales boom.
Not unless you’re in the adult industry that is 😉
So Coca-Cola had to use the ingenious strategy of transforming a Christmas icon (Santa Claus), to make him family-friendly.
This is, the most significant effort ever placed on Seasonal marketing in all of marketing history.
And is the reason why coca-cola is closely tied to Christmas, especially in the U.S.
Whether they advertise it, or not, they’re sure to get more sales on christmas.
This is the main reason why Seasonal Marketing can be a make or break move for your brand.
What is Seasonal Marketing?
Let’s get in detail a bit more, and figure it out further.
Seasonal marketing, simple defined is the process of running your marketing campaigns oriented towards a season.
The beauty of using seasonal marketing is that, there’s always a target audience.
Running your ads can be quite expensive, and even futile.
If you don’t understand your customers well and strategize, you’re bound to loose.
Because, Seasonal marketing can cost a hefty sum in your CPM’s and CPV’s.
I can definitely tell you, that its perfectly worth it.
Only, that you need to promote your product / service in the right way.
Seasonal Marketing is essential for product or brand growth.
People usually tend to purchase, or experiment with products and services during a season of the year.
This finding from the U.S. Census chart shows how sales have increased over the end-of-the-year seasons from 2002 – 2021 (2022 predicted).
As you can see there has been a steady growth right throughout.
And the only downside was during the 2008 financial crisis, which effected everyone.
But still, the scale on supply-vs-demand is not even, in fact the scale tips on the supply side more often.
Andrey Popov (Source: Adobe Stock)
This is because there are always more suppliers than the demand would suffice for.
So, your marketing strategy during the season, better be a solid plan.
To grow confidence in your marketing strategies and to have higher expectations on your seasonal campaigns you need to done thing above all else, Research.
What do your customers need?
The gap between you and your customer, is a sale.
Anyone who buys your product is a customer, and anyone who’s interested is a prospect.
So, how do you turn a prospect to a customer.
First, we need to look at what we mean by a prospect and define how we can imagine them to be.
You should do this, by creating user personas of your ideal customers.
And define what might be some points to attract them by.
User Buyer Personas Infographic. (Data Source: ITSMa, Developed by GumdropDev)
The research conducted by ITSMa had found that those that use a user persona, have gained a significant growth.
If you’re running a SaaS app, we’ve got an amazing article on SaaS inbound marketing, which involves around user personas.
Implementing Storytelling for Your Campaigns
Storytelling has been a huge play used by organizations such as apple.
You can use storytelling as a means to express your brand and associate it to the season you’re trying to connect to with your campaign.
Every season has a theme behind it, you need to use that as a means to express your brand.
(Source: Starbucks)
Starbucks is a frequent user of seasonal marketing.
They use the aesthetics along with seasonal flavors to promote what is most sought after during the season.
A Hype product, can be relevant when running a seasonal promotion on your product.
Make sure to feed create an attachment of your product to the season that you’re promoting to.
Don’t just sell your product, let your product sell itself.
(Source: Adidas)
Here is a 2021 Adidas marketing campaign to promote during the Chinese New Year (Year of the Dragon).
The Chinese audience is obviously a profitable marketplace for Adidas.
Given their interests in sports and buying gifts for relatives during the Chinese New Year.
And also, their respect for proper cultural integration.
The above campaign can give a good example of how to include your product into a season, without forcing it.
Again, i repeat “Don’t sell your product, let it sell itself”.
Who’s buying?
Your audience is not uniform.
People who view your campaign won’t directly buy your product.
You need to create a purpose for them to purchase your product.
This can be especially difficult if your organization is new.
Let’s take a look at how we can approach our audience as a new brand.
(Source: Crest)
Crest, a popular healthcare company that is dominant in the U.S. markets affiliates their brands with halloween.
The scenario above is to help provide caring for your cavity during the halloween season.
This, is an effective ad campaign, given that many children eat a lot of candy during this season.
So, an oral healthcare company such as Crest, can prioritize on this and capitalize.
Appropriate affiliation is a must for a seasonal marketing campaign.
Converting existing customers
You might not have to look for more customers.
Some products are popular enough, or have enough prospects, that you don’t need to focus on buyers.
But, instead focus on your existing users.
Typically, these are your customers that know of your product, or use a free version of it.
But, they don’t want to pay.
Example, A SaaS app that has a Free Forever plan, long with Upgrade to Premium.
(Source: Grammarly)
Although Black Friday itself is not a season.
We can utilize this as a means to start our Christmas promotions early on.
This is usually a period in which our users, might get a little extra on their pay.
And they might be willing to pay for services, that they might’ve usually been stingy on.
Getting customers to share content
Let your customers promote for you.
An ingenious idea in marketing always comes from word-of-mouth strategies.
Getting a campaign to advertise itself and not require a huge budget in advertisement is always a win.
Learn to promote your products, or your services to your users.
You should get users to share your posts instead on social media.
(Source: Rignite)
Exclusives for regular customers
Take the time to build your audience during your seasonal marketing campaigns.
A seasonal marketing campaign doesn’t always have to be about sales.
You can use seasonal marketing to get more brand awareness as well.
As Miinto did for their VIP exclusive promotions.
(Source: drip.com)
The above promotion from Miinto shows a Black Friday deal that’s available for newsletter signees.
This kind of promotions can help to increase your audience engagement of your brand.
And increase curiosity over your promotions.
Overall, the ideal seasonal marketing campaign should be focused on brand development.
Use your intuition and your understanding over your customers to grow your brand online.