What Is Seasonal Marketing And How Can It Multiply Your Reach

There’s no better time than now to take advantage of all the seasonal marketing opportunities that are approaching. The more aligned your marketing strategies are with what is happening in real-time, the more you’ll be able to tap into the collective mind, mood and behaviours of consumers and speak to them in a way that appeals to their in-the-moment necessities. 

People have a tendency to go all out at certain times of the year, and brands need to match that marketing appetite. Whether there’s a sense of FOMO or great excitement for holidays, new seasons or national events, they present a great opportunity to create much more traffic for your website and social media that can ultimately help you increase engagement with your products or services, and multiply your reach by a significant amount. 

Understanding Seasonal Marketing

Seasonal Marketing is the process of adjusting your marketing strategies and campaigns to match the upcoming season, holidays or promotions throughout the year. Whether it’s the festive spirit of Christmas for the beginning of winter, the weather change that demands for outdoor excursions during springtime, the long-awaited vacation and beach mode of the summer or the back-to-school preparations, Halloween and Black Friday extravaganzas of fall, each season presents prime opportunities for leveraging high traffic, engagement and reach. 

Customers are the A to Z of marketing success, and being aligned with their shopping habits, as well as reaching out to them at significant times during their buyer’s journey, can highly impact your strategies and drive a brand’s sales. 

Benefits of Seasonal Marketing 

• Increased Visibility: It’s a great opportunity to be fully in sync with customers’ needs, as they are actively searching for particular products or services at specific times throughout the year. There’s heightened interest, and once you insert your brand into the seasonal conversation, you can expect higher visibility, both online and offline. 
• Enhanced Engagement: Similarly, once you tailor your marketing strategies and campaigns to resonate with what your audience is looking for, there's a better chance for higher engagement that will make your brand resonate with them on a more personal level.
• Improved Brand Loyalty: The more consistent you are with making your marketing strategy based on seasonality, the more your audience will learn to turn to you for all events and holidays, as well as associate your brand with being relevant. 
• Boosted Sales: Seasonal marketing strategies can offer great incentives to customers. Whether it’s limited time offers and promotions or season-specific deals, your audience is looking for the best possible solution that will turn their shopping experience into a memorable, and worthy, engagement.  

Practical Tips for Seasonal Marketing Success

While the advantages of seasonality are pretty clear, they mean nothing if they are not successfully applied to your yearly marketing strategy, and that may still not be enough to uncover its full potential. 

• Stay on top of important dates: The one great advantage to seasonal marketing that can guide a significant part of your entire year’s strategy is that there are specific, unchanged dates that you can mark on your calendar early on. It allows you to plan ahead, not waste valuable time and have abundant time to be your most creative in outlining your campaigns. 
• Entice your audience with seasonal promotions: Every brand has something to offer its audience, that would not only incentivise its loyal following, but also intrigue new customers to get on board. Develop special offers, bundles and promotions that are season-specific and will speak to your customers’ impending needs and demands.
• Tailor all forms of communication: Whether blogs, social media or email marketing, make sure you maintain a consistent uniformity across all channels and platforms, in getting your message across, staying ahead of your competition and reaching a wide audience beyond your loyal one. 
• Update your visual branding to match: Offering a cohesive brand experience to your audience is always a step in the right direction, especially when there’s an additional element to promote or a thematic that requires an entire re-branding of sorts to match the mood of the season. Considering images are a big part of our online experience, it’s vital to creatively upgrade your visual branding with a uniformed theme across all channels. 
  
  

How Seasonal Marketing Can Multiply Your Reach 

Feel The Pulse of the Season 

Just like with fashion, haircuts and interior design, there are always certain themes and trends that seem to take over certain seasons each year, whether design-wise, thematically or even strategically. There’s great gravitas in staying in line with consumer behaviours and cultural phenomena in determining the best way forward that will give you the edge with multiplying your reach. The more aligned your marketing campaigns are with emerging trends, the more likely you are to raise your popularity, demand and interest, and tap into conversations and activities that are already buzzing in the social realm. 

For example, summer may be all about travelling to sunny, beachside destinations, but that may not always be as relevant. In a post-pandemic time, there was a great need for people to explore the outdoors and organise excursions that perhaps were not as popular in previous years, such as camping and hiking off the beaten path attractions, which gave a great leeway to content and products such as sunscreen protection, outdoor gear and unconventional travel guides. 

Tug On Their Heartstrings 

Different seasons and holidays have a different emotional effect on people. Since seasonal marketing gives you the opportunity to connect with your customers on an emotional level, it’s important to take into account how and what your audience is feeling at any given time, and utilise it in a way that is relevant and relatable. Emotional resonance can lead to greater engagement that means your content can start reaching more people who may end up becoming part of your loyal following. 

For example, winter is known for bringing out many nostalgic and downbeat emotions, while the Christmas season is a time of purely joyful sentiments, family connections and a warm feeling of being loved and cherished from all the gift exchanging. On the other hand, spring carries a lot of excitement and anticipation for the holiday season, with the weather change and new activities that it invites, adding a much more free spirit to people’s lifestyles. 

Create A Sense of Urgency 

Holidays and seasonal periods, such as Easter, Black Friday and Valentine’s Day, are significant milestones for compelling users to take action. Whether it is to urge them to buy your exclusive seasonal products, take advantage of your limited-time offer or incentivise them to engage and interact with your brand, there’s no time like the present to make them act upon it. If you intrigue them enough, with the right call-to-action, a captivating visual and an even more enticing copy that encourages them to make decisions quickly and make them not want to miss out on whatever it is you are offering, you are bound to expand your reach and get your brand’s name out there just in time. 

Think of the back-to-school season and the late summer sales that pop up every year. Brands strive their hardest to create a sense of urgency with parents to make their purchases for children’s books and supplies. 

Social Media & Cross-Promotional Opportunities 

Social media are a powerful tool for engagement, as are collaborations with other brands, especially during important seasonal moments and events. Social media gives you the freedom to showcase your brand’s identity, by leveraging popular seasonal hashtags, actively engaging with trending topics related to the season or holiday and adapting your look and feel to match the spirit that prevails, while remaining aligned with your brand’s guidelines. Also, creating season-specific content that resonates with your audience’s interests and emotions, can go a long way in catching people’s attention and expanding your reach. Similarly, any collaboration with other brands or influencers can generate great buzz and expose your brand to new, relevant audiences. 

Seasonal marketing may seem like an obvious idea, but there’s more than meets the eye. It presents numerous amazing opportunities throughout the year, that are not interchangeable, can be dealt with in advance and can generate a significant amount of revenue, engagement and reach. Such seasonal moments provide great opportunities for maximising your brand’s visibility and creating an impact with your audience, while your tailored marketing efforts can extensively increase your reach and invite in new customers. 

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