How To Ace Seasonal Promotions Online To Boost Sales
A whopping 80% of holiday shoppers are influenced by the internet before they make a purchase. And holiday retail sales touched $789 billion in 2020 despite the ongoing pandemic.
The power of the holiday season when it comes to dictating sales is unquestionable. And so is the growing influence of the internet on it. Businesses around the world often craft their marketing practices around holidays, celebrations, and seasons.
However, an average person is bombarded with over 4,000 promotional messages on a daily basis. How do you make yours stand out?
We have put together the complete guide to acing seasonal marketing with proactive ideas that help you boost your sales and create meaningful bonds with your customers.
Benefits of capitalizing on seasonal events
Ongoing trends offer opportunities for businesses to delight customers in a new way that resonates with them. You can present the same offer and products in new packaging, so to speak, and break the repetitive cycle by breathing new life into it.
Here are some key benefits of seasonal marketing:
- Boost sales — The number one benefit of seasonal marketing is the boost it gives to your revenue. People are willing to spend more and you can take advantage of this opportunity by presenting them with enticing offers.
- Topical excitement — It gives you the opportunity to capitalize on a trend or topics people are already searching about. It gives you an organic reason to connect with potential customers and not appear too sales-y.
- Increase brand awareness — Seasonal times are opportune moments to increase your brand’s visibility. Even if someone doesn’t necessarily buy from you, they may still remember and consider you the next time.
- Understand your audience — The holiday season presents an opportunity to understand your audience based on their interactions with you. You can collect data and utilize it in the next season’s marketing campaign.
- Break monotony — Season trends allow opportunities to pair up complimentary products in new ways and connect with customers over different things.
How to ace seasonal promotions
Though every season’s campaign is different, there are a few fundamental aspects that remain the same. They act as the foundation of your campaigns.
Working on common elements beforehand helps you prepare and execute the campaign more efficiently. It also drastically reduces the prep time for each campaign.
Let us take a look at them in detail:
- Conduct a thorough research
Maintain a marketing calendar. It is a schedule of all the marketing activities planned for the foreseeable future. Make sure to put every big and small event on it as it helps you prioritize activities accordingly.
Dedicate a team to researching, following, and analyzing market trends to help you get a better grasp on understanding the market you operate in. Festivals in general require extensive research about the communities that celebrate them and the rituals that are performed.
You should also keep an eye on what your competitors are doing to get a better idea of what works with an audience. Experiment around to see posting at what time brings in the most engagement.
- Craft a strategy
This is the part where you brainstorm ideas with your team. Remember that the goal is to catch people’s attention in an engaging manner. Your ads should stand out in a sea of similar ads.
Don’t stick to just one type of posting format, try as many mediums as you can. You may dabble in picture posts, carousels (multiple pictures), short videos, long videos, sales flyers, posters, and text posts. Keep track of what kind of posts perform better and use them more going forward.
Though there are many ways to do it, two of the most impactful ways to connect with a user are: (a) appealing to them emotionally and (b) getting straight to the point and letting them know what a great deal they are getting.
- Emotional appeal
An emotional message tugs at the heartstrings of the user. It makes them stop and appreciate the message being presented to them. The key is to keep the message simple and not at all manipulative.
For example, this social media post by DICK’S Sporting Goods appeals to the love a user has for their family as holidays are the time when most people spend time with theirs. It’s warm and sweet while refraining from being sales-y.
- Straight to point
At a fundamental level, what any customer at any point is looking to buy is a product or service that gives them value at a reasonable price. Sometimes a user can skip a post halfway if it is taking too long to get to the point.
To counter this, your advertising message can simply skip the preamble and get to chase, so to speak. Directly lead with your offer for them as Ledo Pizza does in this post. It’s a bold marketing tactic that relies on the offer being so good that it doesn’t need anything else.
PRO TIP:
Begin your promotional posts with something anticlimactic. For example, an Instagram carousel with one slide saying: ‘don’t celebrate the festival this year…’ followed by the next slide saying: ‘live it. Such posts help catch the attention of the user among a slew of similar-looking posts.
- Leave room for last-minute changes
No matter how well-prepared you are for a campaign, always leave room for changes such as changes in the date and the deal being offered. You should also have backup posts in case a post has to be scrapped at the last minute.
For instance, the festival of Eid celebrated by the Islamic community doesn’t have a data set until a day or two before it. Thus, you should be able to adjust pre-made posts according to the date being announced.
- Keep an eye on trends and competitions
Always keep an eye on current trends and what your competitors are doing, both in the form of storing data as well as in the present time. It helps you gauge audience reaction and reshape your strategies as you go.
PRO TIP:
Engage with the accounts that comment on your competitor’s page. These people are directly interested in your niche of products and services as well as seeking brands out on their own. They would likely be willing to engage with you if you offer more value and better prices.
Seasonal promotion ideas to try now
Now that you have the basics in place for running a seasonal campaign, given below are some simple ideas that you can try to woo your audience.
- Tap on less popular holidays
This is why you should mark any and all events on your marketing calendar regardless of whether you use them. Everyone will be trying to capitalize on the bigger events such as Christmas, Halloween, the Football World Cup, etc.
But not many brands pay attention to smaller events such as festivals of minority religious communities or say, the world sustainable energy day (27th February). They give you the opportunity to stand out from your competitors and create something new.
- Reply to comments with offers
This is perhaps the easiest way to promote an offer. All you have to do is stop replying to any comments you get on your posts around a week before you wish to go live with your campaign. When the time comes, reply to the comments with a relevant response but with the offer tucked in at the end.
It could be something that goes like this: “Thank you for commenting. We’re glad you like the post. Take a look at the offers we have running on a special occasion here.”
The user is already interested in your brand as they are commenting on your posts. They are highly likely to check out the seasonal offer.
- Educate customers
While it may seem counterintuitive to make educational posts, they can often succeed in engaging users if they educate them about a seasonal topic. For example, dabbling in the history of Christmas clothing can be an interesting topic for fashion enthusiasts and they may engage with your content further.
- Flash sales
Flash sales are a quick way to capitalize on a trend. Black Friday sales are a common flash sale. They are only available for a limited time and the urgency of being on a time crunch helps convert hot leads into customers.
- Email marketing
Every $1 spent on email marketing returns around $32 in revenue. Emails are essentially a way to send a personalized ad to a user’s inbox. You can get creative with personalization by offering deals for the person’s birthday, religious festivals, and personal interests. Try email marketing tools like the PosterMyWall Email Marketing Platform to make email marketing easier and more customizable than ever!
Final thoughts
Seasonal promotions are an excellent way to refresh your marketing strategies and focus on engaging with customers with new vigor. They offer ways to boost your sales and revenue, should you know the right way to capitalize on a trend.
The ideas presented above will hopefully help you craft seasonal promotional campaigns that are unique, out-of-the-box, and immensely captivating. Connect with your audience in new and exciting ways and grow your business organically with seasonal marketing strategies.