Seasonal events are blessings in disguise! Not only do they happen year-round, but they also open new doors of opportunities for retail brands.
According to a report by PipeDrive 2020, “35% of salespeople say seasonality is the key reason why they’re most successful during a certain period of the year”. Whether it’s Black Friday, Christmas, or Halloween, these occasions drive a lot of business sales with the right seasonal marketing strategies. Since marketing trends are ever-changing, retail stores have the onus to reshape their seasonal marketing strategies by following current consumers’ buying preferences.
However, these seasonal marketing strategies offer endless benefits to consumers and retail brands, such as:
- Boost sales for the brands
- Generate customers’ loyalty
- Create brand awareness
- Promote business activities, products, and services
- Prepare businesses for the upcoming season
So, to help you transform your retail game, here’s a step-by-step guide, including four seasonal marketing ideas or strategies to win more sales in the upcoming season.
Let’s get started!
1. Create a relevant email list
Having a seasonal email list helps you capitalize on your website’s traffic. It helps you tag your new subscribers’ list and align them by seasonal interest. For this, your email content should contain information relevant to your seasonal offerings. This is the first step that will help you retarget existing leads and build new leads simultaneously.
For instance, A seasonal event like Black Friday can help generate more sales by offering early access to drool-worthy deals. All you have to do is design a retail poster for Black Friday, put it on your website, and offer access via email subscription.
Similarly, brands like Nike or Miinto achieve more traffic and sales by targeting their new and existing subscribers via Black Friday emails. So for your next seasonal event, you can plan an early-bird discount, exclusive access, or even provide sneak previews to audiences by persuading them to sign up for your email list.
2. Use quantitative & qualitative approach
The next step is to figure out your consumers’ buying behaviors and patterns using qualitative and quantitative techniques. It’s better to understand what drives your buyers to purchase specific items during a particular season. You can try qualitative learning by:
- Interviewing your customers’ preferences for the next peak season
- Generating ideas based on customers’ responses
- Observing actual shopping behaviors and your customer’s reaction toward specific products
- Fostering a conversation by targeting online focus groups and using social media to your advantage.
While quantitative learning helps you gain insights into different businesses and their conversion rates, you’ll have to gather information on seasonal products categories such as:
- Find out the ‘search intent’ of the users related to that specific product by conducting surveys, polls, and questionnaires
- Gather feedback and facts related to the product to compile results and incorporate them wherever necessary
- Consider web analytics and SEO tools to view the ‘most viewed or purchased items or a product category during a specific season.
For instance, TakeOffer used an additional product category to celebrate ‘Mother’s Day’ to gain a competitive advantage over its competitors. As a result, the campaign helped visitors find what they were looking for and evoked emotions that compelled them to buy their product. Thus, guiding visitors to a season-specific product category can help them find the right gift without prolonging their decision phase.
3. Launch the ‘anticipation’ factor
A countdown timer is an ultimate way of building anticipation among your key and potential customers. This is the third most vital step that requires proper planning and execution of your seasonal campaign.
Start early by launching a successful PPC campaign to create excitement or awareness among your visitors for upcoming events. For instance, if you’re planning to launch promotional deals for summer, create a sale flyer endorsing seasonal sales ahead of time across your website and social media pages. A sale flyer or retail banner is a grasping tool to advertise products for your business. You can design vibrant seasonal content by adding impactful typography and stunning visuals to your flyer. Not to mention, this flyer will instantly reach a wider audience and create exposure for your business.
In addition, you can identify relevant keywords for any seasonal event and insert them into your flyers to gain more recognition from the customers. For instance, the keyword ‘Christmas gifts’ is more likely to bring profits during the high season compared to the off-season.
4. Provide discounts & daily offers
Since seasonal holidays and celebrations are ideal for engaging visitors to your website, creating daily or weekly offers is the best thing. To boost customer engagement and loyalty, CC Hobby used advanced scheduling to plan the perfect ‘Christmas Offers’ weeks before the arrival of the seasonal event.
You can even promote your daily or weekly offers via social media pages to boost engagement via an online presence. This will help trigger ‘FOMO’ and encourage your customers to keep an eye out for regular updates during holiday seasons.
A Pro Tip: Don’t forget to tailor your seasonal marketing campaign with personalized and creative messages. While designing your social media posters, retail banners, or sale flyers, use common phrases like Buy Now, Limited Time Offer, Christmas Special, etc., to build better engagement.
Get ahead with these seasonal marketing ideas now!
Seasonal marketing is not just about decorating windows and shops. It’s more about generating unique content, driving creative campaigns, and building customer engagement. Fret not! We’ve aligned all these well-thought-out step-by-step seasonal marketing strategies to boost your retail sales.
Remember that competition will always be intense. That’s why you’ll need to follow a determined and educated approach while adopting these seasonal marketing strategies. Wish you the best of seasons!
Qasim is a senior editor at PosterMyWall. Qasim is a reader and writer during and after work, and likes to explore a wide range of topics and niches. Outside of work, he likes to meditate, listen to good music and journal.
