It’s (almost) summertime, but the living is not always easy. For some businesses, summer is their peak period, for others, a slump. Whichever box your business falls into, it’s important to plan ahead. You wouldn’t jump ahead with your summer vacation without planning every detail, so don’t do it with your marketing strategy.
Stay ahead of your competitors with these marketing ideas to ensure that, while the days heat up, so do your sales.
Stay ahead of the game and start scheduling those all-important summer events. Create an event planner detailing all those B2B expos in the summer season that might propel your business and introduce you to potential customers.
Summer is also a keen season for content so create a content planner for those warm months. People are more likely to consume content on portable devices such as phones and tablets when it’s nice weather so mix it up with videos, blogs and colourful graphics.
A popular way to raise awareness of your business is to host in-store events. They are a great way to generate genuine excitement for your product and build more loyal customers. These events can range from sales pitches in the form of product launch parties to more experiential examples.
So keeping that in mind, try ‘out-of-store’ events. Don’t keep your customers cooped up in a store once summer has come around, but instead, take advantage of the warm weather.
Back in 2015, new Google app, Zappos, for example took to the streets of Austin, Texas with a cupcake truck in tow. People were awarded free cupcakes in exchange for taking a photo through the new app. This generated buzz for the product while also showcasing the humans behind it.
Social media is an extremely important tool for all kinds of businesses. If your social media output is infrequent and your posts uninspiring, you could be missing out on a key audience.
Something as simple as bright colours and vibrant images can catch the attention of a potential customer. This is particularly apt in the summer months, when platforms such as Instagram can be used to showcase products and events. Photo competitions and summer giveaways are useful ways to engage followers and generate excitement in the product.
Summer provides ample opportunity for creativity but it isn’t always easy coming up with great ideas. Thankfully the summer calendar holds the key to a content-rich season, with an abundance of ‘un-official’ holidays including:
Independent Retailer Month (July)
Having a succinct record of these dates (as well as the more official ones) will make finding inspiration a lot easier.
Alongside these seasonal posts, gamified and crowdsourced content will also help maintain that summer buzz. For example, a quiz on favourite summer vacations could help a travel agent optimise its promotions and marketing focus.
Before you get started on new ideas, it’s important to analyse what went wrong/or right last year. There is little point freshening up your marketing plan if you are just going to make the same mistakes.
Google Analytics is a service that will help analyse your data, providing you with statistics on website traffic. Are people visiting your website? If not, why not? These questions should be asked and resolved before attempting new campaigns.
Gathering data isn’t only useful for your business but for your customers too. Analysing the success of previous blogs and articles alongside shopping insights and popular trends will help shape your marketing and sales strategy going forward.
Boasting a strong digital presence is essential, and our experts can help you achieve it.
The summer season brings people - and their wallets - out into the towns and cities and your business needs to be prepared for it. Planning ahead will allow you to stay on top of your marketing and ensure you have something interesting to say to your customers all year round.
If you’d like to get started yourself, download the local business guide to planning your marketing
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