How to Execute a Successful Seasonal Marketing Campaign

Seasonal marketing campaigns are a great way for businesses to get a boost during specific times of the year. Rather than running marketing campaigns that promote your entire business throughout the year, you can adjust your approach to more closely align with the calendar.

However, to run a successful marketing campaign, it takes more than just adjusting a few social media posts when the holiday arrives. 

Below are 4 specific things you can do to execute a successful seasonal marketing campaign. If you can put these strategies into place, you will have an easier time getting the results you are after.

#1 – Plan in Advance

The most important step you can take is to start planning your seasonal marketing campaign early. Just because you want to do something over the holiday season or during the summer doesn’t mean you should start putting the pieces into place around then.

A seasonal marketing campaign takes a lot of planning to pull off, so you’ll want to start at least a few months before you launch the campaign.

Start by setting your goals. What is it you want to achieve with this marketing campaign? Are you looking to sell a certain product? Generate more subscribers to your newsletter? Gain more website views?

You should have a specific goal in mind, preferably one you can measure with numbers. Having a goal like “sell 15 percent more of Product A” is better than “sell more of Product A”. 

Once you have your goal set, you’ll then want to think about your target audience. Who is it you’re trying to reach with this seasonal marketing campaign? Is it your entire audience or just a subset of them?

Try to drill down as specific as you can get, as this will help to inform the decisions you make about your campaign going forward.

Finally, get your team in place. Who within your business is going to be working on this seasonal marketing campaign? What are each of their responsibilities going to be?

Unless you’re an entrepreneur who is on their own, you’ll want to start delegating responsibilities now. That way your team members can begin to plan out their own sections of the marketing campaign and prepare for launch.

#2 – Center Around an Event

The most successful seasonal marketing campaigns are the ones that center themselves around an event. The event could be the launch of a new product, a new sale you are having for that holiday season or service you’re about to offer.

During your seasonal marketing campaign, you don’t want to promote your business as a whole. Instead, focus on one thing that you are doing during that holiday season.

For example, car dealerships have holiday campaigns throughout the year. Instead of promoting all their cars each season, they focus on the specific deals they are currently offering. They also make these deals as a part of an event, adding a sense of urgency to the messaging. 

#3 – Produce Timely Content

The next thing you should do for a successful seasonal marketing campaign is to tailor your content to fit the season. This includes your blog posts, email messages, social media posts, and any videos you create.

You want all of your marketing materials around this time to be in cohesion, with each one of them promoting your event. 

As an example, let’s say you want to run a seasonal marketing campaign for your bakery. The season you are targeting is the holiday season in December. To promote your holiday desserts, you might do the following:

• Send out an email to past customers with pictures of the holiday desserts you have on sale
• Post on Facebook and Twitter about your current Christmas specials
• Upload a video to your website using video hosting to show how you make your holiday cakes and cookies
• Run ads on Google that appear when people search for “holiday dessert shop near me”

Each of these things not only promotes your business, but it promotes the specific thing you have going on for that season. This cross-channel cohesion is essential for a strong seasonal marketing campaign.

#4 – Collect Data and Learn

Finally, for every marketing campaign, you run, whether it’s seasonal or all year round, you should collect as much data as you can.

Unless your business is only going to be around for one year, you’ll likely want to run similar seasonal campaigns in the following years. By collecting data about how your marketing campaigns are performing, you can make better decisions in the future.

Let’s go back to the bakery example. With that marketing campaign, the owners could run two ads online, one promoting their holiday cakes and the other their holiday cookies.

At the end of the season, they could then see if there was a significant difference between the effectiveness of the two advertisements.

If the ad for the holiday cookies performed a lot better than the one for cakes, they would know to place more emphasis on their holiday cookies the following season.

Before you launch your seasonal marketing campaign, have a system in place that will allow you to gather information about it. This could be website visitors, social media shares, or even sales of each product.

It’s important that you have this system in place before you launch so that you can get as much data as possible. You can then use this data to track your progress towards your goals throughout the season or analyze it at the end to help you make decisions for future seasons.

Seasonal Marketing Campaigns Done Right

If you put enough time and effort into your seasonal marketing campaign, there’s no reason why it can’t be a tremendous benefit to your business. All it takes is some advanced planning, cohesion across your marketing channels, and the ability to learn from your past efforts.

Hopefully, this guide was able to provide you with some helpful tips and your next seasonal marketing campaign will be your best one yet.

from Feedster https://www.feedster.com/marketing/how-to-execute-a-successful-seasonal-marketing-campaign/