The same way your wardrobe changes with the seasons, so too should your marketing campaigns. Online marketing is not a set and forget strategy. It’s a constantly changing environment and your digital marketing strategies need to be flexible. Seasonal marketing allows your business to reap the benefits at certain times of year when your product or service becomes more relevant.

What is seasonal marketing?

Seasonal marketing is a strategy where businesses increase or alter their marketing for certain products or services to coincide with relevant times of year. This could be Christmas or New Years, the Back to School rush or simply updating your marketing as winter or summer approaches. It’s a great way to ensure your marketing material stays relevant and changes often enough to keep your audience interested.

How should you do it?

There are many options for seasonal marketing in the digital sphere with social media ads, PPC, SEO and content all factoring into your flexible marketing strategy.

Social Media

For social ads, a new season is a great time to update your creatives with more relevant imagery and copy. For example, winter ads should evoke cosy, warm feelings in the images and taglines whereas in summer it’s all about sunshine, water and refreshing vibes. If you have a particular product or service that is winter related you could also boost your social ads to gain more traffic and engagement for a short time, which also helps with remarketing.

PPC & SEO

Believe it or not, keywords change with the seasons too. Coming into winter is a great time to assess how top search queries will change and whether you can capitalise on this. Beginning a new PPC campaign or updating your current one with seasonal keywords will bring fast results. If you’re seeking organic traffic, getting ahead on SEO a few weeks before the seasonal change or event will ensure your campaign is tracking well by the time it arrives.

Content

Content marketing is a long-term strategy that requires a greater time investment than the others, but it can be made easier with seasonal content. Keeping an editorial calendar with upcoming holidays and seasonal events will mean you’ve always got at least one or two topics on hand that can bring entertainment and value to your readers.

Tips and tricks from our experts

Start early

Joining a crowded marketing arena is never a good idea and with many businesses using seasonal marketing to their advantage, it’s important to get ahead of the competition. Start planning your strategies early, especially for things like SEO, so that you’ll reap the benefits of a low competition launch for your new campaign. With the middle of winter only weeks away, now is the perfect time to consider a cold weather marketing update.

Consider promotions

Promotions and discounts can be the perfect incentive to get indecisive customers over the purchase line and seasonal events, such as EOFY or winter prep, provide an extra incentive boost. Perhaps your services are non-essential but recommended for this time of year, such as gutter cleaning or an extra hydrating facial, and putting on a flash sale could be the difference between clicks and conversions.

Compare year-on-year

If you’ve been running marketing campaigns for a while a comparison of your previous year can be beneficial for planning your current strategy. Were there any noticeable trends in your traffic or engagement that this year you can target?

Heat Up Your Marketing This Winter with Webcentral

Seasonal marketing opens plenty of new doors for businesses to start a campaign or update their marketing strategy. Our creative consultants can assist with every kind of digital marketing; from SEO to PPC, social media and content. If you’d like to know more about how seasonal marketing affects your business, get in touch with the experts at Webcentral on 1300 638 734.