Many businesses are affected by seasonality. The influx of online shoppers right before Christmas, Easter, or Valentine’s Day means a more profitable period for many retailers. Are you one of them?
If the answer is yes (and it most probably is), then crafting a seasonal marketing strategy is crucial to your success. Keep in mind that seasonal advertising is not only massive discounts. Your business can offer much more than just lower prices!
This blog post covers everything you need to know about planning your seasonal marketing:
- What is seasonal marketing?
- Why is seasonal marketing important?
- 8 Steps to crafting a seasonal marketing strategy.
- 6 Interactive Experiences for your seasonal marketing campaigns.
- 14 popular holidays you should be aware of.
What is seasonal marketing?
Seasonal marketing is adapting your marketing strategy so that it capitalizes on the major events and holidays happening throughout the year.
Most companies experience a surge in customer traffic at a certain period of the retail year. For example, a sunglasses retailer will probably receive more orders during the spring and summer seasons. In this case, launching a promotional campaign right before the warm months will increase sales.
Holiday traffic is a perfect opportunity for businesses to boost sales. The rise of online shopping in 2021 is a clear sign that your company needs to enhance the online user experience. The easier to navigate your eCommerce webshop, the more visitors will purchase your products. However, with the highly intense competition in the retail industry, attracting customers has become an arduous task for marketers. Interactive social media posts, seasonal advertising, and a well-thought SEO strategy can help you out.
Way too many companies rely on discounts, hoping that these will skyrocket their revenue. Yes, consumers love finding products at lower prices. But think about it, probably every competitor of yours will sell their products at a discount. What can set your company apart? Keep reading to find out.
Why is your seasonal marketing important?
There are many benefits to adapting your marketing strategy to important events and holidays and having special seasonal marketing campaigns. Let’s explore the main ones:
1. Increase brand awareness
The influx of traffic provides a brilliant opportunity for you to increase brand awareness. With more people visiting your website, you can rely on creating memorable experiences to display your offerings. In addition, attracting new customers will improve your word-of-mouth marketing. Think of your seasonal marketing strategy as a way to attract new visitors and promote your brand.
2. Boost sales
Using the right techniques will enable you to convert leads into buyers. For example, pushing your customizable gifts during the Christmas season will encourage more purchases. Creating a Valentine’s Day seasonal promotion will boost sales in January and February. People are already willing to spend more money than they usually do. Your task is to convince them to buy from your business.
3. Promote your products or services
A successful seasonal campaign promotes not only your brand, but also your products or services. Users tend to look for specific products during the holidays. For instance, they want to buy Christmas presents in December or love-related gifts in February. In this sense, consumer behavior is more predictable during your seasonal campaign. You have an idea of what people need. Therefore, you know which products to promote on your website.
4. Increase customer satisfaction
Customers expect a seamless user experience during the hectic festive months. Getting their eyes on seasonal deals and holiday themes will appeal to their excitement. Nonetheless, some of the most common expectations during the holiday season are good customer service, accurate inventory information, and a quick checkout process.
Many companies fail to meet the elevated customer expectations. As a result, they scare their potential buyers away. Here comes your opportunity to stand out. Your holiday season campaign will be a tremendous success if you prepare well and manage to cover the fundamental buyer’s needs.
To summarize, a good seasonal marketing strategy can help you increase brand awareness, boost sales, promote products or services, and increase customer satisfaction.
8 Steps to building a killer seasonal marketing strategy
Are you ready to make the best out of your seasonal marketing? Follow these 8 steps to success:
1. Audit your previous holiday campaigns
Auditing your previous holiday campaigns will show you what worked and didn’t work well in your strategy. Based on this knowledge, you can improve your performance and increase sales. Furthermore, analysing campaigns from previous years will help you identify and avoid past mistakes.
2. Define your goals and set KPIs
Setting KPIs is one of the most effective ways of measuring your success. Having a clear picture of what you want to achieve with your seasonal advertising will help you craft a successful template. Furthermore, you will have a solid base for auditing your seasonal campaigns in the future. Take a look at these Interactive Content metrics to know how to set the right KPIs.
3. Plan your seasonal marketing strategy in good time
Planning your holiday campaign at the last minute will not yield positive results. To ensure a smooth process right before the holidays, we recommend you create all your social media, website, and blog content in advance. By doing this, you will be ready to make changes if needed.
Pro tip: You might plan your campaign in advance, but some of your customers could be a little behind schedule during the gift-giving holidays. Offer quick shipping to help the late shoppers.
4. Research your competitors
You need to know what the competitors are doing to find ways to differentiate your brand. You will also discover what kind of content your customers engage with. Therefore, thorough competitive research will help you understand your audience better.
5. Avoid common mistakes
Here are some common mistakes you should avoid in your seasonal marketing strategy:
- Last-minute planning. You can never start planning early enough! Publishing all your holiday content in the last minutes can be chaotic and might lead to mistakes. Schedules your posts in advance with your marketing tools to avoid unwanted situations. Moreover, you might sacrifice quality by creating your materials right before launching the campaigns.
- Focusing on one holiday only. The year is full of exciting holidays and special days that you can capitalize on. So, jump in with both feet and decide ahead which seasonal marketing campaigns you want to launch.
- Addressing new customers only. Acquiring new customers is great. However, do not forget about your existing customers. Nurture them with special discounts and rewards so that they remain loyal to your brand.
- Overlooking your email and blog post strategy. Your seasonal marketing should not be only about crazy discounts. Nurture your customers with emails and pertinent content. Furthermore, some marketers think that blogging is dead. In fact, a carefully crafted blog strategy can significantly improve your rankings.
- Relying on only one marketing tactic. Do not limit your potential customer reach. We recommend you use all the channels at your disposal – landing pages, social media channels, emails, and blogs.
- Using static content. Using Interactive Content rather than static content will significantly improve your engagement rates. Moreover, leveraging the power of Interactive Content allows you to be more creative than ever.
6. Design your campaign around the mood of the holiday season
Create holiday-specific content to meet customer expectations. For example, if you are planning an Easter campaign, make sure to incorporate Easter bunnies, eggs, and chocolates in your design. The same applies to any other special day or holiday. In general, showing your audiences that you celebrate together with them will strengthen customer loyalty.
Pro tip: Stick to your brand identity. Showing your festive mood is great, but you need to align your seasonal marketing with your brand design too.
7. Replace static content with Interactive Experiences
Interactive Content is one of the latest MarTech trends you can’t afford to miss on. Enabling your visitors to play an active role on the website will drive customer engagement and satisfaction. Furthermore, Interactive Content can help you promote your products in an innovative way and, thus, boost sales.
You can transform any content on your website into Interactive Experiences. For instance, you can repurpose video content into Interactive Shoppable Videos or magazines into Interactive Lookbooks.
8. Promote your campaign
In order to reach as many people as possible, you need to distribute your campaign. Naturally, your social media channels are a good starting point for spreading the word about your holiday content. Sending targeted email is another way to promote your seasonal campaign.
Related article: How to promote your Interactive Content to boost results
Promoting your campaign through social media
With over 3.6 billion people using social media platforms worldwide, your social media presence should be among your top priorities.
During your seasonal marketing campaign, your social media channels must align with the mood of the holiday.
Your social media channels should match your whole seasonal marketing effort. Even if your website is filled with, for example, various Christmas Marketing Games and Online Advent Calendars, your strategy might fail if your social media profiles don’t reflect the Christmas mood.
Furthermore, don’t forget to always maintain a conversation with your followers. Posting static content only is tightly related to decreasing post engagement. We recommend opting for interactive social media posts, such as:
- Contests and giveaways. Releasing holiday discounts is most probably part of your seasonal marketing efforts. Spread the world about your contests and giveaways to increase engagement.
- Polls. Encourage your audience to share their opinions or holiday plans.
- Links to your Marketing Games, Advent Calendars, or Gift Finders. Let your followers know about the newest holiday Interactive Experience on your website!
- User-generated content. Encourage your followers to create content by sharing their own images and posts.
Promoting your campaign through email
Seasonal email campaigns are perfect for dazzling your customers during the holiday season. If you know your audience well enough, you will know what they tend to purchase at any given point. You can collect valuable consumer insights through the Interactive Experiences on your website. For example, an embedded Product Recommender will collect your visitors’ answers. As a result, you will find out which are the best performing products.
Once you know which category is your audience’s favorite, you can send targeted offers right before the next holiday.
Last, but not least, make sure to measure the success of your holiday campaign. As a result, you will be able to improve the performance of your future seasonal marketing efforts.
6 Interactive Experiences for your seasonal marketing campaign
Now that you know how to plan a successful holiday marketing campaign, it’s time to explore some examples.
1. Product Recommenders and Gift Finders
Help your customers find the perfect product for themselves or for their loved ones. Implementing product recommendation techniques in your strategy will only be to your advantage.
According to customer surveys, people will spend the most money during the back-to-school season, Easter, and Halloween among other holidays. If you help buyers find the best matching products on your website, many of them will choose to purchase from your webshop.
Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day are popular gift-giving holidays. Make it as easy as possible for visitors to find the perfect gifts with a Gift Finder. As a result, you will increase both customer satisfaction and your holiday sales. Exploring some holiday gift guide examples will inspire you to create a successful Gift Finder experience!
2. Marketing Games
Entertaining your customers with gamification is a perfect addition to your seasonal marketing campaigns. You can create fun marketing games to engage your customers and keep them on your website longer.
How does it work? Simply put, you embed an online game to your website and encourage your visitors to play. You can incentivize participation with various rewards, such as discounts, unlimited offers, and exclusive deals.
Gamification in marketing strategy can be applied to every season. Every holiday has its own charm. Convert traditional games, such as Christmas dice, Black Friday spin and win, crack an Easter egg, and birthday cards into priceless online experiences your customers will highly appreciate.
3. Advent calendars
Motivate your customers to come back to your website every day. Not only will you improve your metrics, but you will also increase your chances of sales significantly. An Online Advent Calendar is the perfect content format for your business during the holidays.
A digital version of the traditional advent calendar, you can use this Interactive Experience in the winter season to count down the days until Christmas.
Pro tip: Boost your advent calendar marketing campaign by adding games, quizzes, or other fun elements to further engage your customers.
4. Social Interactive Content
Holidays are the perfect opportunity for everyone to enjoy time with their loved ones. However, some people live far away from their family and friends. Social media plays an important role in these cases. You can leverage the power of Social Interactive Content to build awareness around your brand.
Social Interactive Content is a new way of engaging and entertaining your audience. You invite your audience to share your content with their families, friends, and loved ones. This type of Interactive Content is perfect for your holiday marketing.
5. Interactive Flipbooks
Successful seasonal advertising requires you to display your products in an appealing way. A dazzling Interactive Flipbook can set you apart from competitors because it would engage your audience much more.
You can convert any static magazine, product catalog, and brochure into an Interactive Experience that will surprise your customers. Why do we recommend this type of content for your seasonal promotion? Well, the possibility to add interactive elements, such as animations, quizzes, videos, calculators, and games, makes your visitors actively involved and engaged. As a result, you increase your sales!
You can use Interactive Flipbooks to highlight your product discounts during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, and Valentine’s Day.
Related: What is an Interactive Flipbook
6. Hourly surprises
Holidays offer a brilliant opportunity to drive traffic to your website.
Imagine what would happen if your customers had a reason to come back to your website every day. Or maybe even every hour! This is possible with an Hourly Surprises landing page. This experience is programmed to release special deals and discounts every hour on a specific day. Examples include Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Valentine’s Day, but don’t limit yourself. On the contrary, we would like to encourage you to unfold your imagination and come up with different occasions to use Hourly Surprises!
An Hourly Surprises campaign triggers urgency and, thus, drives sales. However, keep in mind that urgency only works if you offer the products that your customers really want.
Seasonal marketing ideas for every holiday
1. Valentine’s Day marketing ideas
Companies are looking for Valentine’s Day Marketing ideas to attract customers who want to express appreciation for their loved ones. With the market for Valentine’s gifts growing, your business can increase sales with the right seasonal promotion. More than 30% of people celebrating this special day prefer online shopping. Therefore, your online presence should be seamless for your visitors in February.
Increase sales on Valentine’s Day by helping customers find the right gift for their partners. An Interactive Gift Finder will guide your visitors toward the best presents on your website.
You can also promote your products with Marketing Games. A Valentine’s Day-themed game is an entertaining way to keep visitors engaged. For example, an online Discount Card Surprises game will entertain your customers on February 14th.
A Quote Generator is another interactive tool to increase customer engagement. In addition, this experience encourages participants to share their results. Therefore, you can improve your social media presence.
2. Easter marketing ideas
Easter is a prime business time for retailers. Even consumers who don’t celebrate this holiday are tempted by the seasonal sales. Therefore, implementing a few engaging Easter marketing ideas can skyrocket your sales.
Create some buzz around your brand with Marketing Games. Easter is a time of celebration and traditional Easter games. You can convert any custom into an Interactive Experience for your website. For example, egg tapping is a fun competition played in many countries.
The Easter symbols, such as bunnies, eggs, candies, and flowers, can be used to create a unique online experience for your customers. Combine these elements in an Interactive Video to give your best wishes in a creative way.
A quiz can be an educational and fun experience for your customers. Test your customers’ knowledge about Easter history and traditions with an online quiz.
3. Spring marketing ideas
The season of new beginnings is a wonderful time to create mood-boosting content. Not all companies allocate their resources to crafting spring marketing campaigns, especially after the hectic Christmas season. Therefore, you can really make your brand stand out.
An Interactive Lookbook is a brilliant way to display your next spring fashion collection. Enabling your visitors to interact with your catalog will incentivize sales.
Another tool to promote your products is a Product Recommender. This experience guides your visitors towards the best-matching products for their needs. Are you selling sunglasses or any other spring product? Then, a Sunglasses Finder is the most appropriate product recommendation quiz for your business. Based on a few questions, the experience will help your visitors find the best sunglasses for their style.
4. Mother’s Day marketing ideas
Mother’s Day has been highly commercialized throughout the years. Therefore, enabling your customers to celebrate motherhood can help you increase profits.
Stand out amongst your competitors with Interactive Content. As Mother’s Day is all about showing love and recognition, your company can help customers honour their moms with Social Interactive Content. Not everyone can spend this special day with their moms nowadays. Therefore, a Mother’s Day card is the perfect experience for your audience. It is a ready-to-use template that your visitors can customize and share with their beloved mothers.
Another great tool to boost the performance of your Mother’s Day campaigns is a Product Recommender. Not everyone is good at getting presents for others. However, you can help your loyal customers in their decision! Create a Gift Finder experience, and your audience will love it! The concept is simple – you select a few questions. Based on the answers, you suggest products that would be the best fit.
5. Father’s Day marketing ideas
On this special day, brands leverage the opportunity to boost sales and increase engagement. Celebrating the spirit of fatherhood together with your customers will shape your brand identity.
If you want to create an unforgettable Father’s Day campaign, Interactive Content is your new best friend. Enough with the boring static videos and blog posts. You can now let your visitors be active participants in consuming your content.
Enable your customers to spoil the father figures in their lives with Social Interactive Content. For example, you can enable your customers to write and share personalized messages for their dads.
Another great addition to your Father’s Day campaign is a Gift Finder experience that will help your customers find the best presents for their dads.
6. Summer marketing campaigns
If you want to heat up your sales next summer, you should try creating Interactive Content. Get your customers excited and engaged with something new on your website! The possibilities of socializing during the hot season have consumers ready to increase their spending.
Promote your summer campaign products with Marketing Games. Not only will you entertain your visitors, but you will also create excitement around your products. How? With discounts! Reward participants for their excellent performance and watch your sales grow.
If your goal is to increase brand awareness, engage your audience with contests. It can be a selfie, photography, or a refer-a-friend contest – the choice is all yours.
Who said advent calendars are exclusively for Christmas? Your company can keep customers engaged with daily surprises also during the summer! Design your Online Advent Calendar to match the summer mood and share it with your followers to encourage participation.
You just released a new fashion collection? You can also boost your summer fashion marketing campaigns with interactivity. Use an Interactive Lookbook to engage your audiences while highlighting your newest additions.
7. Back to school campaigns
The back-to-school season is another significant retail period with plenty of marketing opportunities. As families approach the season with enthusiasm, they are willing to increase their spending. If you are selling clothing, computers, or school supplies, you have a golden opportunity to boost sales now!
Back-to-school marketing campaigns can have many different forms. Help your customers find the perfect laptop for their children with Electronics Product Recommender. As finding a new computer can be quite challenging, facilitating the decision-making process for your visitors will incentivize sales.
8. Fall marketing campaigns
The season of cooler weather, warm-colored leaves, and pumpkin spice lattes are the perfect time to reward loyal customers or attract new ones. Apart from getting your website and social media channels into the autumn spirit, you can embrace Interactive Content.
Interactive Content is among the best fall marketing ideas that will set you apart from competitors who rely on static content. For instance, you can dazzle your customers with a fun autumn-themed quiz to drive engagement.
Related: How to rock your Thanksgiving Marketing campaigns (with 11 examples)
9. Halloween marketing ideas
Do you want to create frightfully good Halloween marketing campaigns? Then, make sure to leverage the power of gamification! Halloween is a fun holiday with trick-or-treats, haunted houses, and costume parties.
Help your customers find the best costume for their next Halloween party! A Personality Quiz can guide your visitors towards the most suitable costume based on their personal preferences. Embed this experience on your website and watch your customer satisfaction metrics increase to the roof!
Challenge your visitors with a Hit the Pumpkins game! Hitting 10 pumpkins in 15 seconds might be difficult, but the rewards are worth it. You can reward your customers with discount cards to incentivize participation and sales.
10. Singles’ Day
The huge sales in November usually occur during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Nonetheless, there is a new emerging special day that you should not overlook. Singles’ Day is celebrated by millions of single people around the world. The sales on this day skyrocketed in 2018. Spoiling your customers with special discounts on 11th of November can help you increase revenue and brand awareness. Creating Singles’ Day Marketing campaigns can differentiate your from your competitors who will probably focus their efforts on Black Friday!
Let your visitors try their luck to win a prize with a Singles’ Day Spin and Win game. The reward can be product discounts and special offers that will incentivize purchase.
11. Black Friday campaign
Black Friday is the time of massive deals and crazy discounts. Shoppers all over the world lose their minds and increase their spending as if there was no tomorrow. However, all retailers rely on decreasing the price of their products to attract buyers. If you want to stand out amongst your competitors, you need to be innovative. How can you delight customers during the busy Black Friday season?
Enhance your Black Friday marketing strategy with Interactive Content. Using Interactive Experiences on your website enables you to release discounts and engage customers like never before.
You can display your Black Friday offers with a Black Friday Interactive Flipbook to increase sales. If you gate your flipbook, you will also generate more leads for your next email campaign.
Using Interactive Content is also among the most innovative Cyber Monday marketing ideas. With an Hourly Surprises campaign, Interactive Flipbook, or any other interactive format, you will secure higher sales on the most loved Monday of the year.
12. Christmas holiday campaigns
Christmas is the season of family gatherings, giving, and kindness. Almost every company uses this holiday to increase sales at the end of the year. With consumers rushing to buy presents for their families and friends, you are presented with a brilliant opportunity to
You can delight your customers by leveraging Interactive Christmas marketing ideas they have not experience before.
Advent calendars are symbols of anticipation and hope. The modern version of the tradition has been around since the 19th century. With internet usage growing exponentially today, marketers have an online alternative at their disposal. A Digital Advent Calendar is a calendar on the web counting down the days to Christmas with daily discounts. Very similar to the traditional advent calendar, the online one can attract and retain customers and drive engagement.
13. Boxing Day campaigns
Following Christmas, Boxing Day is considered one of the year’s major retail shopping holidays. This day comes with exciting offers and discounts for online shoppers treating themselves and acquiring gifts they may have missed.
On Boxing day, you can find a way to present deals with interactivity. One thrilling Boxing Day marketing idea can be an Interactive Landing Page with a countdown and gamification.
14. New Year marketing ideas
Welcome the New Year with special offers for your loyal customers and increased sales for your business. People love partying on December 31st to celebrate their past successes and say goodbye to any hardships. They are full of hope and ready for new challenges and happy moments.
Retailers thrive when buyers start preparing to celebrate the event. If you are one of those sellers who wants to increase sales, start off the coming year on a good note with Interactive Content.
People tend to stock up on champagne, wine, and snacks for New Year’s Eve. Help your customers choose the perfect wine for their night with our favorite New Year marketing idea: an Embedded Product Finder Wine.
15. Country-specific holidays
There are a lot of holidays celebrated around the world. May Day, Cinco de Mayo, Boxing Day, Canada Day, Saint Patrick’s Day, Ramadan, and Chinese New Year are just a few examples. In addition, countries around the globe also have their unique national and independence days. If you sell to multiple markets, you can’t afford to overlook these occasions.
Surprise your customers with an exciting seasonal marketing campaign dedicated to a special day in your country. As a result, you will boost sales and customer satisfaction.
Make the best out of your seasonal marketing campaign with Interactive Content!
Seasonal marketing is not all about offering massive discounts during the holidays. You can do so much more than this! If you want to stand out from the competition, you can implement diverse marketing strategies that will surprise your customers.
Delight your audience with unique Interactive Experiences. With Interactive Content, the sky is the limit.
Dot.vu is an Interactive Content platform that can help you make the best out of your next seasonal marketing campaign. Among many Interactive Experiences, we offer Marketing Games, Product Recommenders, Gift Finders, Online Advent Calendars, and Hourly Surprises. Create a free account to take any of our seasonal marketing templates to life. When you are ready do publish, you can pick the subscription that best fits your needs.