Seasonal Marketing: Prepping for the Next Wave so You’re Always One Step Ahead

Marketing Through
the Seasons The MarketingSavant Group
www.marketingsavant.com
888.989.7771
dana@marketingsavant.com

Your guide to
creating a marketing
plan for every
season!

The MarketingSavant Group 888.989.7771

Can I Get the Slides?
YES!
http://www.marketingsavant.com/resources/

Are you recording the webinar?

YES!
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Post-Webinar Resources


What You Will Learn
• The benefits of seasonal
marketing
• How to pick seasonal themes to
base your marketing message
around
• Reference Chase’s Calendar of
Events for additional promotional
opportunities
• How to select seasonal products
and services to promote
• How to set up your promotional
calendar for the year
• Create a strategy to implement
seasonal marketing year round
• Effectively integrate social media
into all of your seasonal marketing
efforts


Why Seasonal Marketing?
• Tap into increased consumer spending
• Take advantage of inherent marketing themes
• Heightened consumer awareness and excitement
surrounding the season, holiday or event
• Create a sense of urgency with limited, seasonal
promotions
• Give customers something to be excited about
leading up to your promotion and a reason to buy
during the promotion
• Annual traditions induce emotional buying
patterns


Seasonal Marketing
by the Numbers
• Online spending increased 15% November – December
2001 from the previous year
• During November and December of 2011, US
consumers spent $37.2 Billion on online purchases,
according to comScore
• In 2011, US consumers spent $1.25 Billion on Cyber
Monday alone
• According to B2B Marketing, marketing emails sent in
November have the highest open rate, at 12.28%
• Targeted emails sent in November also result in more
transactions than any other month


5 Steps to a Sound Seasonal
Marketing Strategy
1. Select marketing themes for each season
a. Seasons
b. Holidays
c. Events
d. Anniversaries
e. Sporting Events
2. Align products and services with their respective
season, holiday or event
3. Create a seasonal marketing editorial calendar for the
entire year
4. Integrate seasonal marketing into your regular
marketing strategy
5. Promote your seasonal promotions

Pick Out Your Themes
• Pick out holidays to
base themes around
• Reference Chase’s
Calendar of Events to
find:
– Holidays
– Relevant Dates
– Famous anniversaries
– Major sporting events


Chase’s Calendar of Events
• A single reference source
for calendar dates, and for
authoritative and current
information about various
observances throughout the
year
• Includes
– Special events
– Holidays
– Federal and state
observances
– Historic anniversaries
– Unusual celebratory
traditions


Holidays

• Christmas
• Valentine’s Day
• St. Patrick’s Day


Relevant Dates

• Earth Day
• April Fool’s Day
• Relevant industry dates


Famous Anniversaries

• Abe Lincoln’s birthday
• Columbus Day
• Industry anniversaries
• Watch the Google
Doodles


Major Sporting Events

• Olympics
• March Madness
• Super Bowl
• World Series
• PGA Championships
• Stanley Cup
• Major local sporting
events
• Involve any teams or
leagues that you sponsor


Go for the Gold Summer Ideas!
Even if you can’t sponsor the 2012
Olympics, you can still get your business
involved in Olympic-sized promotions!
• Offer a 5% discount for every gold
medal your country wins, capped at a
certain number.
• Tie discounts to the win of your
favorite athlete. If, say, Michael
Phelps wins a gold, give customers
$10 cash back on that day.
• Advertise Olympics specials: 25% off
all athletic gear until Aug. 24 (the last
day of the games).
• Selling special products or services,
such as a special Olympic-themed
mixed drink, especially for the
Olympics.


Research Seasonal Consumer Demand
• Look at last year’s trends
– Check sales records
– Look at your analytics
during that period for top-
performing keywords
– What content on your
website performed the
best?
• Research high volume
search terms and
keywords
– The Google AdWords
Keyword tool is great for
this research


Align Your Products/Services with
Seasonal Demand
• Consumer demand changes seasonally and it’s
important to give them what they want
• Once you have figured out when different
products and services will be in high demand,
figure out how you’re going to promote them
during their respective “peak” seasons


Promoting Your Promotion –
Media Outreach
A successful seasonal marketing campaign is all
about timing and getting the word out!
• Media Outreach
– Free publicity
– Large audience
– Must pay attention to different outlet lead times
• A monthly magazine publication may require you to
pitch your story 3-6 months in advance
• Daily newspapers may require virtually no lead time so
you can pitch your story and have it published the next
day


Promoting Your Promotion –
Social Media
• Social media allows you to meet your customers in their
medium economically and efficiently
• Allows for efficient customer conversion with an easy
transition to ecommerce sites
• Create a special landing page on your website or Facebook
page specifically for the promotion
• Use Facebook ads to get the word out
• Leverage the power of blogging to go into more detail
about the promotion
• Inform your Twitter Followers and Facebook fans a month
prior and remind them of the promotion several times
leading up to it
• Use Pinterest to launch your seasonal product line or
feature promotional products or services


Promoting Your Promotion - Email
• Leverage your email list to
promote your seasonal
campaign to current and
previous customers
• Email allows you to
reward repeat customers
with coupon codes or
priority access to “limited
supplies”
• Can include links to
promotion landing pages
for easy conversion


Focus on Benefits
For example, Piperlime—an online retailer of
shoes, apparel, and accessories for men and
Holiday shoppers are more women—sent an email with this subject line in
the summer of 2011: “Last day! 20% off fall
likely to open emails that apparel + smokin’ slippers.” This has all the
have enticing subject lines. characteristics of a winning subject line:
• Useful – The offer of 20% off is valuable to
Keep these four the email’s recipient.
characteristics of winning • Ultra-Specific – The subject line is clear:
the recipient can save on fall clothing for
subject lines in mind: one more day.
• Unique – This promotion stands out
• Useful because instead of offering a discount at
the end of the season like most retailers,
• Ultra-Specific Piperlime offers it at the beginning. Plus,
the reference to “smokin’ slippers” is
• Unique unusual and catchy.
• Urgent • Urgent – “Last day!” pushes the recipient
to read the full email sooner rather than
later.

One Step Ahead
• When to start planning
– Have a seasonal marketing schedule mapped out for
the year
– Planning for each promotion should begin 2 months
prior to the beginning of the season, holiday or event
• When to launch the promotion
– Your target window to promote is about one month
prior
– You don’t want to jump the gun but if you start too
late other businesses will have a head start on you


10 Seasonal Social Media
Marketing Ideas
1. Write a series of blog posts about your best seasonal products & services
or tips to get through the season or holiday
2. Hold a Facebook contest or sweepstakes in honor of the holiday or event
3. Create a Pinterest board dedicated to your new product line
4. Create a Pinterest board for followers to pin their favorite seasonal items
5. Send a targeted email announcing your seasonal promotion and include
a discount code
6. Launch a series of holiday-themed YouTube videos – entertaining or
informative
7. Offer 20% off or a free drink to all dads who check in at your place of
business on Foursquare on Father’s day
8. Create your own holiday-themed hashtag on Twitter to build a buzz
surrounding your marketing campaign during the weeks leading up to it
9. Have your designer tweak your logo to incorporate the season and use it
as your avatar on the social networks
10. Create a special seasonal/holiday landing page on your Facebook page or
your website


Seasonal Marketing Success Story –
Starbucks
• Offer popular seasonal
drinks – available for a
limited time only!
• Cup Magic Mobile App
– Customers can “collect”
seasonal cups
– Allows consumers to
send e-gifts to their
friends and family
– Informs customers of
seasonal specials and
promotions


OfficeMax
• OfficeMax wins the
creativity prize with their
customer-created “Elf
Yourself” videos
• Customers can transpose
pictures of their friends and
family onto the heads of
elves to create custom
holiday dance videos
• Doesn’t have anything to
do with office supplies but
gets people excited about
the season and talking
about their campaign


Kohl’s
• Kohl’s rode on the viral
coat-tails of the YouTube
sensation “Friday” by
Rebecca Black
• Created a spinoff of the
video to promote their
Black Friday sale
• Takes advantage of the
popularity of the original
song
• The video makes people
laugh and informs
consumers about their
biggest sale of the year


Integrate Seasonal Marketing Into Your
Regular Marketing Strategy
• Download the Seasonal Marketing infographic and use
it to map out seasons, holidays, events, trade shows
and historical anniversaries to promote throughout the
year
• Incorporate these promotional dates into your editorial
calendar
• Work 2 months in advance – look ahead to make sure
you are ready to roll out an organized seasonal
campaign a month prior to the actual season or event
• Leverage your social networks, email contacts and the
media to promote your seasonal marketing campaigns


Smile if you liked it!

The MarketingSavant Group
888.989.7771
dana@marketingsavant.com

Thanks You for
Attending!

Thanks for Joining!
SEE YOU AT THE NEXT WEBINAR!


Seasonal Marketing: Prepping for the Next Wave so You’re Always One Step Ahead

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Seasonal Marketing: Prepping for the Next Wave so You’re Always One Step Ahead