Why Your Promotional Strategy Needs To Embrace Seasonality

Staying relevant in a frenetic marketplace is crucial for brands of every size. There are myriad ways to achieve this, but seasonality is amongst the best. Seasonality lets you tap into what’s happening and make your brand part of the conversation.

With Christmas just around the corner, there’s no better time to look at how embracing seasonality can take your promotional strategy to the next level. Read on to learn how.

What is seasonality?

Seasonality refers to the specific targeting of notable events throughout the calendar year. These events offer businesses the chance to tailor their marketing

towards increased consumer interest related to these events. The most obvious example of this is Christmas. Brands create festive promotional strategies that focus on Christmas themes and interests, driving sales as a result. But this is just one example — Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM), Easter, sporting events, and so on are all perfect opportunities for a seasonal promotional strategy.

How can seasonality benefit your business?

So what are the benefits of seasonality for your promotional strategy? Here are just a few. It capitalizes on trending events Seasonality lets you tap into wider events and make your brand part of the conversation. People talk about seasonal events on social, creating buzz and actively seeking out relevant seasonal content. By embracing seasonality, you inject yourself into the wider conversation and enjoy increased traffic and engagement with your strategy as a result. It lets you tell more engaging stories A seasonal promotional strategy is a great way to connect with your customers and make your brand part of their day-to-day lives. When you immerse your brand in the culture around a seasonal event, you can become part of your customers’ stories and enhance your own into the bargain. It lets you plan ahead and strategise

Seasonality is also an excellent opportunity to plan ahead and strategise. By identifying key seasonal events ahead of time, you can plan ahead and create promotional content accordingly. This lets you optimise your budget and plan for any eventuality, so when the event finally arrives, your strategy lands with success.

How can you embrace seasonality?

Here are a few ways you can bring seasonality into your promotional strategy. Look to influencers for seasonal engagement Influencers offer an array of benefits for brands looking to launch a seasonal promotional strategy. While they offer high engagement all year round, collaborating with relevant influencers during seasonal events provides better results 

For example, let’s say you want to drive sales by tapping into the World Cup hype. By collaborating with relevant influencers (footballers, sports pundits, fan accounts, and so on) you can boost engagement with your promotional campaign by tapping into their niche audience.Identify seasonally-relevant influencers who your target audience are likely to engage with and let them take control of your social channels. During this takeover, encourage your chosen influencers to host Q&As, respond to your followers, and share their own content across your channels 

This strategy lets you place yourself within a seasonal event via your influencer conduit. Your social channels become a platform for followers to engage with your brand and, as a result, an opportunity to promote your products natively and with the approval of a recognised influencer. Build loyalty programmes with seasonality in mind There are many innovative ways to use loyalty programmes and embrace seasonality in your promotional strategy. You might already have a loyalty scheme in place, but seasonality lets you take it further by increase sales at a specific time of the year. Create a short-term loyalty programme that starts in the months leading up to your seasonal even in which the points earned during this period can then be spent.

This works particularly well for Christmas. Start your loyalty scheme at the beginning of autumn to capitalize on the BFCM spending season and finishing at the end of November. Any points your customers earn can then be spent in-store on their Christmas shopping.  In this way, you keep customers locked into your brand while taking advantage of their seasonal spending habits. Create seasonal content that taps into your target audience Your content marketing is a year-round thing, requiring careful planning and consideration to drive traffic, sales, and engagement to your brand. But in the run-up to and during seasonal events, you should step your content game up and strive for seasonality in every piece.

Conduct some comprehensive keyword research into your chosen seasonal event. This helps you spot what your customers are searching for online and, consequently, provides an insight into their pain points, interests, and seasonal queries. Armed with this insight, you can create targeted content and promotional gifts that answers your customers’ queries directly. For instance, let’s say your target audience is grassroots football fans who watch home games outside. They might be interested in ways to stay warm outside, so a promotional handwarmer is the ideal complimentary gift. Plus, once you have their attention, you can use this to promote your brand in a natural, relevant way. You deliver value to your customers while pushing your brand in an organic way — it’s a win-win. Be sure to create and upload this content ahead of time to get it ranking in search queries, and then cascade it across your email and social channels in the run-up to the event. This lets you push the relevant content directly to your customers before they can look elsewhere for the same.

Seasonality is all about tapping into the seasonal zeitgeist and connecting with your target audience in a relevant way. Follow the tips above, take your promotional strategy seasonal, and enjoy all the benefits such an approach can bring.

Kayleigh Alexandra is a writer for Writerzon and MicroStartups, your online destination for everything startup. She’s passionate about hard-working solopreneurs and SMEs making waves in the business world.