Online Marketing Strategies for Seasonal Businesses
Seasonality is one of many things to consider when developing an online marketing strategy for your business. No, we’re not talking about posting the same old photos with a holiday filter. Effective seasonal marketing is a lot more complicated than that, but when you pull it off, the results are more than worth the effort.
Most industries, from roofing to auto glass, should correlate their online marketing strategy with the seasons. Don’t worry, we’ve got some tips to get you started!
Customer's Needs Change With The Seasons
No matter what industry you’re in, the demand for your product or service likely fluctuates with the seasons. As a business owner, you may have even noticed the same about your website. If you’re a plumber in Minnesota, for example, you see higher web traffic in the winter, when burst pipes become a major issue. Your target audience’s lives and needs change with the seasons, and so should your online marketing.
Provide Answers & Solutions All Year Long
When it’s the middle of the summer and you’re an HVAC company, you can expect much of your business to come from air conditioning appointments. But if you’re pumping out blogs and social posts about furnace repair in July, your content isn’t going to get many views – at least not from real potential customers. Most of them are busy Googling “air conditioning repair near me.”
The whole point of digital marketing is to be there with solutions when your potential customers are searching for answers to their problems. Focus on producing content that anticipates season-related issues specific to your service area. Answer the seasonal questions you hear most frequently from month to month. This will demonstrate that you’re tuned in to your customers’ needs and help establish your brand as an authority in your industry. Google will also see your content as fresh and relevant, boosting its rank in the search results.
How To Identify Seasonal Patterns & Trends
To access the benefits of seasonal marketing, you must have a deep understanding of your audience’s needs in relation to your products or services, as well as how their needs and habits change throughout the year. Needless to say, this requires advanced planning. You want to start posting about the season before it hits, so you need to have content ready. Start planning and creating content at least 2-3 months in advance.
Here are a few tips to help you decide which seasonal trends are most important to your business:
- Google Trends invites you to “explore what the world is searching” online. Enter a keyword for your business, and it will create a graph that details the popularity of that term month by month.
- Dig into your website stats and see what content on your site is most popular throughout the year. Then do the same thing on social media!
- Factor in seasonal advertising rates. Do you want to spend a ton of money to get a holiday promotion seen, or would it make more sense to dedicate your budget to the off season, when there’s much less competition?
- Don’t be afraid to try different platforms. There are many ways to reach your target audience, from social media to email marketing. Integrating seasonal advertising across multiple channels widens your reach and strengthens your online brand.
Plan your content according to the seasons of your customers’ lives, and you will demonstrate your company’s attentiveness to their needs. Want some help? Triton Commerce is ready to help you spring forward in 2021 with a better digital marketing strategy!