Seasonality sells, and that’s one thing that every content creator must take into consideration when producing content.
Marketing trends show that aligning your campaign with social conversation can improve your user engagement.
Paying attention to changing seasons, holidays, and events shows your customers how trendy your company is. It not only makes your content more relatable, but it’s also more likely to capture attention.
Read More: 10 Tools To Improve Your Content Creation Process
However, be careful when it comes to incorporating seasonality. You want to include these trends subtly.
Think carefully about how you can be seasonal while not taking away from the primary goal of your marketing campaign.
Less is more in this case, and you want to support your content, not suffocate it.
The following are our best advice for seasonal marketing.
Tips to Incorporate Seasonality in Your Content Strategy
Season’s Tweetings, Content Creators
Take the small Starbucks pumpkin spice latte, for example. The PSL, as it is referred to on the Twittersphere, has developed a viral-like following online.
The seasonal icon received a whopping 500,000 Tweets in the fall of 2013–and that buzz hasn’t gone anywhere. In fact, Starbucks created an Instagram account for the ‘PSL.’
The corporation took full advantage of this online fandom by participating in and intensifying it.
Of course, the PSL promotion goes away every January. While fans can get them year-round, there’s something about seeing them in fall colors that drives PSL sales way up.
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Brilliant seasonal marketing strategies made Starbucks’ pumpkin spice latte a seasonal staple. Starbucks even won awards for these marvelous marketing tactics.
But, they made it clear that the PSL fandom didn’t happen by chance.
The company started with a focused plan that helped them cultivate an online community. They turned this following into a community using hashtags and by adding a unique image to the beverage that customers would buy.
The result was an overwhelming level of customer engagement, which, of course, means sales!
Seasonality Gameplan
Incorporating seasonality into your marketing strategy requires preparation. For starters, understand the primary medium for the campaign and how long it will last.
You should outline your reasons for launching the campaign and the results you would like to see. If you want to get ahead of the curve, craft images and other media in advance.
Give yourself plenty of drafts, prototypes, and possible media combinations.
Afterward, you can compare your work side by side and choose the most effective media package. Don’t leave any of this to the last minute.
Going further, always plan your social media strategy and promotional strategy.
Read More: How to Improve Your User Engagement Status on Twitter
Keep your Audience Close but Your Objectives Closer
99.9% of the time, your marketing campaign is only going to be as good as the strategy behind it.
Knowing your audience will help your brand stay on target.
Ask yourself:
How will leveraging seasonality in your content strategy improve your customers’ experience? Which route would be the most appropriate to take to promote seasonal content?
You should consider whether or not certain holidays or seasonal events compliment your branding.
A good match will always cater to your audiences’ needs while also helping you reach your marketing objectives.
Don’t let Seasonal Buzz Take Away From Your Content
Once you have planned your campaign, don’t stuff your content with chocolate bunnies. Instead, you should infuse seasonality into your content but only where they fit.
Your content still needs to offer an exceptional user experience. Don’t force it.
If you don’t think it’s working, abandon ship, return to normal, and prepare to try the next event. If you have to sacrifice true-to-brand offerings to make your business seasonal, you’re trying too hard.
You can, however, smartly use seasonality to support your business.
For example, the New Year is a great time to roll out a new subscription service. You could ask customers to ‘share the love’ on Valentine’s day by initiating your referral program.
A Strong Content Creator Chooses Their Holidays Wisely
Try to stand out from the crowd by highlighting off-beat unique holidays in your content. With a number of holidays celebrated these days, there are many occasions that you can use as part of your brand.
You should consider where your audience is located. Be aware of what is going on in their neck of the woods.
As well as making things more interesting for customers, you can also tailor the holidays you chose to your audience.
You should remember that it doesn’t necessarily have to be a holiday. Annual events work brilliantly for seasonal marketing too.
You could use going back to school or Spring Break. For example, we posted articles about the Super Bowl and the SXSW conference.
Brainstorm ways you can work seasonal happenings into your strategy. You have to make sure the events you choose are relevant.
Knowing what events your audience will be interested in and enjoy will make your content more engaging.
Keep Special Occasions Special
Seasonal marketing will lose its allure if you are marking everything from International Bubble Week to World Rat Day (it exists!).
Remember, seasonal marketing functions on its novelty factor. If this wears off, no one is going to pay attention to your content.
Pay Attention to Time Frames
You want your content to be part of the seasonal or holiday buzz. Marketing experts say that two weeks before an event is the prime time to publish content surrounding it.
This time frame may be less for one-day celebrations.
You can figure out what is the optimal time frame for your seasonal marketing campaign by judging the popularity of an event.
Having a calendar of all the events you want to incorporate is vital. This means you can prepare in advance and publish at the appropriate times effortlessly.
Seasonality can provide immense value to any marketing strategy. But you shouldn’t let yourself get carried away. Instead, approach seasonality like any other marketing tactic.
Stay grounded and professional on all occasions. If you put our advice into practice, it will help you to maximize the potential of your seasonal marketing campaign.
Optimize for Search
Lastly, while capitalizing on seasonality offers plenty of marketing opportunities, you still need to optimize your content for search.
Holidays and seasonal events are the best times to use festive content to attract more visitors. If you want to bring more visitors from organic search, you need to rank your pages.
Use seasonal keywords and carewords. If you want to ensure that your seasonal content is search engine-friendly, don’t hesitate to use marketing tools.
Below are some fantastic optimization tools that you can use to create and monitor your seasonal content.
Google Analytics & Ahrefs
Google Analytics and Ahrefs are the best SEO tools to use if you want to keep track of your content traffic. Both of these tools can be used to monitor the performance of your site pages or seasonal marketing campaigns.
You can use INK to create your seasonal content. It will not only ensure that your marketing campaign, blog, or article is reader-friendly, it will ensure that it’s search engine-friendly as well.
Searching for the right keywords to use in your seasonal marketing campaigns could be a challenging task. However, using KWFinder can make it easier and faster. This tool will show all the information that you need in the keywords you’re looking for, like search volume and ranking difficulty.