Summer is around the corner and that means more than hot weather and longer days. Families plan vacations, kids are out of school, and everyone is looking for something to do. This makes the summer primetime for companies that want to grab more business and create more fans.
Ideally you start the year with your marketing plan in place, but that’s not always the case. Never fear though, you can get ready for summer today using these marketing tips. Not only are they easy to execute, you can build on them to strengthen your overall marketing strategy.
Summer-ize your social
Summer-ize may not be a word, but it does perfectly describe how companies can shift their feed to include more summer friendly posts. This gives people something new and fun to share and shows that you are not on the platform to simply push your company message, it is “social” after all! It can also get your social feed pushed to more people and broaden your audience.
There are a few ways to do this, and it can depend on the nature of your business, but here are a few ideas to get you started:
- Share local events to help people find fun activities close to home.
- Share articles about how to keep summer cooling costs under control.
- Share kid-friendly websites with activities for parents looking to keep kids busy.
- Summer recipes are always popular and shareable
- Share your city’s forecast from a popular local media outlet.
Summer-themed specials, events and sales
Independence Day and Memorial Day are great opportunities to connect with your community and customer base. There are also plenty of unofficial holidays you can have fun with as well. For example, July 22 is Hammock Day and August 3 is National Watermelon Day and Friend’s Day. You can find a lot more online at sites like this.
You also don’t have to use any holiday on the books, official or not, for a sale, special or events. Do you live somewhere especially hot? If so, have a “hottest week of the summer” special where you give away a branded personal fan with every purchase over $20. You could give a certain percent off based on the weather. For example, if it reaches over 100 customers get 15% off purchases. There are many ways to have gamify your marketing to fit the season and in doing so, create some buzz .
For the official holidays, it’s important to be respectful of the meaning of the holiday as you position the special. For the fun holidays, feel free to be as campy as you want. Add new images to your website’s homepages, your social profile and in any email you may have going out at the time to showcase your special.
Give your email marketing a summer twist
Your company’s email marketing provides you a great opportunity to shift into summer right along with your customers. Update the look of your emails going out to fit the season, with brighter colors and a cleaner design. Start using images that are fun, energetic and showcase summer scenes when possible. This is a good time to switch out your messaging a bit to fold in some non-sales email drops as well. The tendency is to send nothing but sales and specials, which people get tired of pretty quick. If you are resistant to not pushing sales in every email you send, take a minute to think of yourself as a consumer….how many of those emails in your own inbox do you ignore?
Exactly, so dedicate some of your messaging to fun, summer-friendly tips, ideas, activities and events. What you include depends on your client base and your industry, but there is always a way to include these types of emails in your marketing campaign. Now, a word of caution here – if you’ve burned your email lists out already and have poor open and click rates, this will not fix it. We can, however, so give us a call!
Remember, you do not have to go it alone with your marketing. We are here to help your business. We can even do all the work for you! Simply contact us to get started on your summer marketing campaign.