What is Seasonal Marketing

Seasonal marketing is an exciting prospect for any marketing professional! It is when you market products at specific times of year, such as the Christmas holiday or summertime. Although you might imagine that the attention your products or services receive rarely fluctuates during the year, the reality is that you need to adapt your marketing message for different periods.

The consumer trends of your target market are highly likely to change depending on the time of year. For example, if you sell children’s toys, you will almost certainly sell more during November and December in the lead-up to Christmas than in January or February.

Therefore, you need to have a firm grasp of seasonal marketing, how it can affect your business, and the common variables. You should then begin to learn how this seasonal fluctuation can benefit your business and put marketing techniques in place which help position your brand correctly for different times of the year.

Depending on the season, consumers are likely to respond differently to certain stimuli or offers. You should know the times of year that trigger the most website traffic from your customers and which periods might be trickier.

Not only does this help you craft more effective marketing campaigns, but it can also help you measure each campaign’s success more accurately. Once you know that you are facing a quiet few months due to the season, then alarm bells won’t need to go off if your marketing campaign is less responsive than at other times of the year.

We’ve put together everything you need to know about seasonal marketing and how your business can take the best advantage of it.

What Is Seasonality?

To give a succinct seasonal marketing definition, seasonality is the predictable fluctuation of a regular pattern that happens annually. This can be traced accurately on a calendar, with firm data that backs up the phenomenon.

In marketing, this relates to consumer behaviour, which can differ depending on the time of year. The starkest example of seasonality in marketing is the winter holiday period when most of the population are hurriedly buying Christmas presents for friends and family, or purchasing supplies – such as food, drink, decorations, and additional furniture.

Contrast this with the quiet months of January and February, when most consumers are replenishing their bank accounts after the Christmas period, and you will notice the dramatic difference in purchasing behaviour.

Seasonality can impact your marketing considerably, depending on the type of products or services you offer and their price point. However, it is worth appreciating that every business is affected by seasonality to some degree, so learning more about what causes it and how you can take advantage of it is critical to the long-term success of your business.

If you want to fast-track your business’s mastery of seasonal marketing, then book your consultation with us today.

What Are Seasonal Variables?

Many common variables account for seasonal fluctuations in marketing. These include annual festivals and national holidays like Christmas, Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, and Easter, which account for a huge amount of consumer interest and a general uptake in spending across the economy.

However, the natural meteorological seasons can also be a factor in affecting these fluctuations. As the weather grows warmer and consumers spend more time outside, purchasing trends change. Most obviously, if you sell ski jackets or patio heaters, you are unlikely to do much business during the hotter months, which is why you would want to adapt your marketing positioning to match.

Conversely, if you sell swimming shorts or sun cream, the depths of winter are going to be far tougher than the summer months.

Of course, different seasonal variables can influence one another, too. There is usually far less available consumer cash to be spent in the months after the winter holiday season because many people will have saved up and bought presents, food, drink, and decorations for their friends and family.

Companies looking to make most of their money after the summer holidays could be sorely disappointed because many people focus on saving after going on holiday or enjoying more evenings out in pricey public spots.

Instead of being caught out by seasonality, you can use it to your advantage. If you know that the summer months are going to be particularly slow, for instance, then you can take steps to counteract this.

You could create a system of hiring staff on seasonal contracts (which minimises your expenditure when cash flow is drying up), create eye-catching offers that entice your audience more than they usually would, and try marketing seasonal products that make them more relevant to the time of year or discount your products to shift ageing stock.

How Much Revenue Can You Earn Due To Seasonal Changes?

To give you a clearer idea of how consumer spending habits vary across different times of the year, let’s examine how two of the most impactful seasonal events affect spending behaviour.

Over a typical month, the average UK household spends roughly £2,500 per month. However, during the winter holiday that leads to Christmas, the average household spends far more money – to the tune of £740 on average. This is an increase of 29% over the normal monthly average.

Now let’s examine another cornerstone of the yearly calendar – the summer holiday season. Similarly to the winter holiday season, the summer months see an increase in average household spending – with  £4,792 being the average cost of a family holiday. This includes £227 of average spending per person while away, demonstrating the additional cash being spent.

Understanding How Seasonality Can Impact Your Business, Regardless Of Sector

At this point, you might be wondering how seasonality might impact your business. It is easy to imagine that unless your livelihood directly depends on seasonal holidays like Christmas or the summer break, you won’t notice a particularly substantial change in consumer behaviour month on month.

However, the reality of seasonal product marketing is that every section of the national economy is linked in some regard. This means that even if your products are not seasonal, the number of customers you receive may fluctuate regardless. The reason for this is that the average person (or even business) doesn’t spend money in only one industry. They spread it across various items, from rent and mortgages to food, holidays, cars, and countless other forms of expenditure.

Therefore, if a person has just splashed out on a luxurious holiday, they are unlikely to be as receptive to your marketing campaign as if they had been saving for months during the off-season.

It is imperative to understand how seasonality linksHyperlinks, also known as links, are the connection points on a webpage that take you to other webpages. to your business and industry, to predict when good or bad times are ahead, and to tailor your marketing campaign appropriately.

How To Use Google Trends To Plan For Seasonal Peaks

If you are wondering how to predict when you will be busier or how to plan marketing content to adapt to changing market behaviour, then you should look at Google TrendsGoogle Trend tool is a free service from Google that lets you see how popular a particular search term or topic is over time..

This allows you to see the most popular search trends for a particular month or topic. For example, if you know a national holiday is coming up, you can see what people want to buy, the content they want to consume, or the problems they are facing at that time of year that you can help them with.

You can start by entering keywords related to the season you want to research, a particular event, or keywords that relate to your business. This will help you begin to formulate a picture of how you should position your brand and products.

How Seasonality Can Evoke Emotional Selling

Certain times of year are likely to spike more emotional selling than others. The weeks leading up to Christmas or Valentine’s Day are prime examples. People will be rushing around shops, both online and offline, far more frequently than usual, trying to find certain products, perhaps ones they would not usually shop for, and deciding whether they are appropriate gifts.

This makes the purchasing process far more emotional because customers are putting far more than their own money on the line. People want to know the product will be the right choice for their loved ones and that it will be delivered on time to a high standard.

Whether this plays into your hands depends on your marketing angle and the type of products you sell. Still, it is worth considering whether a particular time of year is especially emotive.

Planning Seasonal Campaigns

To plan seasonal campaigns, you should start by compiling market research. This should be about how your target customers behave during those times of the year, how your competitors position themselves, whether you traditionally see greater or lesser sales than average, and study search trends in your industry during this period.

You should ensure the messaging has been specifically honed for this season and that the price point reflects the typical spending habits of your customers.

Reporting on Seasonal Campaigns

It would be best if you kept a close eye on how a campaign is performing throughout the season, noting where you are receiving the most traffic from, which pages or ads are working the best, and which are receiving the highest bounce rates.

This will allow you to hone the messaging better as you go, hopefully resulting in a campaign that performs more strongly as it continues.

If you need expert help with your latest seasonal marketing campaign, contact our team at Click Intelligence today!