An essential guide to launching seasonal marketing campaigns
Brands are always on the look-out for events and occasions that would interest their audience
The demand for goods and services can vary throughout the year. Seasonal marketing is all about adapting your strategy to future events, whether it's a big holiday or just the start of a new season. The most important thing is to find and benefit from opportunities that fit your business best.
Business goals you can achieve with seasonal marketing:
- Increase website traffic
- Promote salesImprove brand awareness
- Retain existing customers
- Attract a new audience
- Collect data
What kinds of businesses can benefit from seasonal marketing?
Seasonal marketing is the perfect solution for the B2C segment, e-commerce in particular, because holidays encourage your audience to make purchases. Many are awaiting holidays to get offers and discounts. During the pandemic, seasonal campaigns became even more promising. This is because people felt stressed due to quarantine restrictions, and shopping provided them with positive emotions and assurance. If you combine a cheerful holiday with a customer's desire to make purchases for themselves and their beloved ones, you’ll get amazing conditions for marketing activity. Since an audience like this usually has a shopping intent, the challenge for businesses is to meet consumer expectations by anticipating their needs and making relevant offers.
Your checklist for creating a seasonal marketing campaign:
- Start with a goal
- Study your audience
- Explore competitor campaigns
- Plan ahead
- Work with keywords and trends
- Suggest a solution to a problem
- Think over your message and design
Popular holiday marketing formats:
Useful content. These could be New Year's Eve recipes, a video tutorial on creating a bright Halloween look, or tips on how to spend a holiday in an unusual way.
Contests and challenges. The easiest way to engage users in seasonal campaigns is by inviting them to share thematic content. You can also add a competitive element by promising a prize to the winner.
Temporary discounts. Offer event-driven and time-limited promotions that motivate your audience to make quick decisions.
Thematic projects. If you have enough resources, launch a creative campaign for the holiday. For example, this could be an interactive Advent calendar that lets users find gifts, or helpful advice for the holiday season.
Key holidays and occasions this season
- October 21 – Halloween
- November 26 – Black Friday
- November 29 – Cyber Monday
You should also start preparing your Christmas campaign in autumn to have enough time for planning and carrying out.
How to find and choose content for holiday marketing campaigns
When creating marketing campaigns, all brands question where they can find visual content. The option to download images from the Internet seems easiest, but hardly anyone would want to deal with copyright infringement issues later.
There are two options left. The first one is to create content from scratch. Surely, you get exclusive visuals, but production is usually time-consuming and expensive. The second option is to turn to content marketplaces or photobanks, where you can find inexpensive, ready-to-use images, vectors, illustrations, videos, or even audio files.
Today, content marketplaces like Depositphotos offer a vast selection of files. And thanks to the useful features and tutorials they create for clients, finding suitable content for seasonal campaigns is easy.
1. Visual Trends
Global changes in society also affect visual communication. To align with audiences, brands are adapting their communication strategies and including relevant topics and ideas. One of the main visual trends for 2021 is Symbols of Optimism. The idea behind it is to select life-affirming content that will cheer up your potential customers and give them hope for a bright future. Rely on images that remind you of the little joys of life, because this is what many are missing now.
2. Thematic collections
In stock libraries, you can find different types of content: photos, illustrations, vectors, video, and audio files. However, sometimes searching for the perfect visuals can be time-consuming. The solution is to use thematic collections that are put together by Depositphotos content curators. They hand-pick the trendiest content for thematic collections, which is why you’ll be able to quickly find what you need. For example, there are selections of photos, backgrounds, and videos for Halloween, and a special collection for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
3. Fall color trends
In addition to general trends in visual communication, there are micro-trends that are relevant for one season. They best reflect the current reality, mood, and expectations of an audience. In the fall, potential customers will surely be attracted to content that will give them a sense of coziness and warmth. These trendy colors will help achieve this:
Pumpkin Mush is a warm brown shade. It is associated with the beauty of autumn and provides a sense of security according to color psychology.
Lilac Dreams is a romantic, optimistic color that symbolizes openness and friendliness.
Rainy Day is a neutral, soothing shade that evokes control and maturity.
Bluish Black is a stylish color, a symbol of strength and loyalty.
These colors are the best choice for seasonal campaigns and designs. You can choose one of them or combine several trendy shades at the same time.
4. Ready-to-use design templates
If you did not have time to plan a large-scale marketing campaign, you can always run a flash sale. It doesn't take too long to launch: you can quickly create content using thematic design templates. Moreover, you won’t have to spend time searching, as there are collections of ready-made templates dedicated to Halloween, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday. All you have to do is choose the right format - from a banner or flyer, to animations or a social media post - and personalize it.