For businesses of all sizes, it’s common to notice seasonal trends when it comes to web traffic performance and even social media engagement. And while “seasonal” trends can refer to trends that literally change with the seasons, they can also refer to trends that shift with national events and even holidays. By anticipating seasonal trends as they relate to your specific industry and strategizing your digital marketing plan with these in mind, you can maximize your profits and enjoy a leg-up on the competition.
How Seasonal is Your Business?
First, consider your industry and business type to get a better idea of just how “seasonal” your business is. For example, B2C businesses tend to be more seasonal than B2B businesses for a number of reasons. However, the main reason is that different holidays and special times of year provide a built-in excuse for your potential customers to spend more money. For businesses, on the other hand, the holiday season is often a time to cut back. This isn’t to say that there is no seasonality involved in developing a B2B digital marketing strategy, but you may need to get more creative and strategic to appeal to these kinds of customers.
Which Seasonal Trends Apply to Your Industry?
The next step is to consider which seasonal seasonal trends may apply to your industry. There are many ways of doing this, but perhaps the most effective and easiest way is to observe your website’s traffic performance over the course of the past year and look for spikes during specific times of the year that could indicate a seasonal trend.
The Importance of Keyword Research
For digital marketing and especially for social media marketing, keyword research is a vital aspect of building your marketing strategy with seasonality in mind. Google’s Adwords Keyword Planner is a great tool to help you conduct necessary keyword research that will provide you with valuable insight into which terms are trending at various times of the year. From there, you can not only get a better idea of when it begin implementing your seasonal campaigns, but the specific keywords and terminology that you should use on your website and social media page to boost your search engine results (SERPs).
Tips for Developing a Seasonal Digital Marketing Strategy
Once you’ve done your research and have a more solid understanding of the types of social trends your business sees seasonally, you can begin to develop a marketing strategy around this information. As you do, there are some specific tips worth keeping in mind that could optimize your strategy.
For starters, keep an eye on last year’s holiday trends in your industry; if you’re a relatively new business, don’t hesitate to check out some of your competitors to see what they did in the previous years to market seasonally. Keep in mind, of course, that what works for one business may not always work for yours. Coming up with your own strategies and spins on existing strategies is a must to stay relevant and on top of the competition.
On social media and on your business website, you may also want to consider enhancing your pages with seasonal themes and images. Changing your social media cover photo to something relevant to the season is a great way to connect with your customer base, as is creating share-worthy seasonal posts. The same applies to your website images and even e-mail banners for blasts that you may send out.
A little bit of strategizing goes a long way, so remember to:
- consider the seasonality of your business
- focus on keyword research and search trends
- craft your seasonal marketing strategy
Looking for professional assistance with your digital marketing strategy? Contact Ballantine to find out more about their marketing services and how they can benefit your business.
I'm the Director of Digital Services and Partner at Ballantine, a family-owned and operated direct mail & digital marketing company based in New Jersey. and started in 1966 by my great uncle!
