Preparing for peak season

Your customers don’t go to sleep during your quiet times and neither should you. Seasonal marketing needs to happen all year round. You can collect information from your existing customers and look for new opportunities to attract potential customers. Marketing strategies and campaigns should build up to your busiest season and follow-up with last-minute offers to keep customers interested. 

 

Don’t save all your advertising budget for your peak season. Take advantage of lower advertising costs well in advance to keep people interested in your brand. Stay in touch with existing customers and send them pre-peak-season offers to tempt them. 

 

Google Trends is a useful tool that uses real-time data to show what interests your audience and their behaviour over time. It can give you ideas for new products or bundles to launch during your peak season. Importantly, you’ll need to respond quickly so customers see your new offers when their researching online. 

 

As peak season draws to a close you can start building your database for next year. Add anyone who showed interest, even if they didn’t buy. Send them some follow-up emails and offers and invite them to join your loyalty programme. Share reviews from happy customers to gain their trust. During the lead up to next year’s peak contact them again and remind them to keep in touch. 

 

You probably set targets for last year’s peak season and it’s worth reviewing what happened. Did all of the products sell well? Did some perform better or worse than expected? Look out for surprises as well – they might inspire some new tactics for the coming year. Add unique discount codes across all your marketing channels so you have more accurate information for the future. 

 

Use a combination of online and offline advertising for best results. Digital advertising helps you keep in touch with existing contacts. Print advertisements can generate engagement with new groups of customers. Include informative content that builds trust and has a high-recall value. 

 

Add calls to action that encourage visits to your website and make sure your content is fresh, attractive and relevant. Add landing pages for specific peak season promotions to build on your recommendations and offers. It’s a great way to get the most out of Google’s Dynamic Search Ads to support your seasonal marketing. These advertisements appear based on your site’s content rather than keywords. When you update your site with seasonal content, Google collects, analyses and matches it with search terms. 

 

Teaser print campaigns, website pop-ups and social media countdowns can all help create some urgency. Try different types and styles of promotion such as videos to catch people’s attention.