To everything there is a season, as the saying goes. This is a great thing for those of us in business especially when we are struggling for a new angle for our marketing campaigns.
Easter, Christmas, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Valentine’s Day are the biggest events of the year and ones that most retailers build huge campaigns around. They are the events that probably bring in a high percentage of the years income for many businesses.
We can use the same principle in home based business. Find your season and wind it throughout the business. Small businesses are agile compared to the elephantine corporations like David Jones or Myer so they can jump to new opportunities easily. Why not take advantage of that and look for some other ‘seasonal’ marketing opportunities? A lack of budget can be made up for with some clever ideas.
What other seasons could you use as a basis for a marketing campaign? Your choices might be affected by your line of business but what about some of these ideas?
- End of financial year
- Harvest
- Spring racing carnival
- Comedy festival
- The Oscars
- Winter / Summer / Spring / Autumn
- Grand Prix
- Melbourne Cup
- A popular TV show finale
- Back to school
- Religious festivals
- Clean Up Australia Day
- Australia Day
- Anzac Day
- Fashion festival
- Biggest Morning Tea / Daffodil Day
- St Patrick’s Day
There are lots more to find if you go out and look and each of these can become a theme for a sale or even a special event that you might run.
How could you apply these seasonal events to your marketing? Let’s take a look.
Charity events are easy. You could do a special fundraiser on your site or offer a percent of each sale to the charity. You could turn your site yellow for Daffodil Day or Pink for the McGrath Foundation. You could include a ribbon free with every order.
Clean Up Australia Day (or similar environmental days) can be celebrated by using green or recycled packaging, or by promoting the products in your range that cause no harm to the environment.
The Comedy Festival / Arts Festival or Fashion Festivals are all fun. Can you imagine some of the lines you could use in your promos? “This price is so low that it is a joke!” Go one step further and include a printed joke with each order in the same way they are included in a Christmas cracker.
Don’t forget to carry the theme through into your newsletter and blog, too. If you are going to run a seasonal promotion then it needs to be consistent across all parts of your business.
Seasons and events can be the best friend of small business. All it takes is some awareness, inventiveness and pre-planning.
What are some of the seasonal promotions you’ve done with your business? Share with us below
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