Every season brings its own different and unique marketing opportunities and summer is no different, bringing lots of vibrant and positive ways to promote your business, engaging with your audience in unique, memorable, and relatable ways.
All it takes is a little bit of creativity and maybe some know-how in the form of some expert help from a digital marketing agency.
You don’t even have to go to a fancy digital marketing agency in London. With over 7000 marketing agencies in the UK, you’re guaranteed to find something closer to home, and cheaper too!
Agencies usually offer different tiered packages to suit your budget, many will also work with businesses across the country or even the world. If you need some help, it’s definitely something you should consider.
And as people embrace the warmth and outdoors, get ready to navigate summer marketing. Here are some key tips, trends, and strategies to connect with your audience and make the most out of this (hopefully sunny) season.
Try Out Seasonal Themes, Promotions and Discounts
When people think of summer, they usually think of fun, relaxation, and adventuring outdoors. Think about how your brand can incorporate this in its marketing, using a summer theme throughout your campaigns will enable you to connect with your audience on a relatable level.
If appropriate to your brand, try using bright and cheerful colours in your advertising and imagery.
Obviously at this time you should be focusing on summer or outdoor related products, services or activities.
This may be easier for some companies and services than others. Clothing, food and drink sellers, and travel agencies will find things quite straightforward with either offers or a hard focus on promoting summery clothing, barbecue food, refreshing drinks, and popular summer destinations.
But you can also promote an “out of season sale” too. For example, you may want to offer discounts on winter relatedproducts – the early bird gets the worm after all. This also might help shift some old stock in preparation for new fresh products for the upcoming winter.
It’s all about timing. Time the promotions and discounts at points in the season that make sense. Limited time offers also prompt customers to make purchases that they may have been considering for a while.
Engagement and User Generated Content
Social media will be the best place to connect with your audience, so come up with posts that encourage engagement, talking about summer holiday plans and activities.
You can speak to the summer lovers but you can also speak to those who aren’t big fans of extreme heat with relatable posts, memes, or campaigns. Again, it all depends on your brand and service.
But with a clever strategy, you can utilise user generated content, a powerful tool to get people interacting with your brand. You just need to be asking the right questions/posting the right stuff that gets your audience to share.
This could be in the form of contests, hashtag campaigns, a specific call-to-action or something that prompts users to share photos and stories. This will both provide free content for your brand and increase engagement, fostering a sense of community within your customers, both new customers and loyal ones.
Collaborations and Events
Think of other brands, businesses, or influencers – is there anyone you can connect and collaborate with? It could be a local business or a micro-influencer that is relevant or compliments your business.
You could also think about events during this season, either creating one or taking part in one. Festivals, community events, activities, and pop-up shops – what’s the product and where can you show it off? Social media is great, but a chance to showcase and try out products in real life can seal the deal.
Sustainability
Increasingly hot summers and more people travelling outsidebring up discussions of climate change and environmental awareness.
Brands that prioritise sustainable actions are becoming increasingly attractive to customers. If this is something that your brand can earnestly do, then you should absolutely consider highlighting sustainable practices.
This could be in the form of promoting products made from eco-friendly or recycled materials to efforts to reduce packaging waste (ever been sent a box that was way too big for the product you ordered?).
You could also offer discounts for people who choose eco friendlier options, for example Uber charges less for rides in electrical vehicles.
This could also mean that your company supports, partners with, or promotes environmental causes and campaigns. It’s a great way to increase your reputation and show that your brand is responsible, and that’s so hot right now.
Health
As well as talking about the health of the planet, many people focus on their own health and wellness in the run up to, and during summer. Whether that means becoming more active with sports and fitness due to the nicer weather or eatinghealthier meals.
Brands in areas such as fitness, food, and general health/wellness can offer tips on social media, as well as promote relevant products and services.
For example…
If you sell food, promote your healthiest options, recipes, and other cooking or health tips.
If you’re a clothing or fitness brand – do you sell lightweightsporty outfits and/or exercise equipment?
If you’re a wellness or perhaps a skincare brand, offer tips and promotions on healthy living, self-care, sun safety/protectionand advice on dealing with the heat (as in, what products are best to use).
Final Thoughts
Summer is brimming with opportunity, so plan ahead, keep your ear on the ground to trends, and listen to feedback from customers. Enjoy getting creative this season – see you in autumn!
