5 Tips to Give Your Business a Sweet Summertime
Most people look forward to the summer as the best time for sunshine, beaches, and vacations. However, the summer season tends to bring a different story for business owners. The retail industry experiences a slump in sales and a decrease in customer traffic as festivals, concerts, and other outdoor activities become more in demand. While this is a typical outcome during summer, it is not entirely inevitable. With the proper marketing and public relations strategies, you can continue to drive sales and engage with more customers while getting your business prepped for the following holiday season.
Here are five tips to bring waves of customers to your business this summer season:
Provide limited-edition summer offers.
Create buzz and engage with new buyers and return customers by putting forward something new to the table. Offer seasonal products, services, and packages crafted with summer themes like relaxing beaches, fresh flowers, citrus fruits, and more to embrace the summer vibes fully. Do a quick market research, see what's hot and trending for the year, and follow what aligns with your branding.
Summer discounts also effectively drive interest back to your business since people are looking to spend less after splurging during the holidays. Sharing coupons in exchange for consumer participation, such as referrals and online reviews, could also drive customer loyalty. These offers can either run on a weekly or monthly basis or for the entirety of the summer season.
Introduce summer contests and giveaways.
Encourage interaction with your targeted audience with simple but fun summer contests and giveaways. In addition to more interaction, these contests and giveaways are excellent sources of user-generated content (UGC) that can help boost your authenticity and improve public perception of your brand. UGCs are the digital equivalent of "word of mouth," making them essential to present-day marketing.
Some examples of simple summer contests include a themed photography contest, challenge video, trivia quizzes, comment and share to win, and more. Winners can be chosen through a raffle system or by setting up goals such as the number of likes, retweets, reactions, shares, comments, etc. Share them on all your social media channels, email, and website. Plan and see what works best for your audience demographic so your business can have an interactive summer.
Share newsworthy stories as press releases.
Summer is the best time to improve the internal side of your business. These improvements may include store and office renovations that will raise customer experiences, summer team-building activities to improve staff relations, and exploring potential partnerships with other businesses and organizations that will help expand your resources.
These newsworthy stories about your business that will improve public relations should be shared through a press release. You can also share other important news and updates about your products and services and other brand improvements to build anticipation for the coming months. Press releases help establish brand credibility and generate media coverage, driving more traffic.
Release a business calendar of events.
Tease the public with your planned events for the year's second half by releasing a business calendar. This calendar may contain scheduled updates, a timeline of new projects, upcoming public and community events, and more. Releasing this early calendar will help your audience plan ahead of time and become something they can look forward to.
Once your dates have been finalized, submit your events to certain social magazines and websites to increase your reach. Create eye-catching promotional materials and share them on all your channels. While it is still the summer season, throwing a curve ball by teasing a winter event will make it stand out more.
Follow holidays and observances.
Aside from creating summer-themed social media posts, following holidays and other fun social observances relevant to your business will make your business more engaging. Popular summer holidays that provide a wealth of marketing and advertising ideas include the 4th of July, Labor Day, International Friendship Day, and more. Check which fun celebrations you can join this season.
Having a variety of content and themes is essential in the current digital landscape, where consumers are content-hungry. However, mindlessly following every trend might backfire and affect your branding, especially if they are irrelevant to your business. Brands should follow proper research and plan for a successful summer marketing strategy.
Winning against the summer sales slump may be difficult, but it is possible with the right tools and strategies. A steady and effective content plan, a robust media connection, and audience understanding are your keys to survival. If you are struggling or would like some advice on managing your business this summer, contact C2 Communications. Let us work together to help ease your marketing and public relations campaigns this season. Contact us now and get a quote!