seasonal

By Lexie Lu

Every year, the holidays seem to arrive before business owners realize they are here. It’s hard to juggle everything and figuring out branding strategies for the holidays, too. Seasonal branding strategies are a mixed bag of challenges. Not only do you have to figure out how to market to your target audience for the holidays, but any campaigns need to tie into your overall branding goals so that customers come back once the holidays are past.

The winter holidays bring in an estimated $602 billion in revenue in the United States, making it the top season for sales out of all the other seasons. As the holidays approach, here are some branding strategies you should implement to drive traffic to your business and keep new customers coming back after the first of the year.

1. Prepare Now

Prepare for seasonal branding early. Around 21 percent of companies begin seasonal branding in September and most in the third quarter. Planning far in advance for seasonal marketing campaigns allows you to tweak ads and make sure your brand is represented in the way you want.

2. Differentiate Your Brand

Figure out the best way to make your brand stand out from all the other brands pushing their seasonal branding. What is unique about what you have to offer consumers?

Focus on the people in your company who make you who you are. Tell your backstory. Explain how your product makes people’s lives better, especially during the holidays. To differentiate your brand, you need to study your competitors. What makes them unique? Now, how are you different?

3. Use Seasonal Packaging

Celebrate the season with some special packaging that users only get during the holidays. Think about some brands that do this and how exciting it is to see what new packaging they’ll reveal each year. Starbucks reveals a holiday cup each year, for example.

Even if you don’t change the packaging on the actual product, you can add a seasonal twist to how you box up orders. For example, use a red or green box instead of a standard brown. These colors can still be utilized after the holidays pass if you wind up with more than you ship out.

4. Tap Into Hashtags

Social media is a great way to reach new users through seasonal branding without changing the heart and soul of your marketing program. Look for hashtags that tie into the season and tap into those. For example, if there is a hashtag on Twitter or Instagram of #SnowmenRule, then you should create an ad that ties into this and use the hashtag to promote your product.

Of course, there is a lot more to promoting on social media, so you should study the platform of your choice carefully and learn how to best engage with customers.

5. Find Your Seasonal Appeal

Every season has its familiar offerings. The fall brings pumpkin spice everything and winter brings hot cocoa and warm mittens. Think about the common factors for the season and how your brand ties into that seasonal appeal. Once you find a connection, it’s simply a matter of playing it up in your seasonal branding efforts.

If you sell data backup equipment for example, you might focus on cold weather and power outages and then tie into how your product prevents data loss when the power goes out. Or, you might focus on feeling safe and warm for the holidays and then segue into feeling safe that your data is protected.

6. Keep Your Logo Intact

While it is okay to add a seasonal twist to your logo, don’t go so far outside the norm that people can’t recognize your logo as yours. Long after the holidays are over, you still want customers to find your brand familiar. Think about the subtle changes Google makes to their logo from time to time. They use the same typeface, but they might add a small Santa hat to one corner of the logo or add a bit of background imagery.

7. Share Your Seasonal Values

What does the season mean to you personally? Take some time to share thoughts from your CEO and your employees. Around 64 percent of people say that shared values is the main reason they do business with a brand. If you can tap into your values and tie them into the season, you’ve tapped into a valuable component to your marketing efforts.

8. Check for Mobile Friendliness

Around one-third of all online sales are via mobile devices. If you want to be ready for the holidays, make sure your mobile responsiveness is up to par. If you have the most brilliant seasonal marketing campaign in history, but mobile users can’t access your site to place an order, then you’ve missed out on around 33 percent of your sales for the season. A loss of 33 percent could be catastrophic to a small business.

Take the time to thoroughly test any ad links and make sure they are easy to access and landing pages easy to view on smaller screens.

Seasonal Branding

The best seasonal branding doesn’t focus on one specific holiday but is something that goes on year round. All branding needs to run through the filter of the overall image of your company. Take the time to check out what competitors do for their seasonal marketing, add in fresh ideas of your own and point the consumer back to a long-term relationship with your company.

Lexie Lu is a freelance graphic designer and blogger. She keeps up with the latest design news and always has some coffee in close proximity. She writes on Design Roast and can be followed on Twitter @lexieludesigner.

Holiday stock photo by Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock