In this competitive world for more leads, sales, and traffic, most of the marketers are not paying attention to one highly important thing – Trends!
As a business brand, you must consistently innovate novel ways to advertise to your audience. Individuals are desensitized to the same messages, which are conveyed over in a similar way.
This is the situation where seasonal content can bring your brand or business back into the limelight.
Seasonal Content Marketing:
Seasonal content marketing is an excellent way to incorporate variety and attract the attention of buyers. It is the content, which is either designed around a specific reason or helps the audience to take more benefit from it.
With large retail brands, you are able to witness time-specific marketing.
In content marketing, you may see it as seasonally themed helpful guides or Infographics related to the specific time of the year.
However, there are certain things, which make it more effective.
First, you need to capitalize on the B2C platform, like:
- July sales
- Christmas
- Viral Content Marketing Campaigns
- Black Friday
A large number of buyers plan for such seasons and are willing to pull out the wallets. The aim of seasonal content marketing is to ensure that your business is the first thing that buyers consider when they are out for buying.
Furthermore, you must capitalize on B2B events, such as bank holidays and different quarters.
As compared to regular content, seasonal content is the most shared one. It boosts band awareness. Moreover, the season is already in the mind. Hence, the content enters naturally into their lives.
Types of Seasonal Content:
The content for the season is not limited to fall, spring, summer, and winter.
Rather, it can be about any trend related to a business and can be stated as the season.
Mainly, there are two types of seasonal content marketing:
- Event-based content – It is the content designed for bank holidays, Memorial Day, or Thanksgiving Day
- Time-based content – It is the kind of content designed for regular seasons of a year
There are lots of overlaps between such types, but if you are stuck between both seasons, you need to determine whether you want to target one or both.
What are Examples of Seasonal Content?
The key aspect of seasonal content marketing is that you must make the service or product centerpiece of your campaign, and not the season.
The season is just a vehicle to transform your marketing and make it more shareable.
Some of the best examples of season content marketing for B2C companies are:
- Infographics designed on a seasonal theme
- Gift guides
- Seasonal or holiday recipes
Some of the examples for B2B companies:
- Guides for products to win over the competition
- Strategies of business, which work best for that particular season
- An excellent example of this content is from Personnel Today
Why is Seasonal Content Useful?
Seasonal content plays a vital role in the overall marketing strategy, even if it is not created to drive conversions. Some of the benefits of designing seasonal content are as follows:
1. Link Opportunities:
Just like any kind of content you design, seasonal content offers you an excellent opportunity to build the links to your website. It is particularly true if you create the content enough in advance so that it is easier to reach out to editors and bloggers who may wish to share the same with their readers.
For instance, let us consider that your company is selling craft supplies. Earlier, you can place together a blog listing ideas for a homemade costume. You may reach out to bloggers whose readers are searching for inspiration.
Even if you are not including products in the post, the links earned from such websites would make it worth the effort including additional traffic, and some of them could be potential customers.
But make sure you select topics which belong to your industry. Also, add a little bit of creativity to it to fetch the best results.
2. Relevant Ideas for Content Generation:
One major challenge of any content marketer is regularly coming up with interesting and relevant topics to cover. When seasonal content is added into the strategy, filling the editorial calendar is much easier.
You can begin with important national holidays; utilize websites to determine shorter holidays to incorporate. It is vital to select topics, which have a natural link to your brand.
It implies that creating seasonal content needs prior to planning in advance. Add relevant holidays and events to the editorial calendar or blog, and offer your team enough time to create content for such days. After all, a blog with holiday trips is useless once the vacations are over.
3. Social Media Content:
Just like content marketing, marketing on social media needs you to regularly come up with interesting and novel ways to engage the followers. When you begin by creating timely and interesting content on a consistent basis, it becomes quite easier.
The entire seasonal content you add to your website can be an excellent material for the social media platforms. Any in most of the cases, you can re-share the content for further years to come.
Researching Keywords for Seasonal Content Marketing
As I told earlier, seasons are trends and it is vital to see that such trends reflect in monthly searches and search engine traffic.
The odds of numerous businesses creating content and availing rank for the same are low. You must still base the content around specific keywords for two main reasons.
- You are aware that such topics are popular for a particular season and are more likely to get shared.
- You may end up ranking the topics for next season.
Here learn how you can find keywords for seasonal content.
- First, you must visit the Google Keyword Planner and enter a suitable keyword related to the niche. Select the ‘keyword ideas’ and click on ‘trends’ over the past years. This will let you know about the Google keywords, which are trending.
- If you wish to know what is trending, Google Trends is an excellent resource. Just enter the topic in which you would like to avail of some data one and Google will inform you what is trending online at that time.
The data fetched can be used to send the content, which is relevant to that time duration.
Content Timing is Important:
Timing is vital in seasonal content marketing. In order to boost results, you must aim to get two things correct:
- The content you publish and when you publish it
- The beginning of the campaign
It is best to begin the campaign right before the season’s peak. It ensures that you are a leader and does not follow everyone else’s footsteps. For instance, as per the SiteProNews, you must begin the Christmas campaign in early October. It is the time period when the demand for customers begins to increase because people start buying gifts in preparing for the holiday season.
Beginning promotions before competitors also lets your company beat the competition.
But, if you begin the campaign early, the campaign may fizzle before interest begins to climb. Hence, you must start slowly and push better content. This leads to anticipation and ensures the best stuff is not targeting unsuitable clients.
Remember, you must anticipate seasons and prepare!
Most of the businesses are subject to buying trends of the consumer. It is where you know about busy and slow seasons.
First, you must be aware of exactly when the busiest seasons begin. Highlight them on the calendar and ensure that everyone in your company is aware of it. Moreover, during such seasons, research the buying trends for the busy season.
Using Google Trends lets you see the topics within your industry as well as past trending seasons. This will offer details about what kinds of content will deliver best. Even if you are in between a season, using Google Trend will let you know what is exactly trending now.
Once all such details are availed, brainstorm how you are able to make the content unique. Some of the important aspects to consider are:
- Adding graphics – is it possible or not?
- Is it possible to make content more detailed and longer?
- Is it possible to add resources, which your audience would consider valuable?
- Is it possible to incorporate viral components, such as hashtags, which your competitors may ignore?
Considering all such characteristics let your content stand out.
For planning the content, you can also establish an editorial calendar. It will keep you and the team on track with creating, promoting, publishing, and planning the seasonal content. With a WordPress plugin, this can be carried easier.
Finally, you need to determine the key objectives of your business, which you wish to achieve. Some of the objectives can be:
- Traffic
- Social Shares
- Downloads from the lead magnet
- Sales
- Email subscribers
- Clicks for Add to Cart
When next season is approaching, analyze the way your last campaign worked and what can be done to make it better this time.
Considerations for Content Promotion:
For any content marketing campaign, promoting content is a core element. Without promoting content to the correct audience, it would not do much good for your business, no matter how well-written or how qualitative it is.
However, when you are promoting the seasonal content you must remember seasonal content involves only temporary interest.
It is wise to focus on outreach campaigns and social media, which you may turn on and off over the hat. It will maximize the ROI and reach. Moreover, you must be able to push the content quickly, efficiently and to the correct audience.
Some of the methods to consider are:
- Google Adwords
- Facebook Ads
- Paid Promotions on Twitter
All these tactics function as a traffic faucet, which can be turn off or on when you wish to use it. Also, you can control the level of exposure your content receives, based on a monetary investment placed.
Incorporate Rich Elements into the Content:
Rich elements here refer to the current events. Such events can be thrown into the content or used sparsely around the campaign as articles.
One great example is SEOmoz rebranding to Moz. Referencing such events or basing content around it can help your content avail more exposure.
Within the B2C realm, the rich elements refer to pop culture events.
Including such elements in the content hooks the audience immediately. It could be referencing anything from pop culture, a story that is trending in the business world, or the result of a sporting event.
No matter, which element you select, time bomb can make the content more shareable and relevant.
Pick a Season that Matches Best to Your Brand:
For seasonal content marketing, you must select a season, which functions as a vehicle to bring out the brand’s message in a unique and different way.
It must not take over the message, rather promote it.
The British Home Improvement and DIY retailer, B&Q, is a good example of this, which did it exquisitely during their campaign – #ChristmasUnleashed campaign. The campaigns were designed seasonally and continued to the core message of unwinding the DIY expert within you.
Just remember the core values of your business. Consider how it eventually helps people and offers the same message in ways that fit naturally with season sentiments. Check what does the business offers, which is relevant to that specific time. It is because, you must consider not just your business services and products, but also connect to real situations and emotions of experiences of your audiences.
To Sum Up:
The practice of seasonal content marketing is a powerful approach to take benefit of the natural buying trends of people.
However, rather than inundating the audience with savings of holiday, you must enter their lives within the same wavelength.
Some important points to remember are:
- Base the content around keywords, which are trending for that particular season.
- Accurately time your campaigns just before the rise of each season.
- You must be well-prepared during the slow times.
- Make use of paid promotion for getting the content fast and efficiently.
- Finally, match the particular season to your business brand.
Hope you find this article useful. Use the above-mentioned aspects to precisely using seasonal content for your marketing campaign.