Is it really that important to bring the element of seasonality into your campaigns and revisit your campaigns periodically? Short answer: yes! Seasonal marketing is not just about staying relevant; it’s about connecting with your audience on a deeper, more human level. So, are you thrilled about putting together some sun-kissed campaigns? Let’s take a deep dive into the “how”. In this blog, we’ll be discussing a quick few benefits of seasonal marketing upgrades, fool-proof campaign ideas any brand could benefit from, and some design tips to refresh your marketing designs. 

The power of seasonal marketing for brands 

If you are wondering whether it’s worth your time to update your marketing strategy for a season that only lasts a couple of months, here are some of the seasonal marketing benefits you should know about. 

• Including a summer theme and getting ready for the season can help boost your sales because product demand and customer shopping patterns fluctuate based on seasons. For example, a lot of people plan their travel in spring and summer. As a result, around this time, the revenue in the luggage category on Amazon has been seeing a 183% year-over-year increase. This means that if your products or services are relevant to the seasonal spike in demand around summer, then it’s time to up your marketing campaigns ahead of time. 
• Relevance leads to connection. And by creating seasonally relevant ads and social media posts you are able to better connect with your customers. 
• The emotional state of people often changes with the seasons. After all, the concept of winter blues and autumn melancholy exists for a reason. So, by creating ads that feel cozy and warm during winter and radiant and cheerful during the spring and summer seasons you make your ads more relatable to customers. And by doing this you increase the engagement. 

To leverage all these benefits and more, it totally makes sense to spend some time giving your marketing strategy a summer theme makeover. Now let’s proceed to those summer marketing campaign ideas we promised! 

Summer theme in marketing – Ideas for a breezy seasonal campaign 

1. Throw a summer event to engage your audience 

When the days are longer, and people are looking forward to spending time outdoors, hosting an offline event is a great idea. An event with a summer theme can be in the form of a rooftop party, beachside events, and anything that feels relevant to your brand and to your audience. 

A few perks of doing this: 

• Increase your brand visibility and awareness by boosting the publicity for your event and therefore getting people to talk about your brand. 
• Increase brand loyalty by delivering an enjoyable and memorable experience to your customers through the summer event. 
• Get a chance to showcase your product, especially when you have something new to launch. 

2. Or take part in a local event

If you do not have the budget to organize an extravagant summer event yourself, no problem! With summer comes a variety of local events and trade fairs. You can always make your mark by taking part in one of these. This could be in the form of a stall at a local trade fair. Or you could become a sponsor for one of these events. Both these steps help you make a splash in a cost-effective way. 

Joining local communities and joining local events in summer come with the below perks:

• Local fairs attract a variety of attendees. Therefore getting your target audience in the local market to notice your brand becomes much simpler. 
• With community events come local community engagement which can be of huge benefit to your brand. 

A good example of this is Samsung’s participation in the Orange County Fair a few years ago. In order to promote its Giga Sound System the brand came up with a make-shift DJ system from a truck. This attracted the attention of the local audience and strengthened product awareness. 

KIMP Tip: When you plan a local event (hosting one yourself or taking part in a community event) remember to invest in print advertising. Flyers handed out in high-traffic areas, billboards placed in busy junctions, and personalized postcard invites are effective ways to bring the crowd. And in the case of a stall at the local event, use posters and banners to direct customers to your stall and to establish your brand in a crowded space. 

Want to streamline your event marketing designs? Get a KIMP Graphics subscription! 

3. Summer giveaways/contests 

A cost-effective way to engage your customers and also bring in new leads is a social media contest or giveaway in the summer theme. The reward can be a summer-relevant product or service or a gift card. It could also be a free entry to one of your summer events. Other than driving engagement and strengthening your brand’s presence on social media, there are a few more benefits to hosting a social media contest for summer: 

• It gives you a chance to expand your customer data collection measures. Customers often register their interest by providing an email id or following your account. This lets you evaluate your understanding of your target customers and identify if there are new markets to explore. 
• A relevant contest with an exciting reward for the summer can create a positive brand image. 
• Finally, through these giveaways, you can also collaborate with influencers and other brands and therefore expand your network. 

KIMP Tip: Even if it is a contest for social media users, you can incorporate other methods of promotion like adding a web banner to your website to direct your website visitors to your social media pages and emails to keep your existing customers informed. Come up with visually cohesive designs for all these platforms in order to make the most impact. 

4. Summer sale to boost sales 

What better way to embrace the summer theme than to throw a summer sale? Identify the most relevant products in your catalog, products whose sale generally tends to increase in summer. And then offer these with limited-time discounts. The time constraint creates a sense of urgency and therefore boosts sales. 

What are some products you can think of in the summer theme? Summer fashion, travel essentials, summer skincare and makeup, camping and outdoor gear, beverages, beachwear and so much more! 

Through these sales here are some advantages you can expect: 

• With captivating visuals and catchy copy, you can convey the rush and encourage people to buy by evoking FOMO. That is by letting them know about the limited-time deals and the limited stock for the season. 
• This also means that you can use this as a clearance sale to refresh your inventory. 
• Exclusive discount codes mailed to customers and timely updates posted on social media make your customers feel acknowledged and therefore foster brand loyalty. 

5. Introducing exclusive products/services for summer 

Can you come up with limited edition items relevant to your niche and somehow connected with the rest of the products you offer? Then these would help you bring on the summer theme. 

They do not even have to be whole new product lines. Sometimes simple summer-focused variants in your existing product lines work. For example, if your business sells beverages, summer flavors, and tropical fruits will be a good option for a summer-edition product. 

Another way to embrace this idea is to put together a summer combo with the products you think that customers will find the most relevant to summer. 

Or if you have a product-based business, to get into the summer spirit and to make the most of the time when vacations begin, you can introduce summer service camps for your products. Or if you have a service-based company, you can introduce a limited-edition product line that establishes your brand and also dons a summer theme. 

By doing these here are some benefits to reap:

• Emerge a trendsetter by creating summer-ready trends and therefore strengthen your brand’s authority. 
• Boost brand engagement and create a buzz for your brand.
• Explore new offerings with minimal risk. The short-term availability of the product lets you experiment with ideas without worrying about the long-term shelf life of those ideas and thus evaluate their feasibility in the long run.  

Some last-minute ideas 

The above-mentioned campaign ideas all involve the effective use of multiple marketing channels and long-term planning. However, if you think you have very little time left to plan or if you do not have the resources or budget to execute large-scale campaigns, there are some small-scale ideas that you can use to take on the summer theme. Let’s look at a few such ideas. 

6. Summer conversations 

With posts that capture the spirit of the summer, you spark conversations. This gives you a good way to build meaningful connections with your customers. 

These can be simple posts that encourage customers to talk about their plans for the summer vacation. With this, you have the benefit of gathering insights about what your customers love doing during summer vacations and therefore give you ideas to plan your next summer campaigns. 

Or you could host a summer photo contest. With this, you gather an endless reserve of user-generated content that can build trust. 

To execute these ideas come up with interactive posts. These should include visuals that attract their attention, and polls and questions to let them share their experiences and preferences. 

Some of the benefits of posting conversational content in the summer theme include: 

• Community building through photo contests and insider conversations in social media groups and channels. 
• Boost the engagement on your social media profile and therefore an improvement in your brand’s reach. 

7. Informational content but in the summer theme 

Another great last-minute idea to soak into the summer theme will be to create informational posts related to summer. These could be posts about summer skincare or tips for your target customers to take care of their health during summer. 

Or you could talk about travel packing essentials for summer vacations. Another idea is to talk about summer-related maintenance activities for the house or even specific to your products. 

Upon regularly posting content that educates your audience, you reap the below benefits: 

• Get a chance to show that your brand is an expert in its field. 
• Informational value-added content increases engagement and gets shared a lot more than promotional content. 
• By delivering content that your target customers find to be useful, you are showing them that you care. It helps strengthen your brand image and humanize your brand. 

Now that you have gathered some exciting ideas to execute the summer theme in marketing, the big question is “How do you materialize these ideas?” Every piece of design you use to communicate the idea and to promote the event or the discount or the exclusive product line needs to scream summer. Let’s look at some design tips to make that happen. 

A few quick design tips to flaunt those summer vibes 

To make your designs for your summer campaigns work, “summer” cannot be just another word in the copy. It should be the core mood of your design. And here are some ways to achieve this:

• Use a vibrant summer-ready palette. Shades of yellow, orange, turquoise, and pastel hues work well. 
• Pick cheerful fonts like casual script fonts to maintain the laid-back and fun mood that prevails during summer. 
• Play with summery effects like adding a glow filter, daylight effects, and glare effects wherever relevant. 
• Add images and illustrations that capture summer scenes like beaches, palm trees, water splashes, and tropical fruits. 
• Experiment with textures that use illustrated summer-related icons and doodles like sunglasses, sun, palm trees, and beach waves. 

Remember that while capturing the essence of the summer theme, these designs should also resonate with your target audience and stay true to your brand identity. That’s when these designs actually make sense to your customers. 

Welcome the summer theme into your marketing designs with KIMP

To make the most of these ideas for adopting the summer theme, an omnichannel approach works best. Because summer is a season when your target customers are not going to be confined indoors. Therefore, digital media alone cannot get the word out. 

You need a well-planned outdoor campaign that attracts audiences in the local market and grabs the attention of travelers. The next requirement will be posters, outdoor furniture ads, and other design formats to meet people wherever they are. To back these physical print campaigns you also need a strong digital advertising strategy. 

While you have all these little elements, you should be sure that they are all designed in unison, aligned with your brand identity and the summer theme. How do you do that? By working with a designated team of designers for all your print and digital designs for summer. 

So, what are you waiting for? Register now for a free 7-day trial.