How to Bring the Seasonal out Your Brand.

Labor Day is just a few weeks away. After the unofficial end to summer, the floodgates will open to fall festivities, Halloween, and the winter holidays. Now is the time for brands to consider how they will reach moms during this valuable time of year. To help, I’ve put together some pointers for mom-focused brands to help them make the most of the major holidays in the latter part of the year:

• Research holiday habits – Right now is the ideal time to do some research on holiday habits and trends. Here are some questions you need to answer to be most prepared:  Are moms using their tablets to make purchases? Which offers receive the highest open rates? Where do moms look first when buying gifts? Take this information and analyze carefully so that you make informed decisions about your planning. This will help your brand be more successful than your competitors during the holiday season. 

• Highlight a seasonal angle – Find your brand’s inner seasonality: how does your product relate to the season or holiday? For example, 3M might want to create videos on how use its products to hang holiday wreaths, or Campbell might want to highlight soup recipes that are perfect for larger holiday gatherings. Think about how you can relate your brand to the holidays, and it will pay off in the last three months of the year.

• Lean on social media – Your brand’s presence on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest provides the best place to update your seasonal content with little effort. Over a quarter of consumers researched via social media before buying holiday gifts last year, so you need to make sure that your brand has a social media plan. On Facebook, change your cover photo to reflect the upcoming holiday. Create a few boards on Pinterest dedicated to seasonality using highly visual images that will encourage crafty moms to click on your holiday ideas, recipes, and decorations.

• Install a process to verify changes – Things move quickly from Halloween to Thanksgiving to Christmas, and all of the activity can lead to mistakes by your marketing team. Take the time to discuss a quality assurance process to ensure that expired seasonal content is removed and replaced with new content for upcoming holidays. You don’t want a mom who is coming to your site to look for winter table settings to see a Halloween graphic in December. A quality assurance process will keep your marketing team organized and mistake-free. 

About one-third of consumers begin their holiday shopping before September. Now is the perfect time to focus on your brand’s holiday planning and add in a few seasonal elements that will make your brand more relevant and prepared for the upcoming season. 

By Katie Petrillo 
Katie Petrillo is a B2B Marketer for Punchbowl, a celebrations site for moms. She writes about marketing to moms on the Punchbowl Trends Blog.
Courtesy of MediaPost

Skip to content