Staying top of mind year-round is crucial for businesses who want to stay competitive in their industry. This requires constant marketing efforts, even during months when it doesn't feel like there are many opportunities to reach new customers.
Rather than becoming complacent during a seasonal lull, it’s an opportunistic time to evaluate current strategies and refocus your message to attract leads. This translates to being more creative with your marketing efforts.
Here are a few creative techniques for remaining at the forefront of customers' minds, not just during the high season, but throughout the year.
Deliver Compelling and Consistent Branding
Use seasonal downtimes to reinforce your commitment to your audience.
When you're marketing your product or service, you want to make sure that your brand is appealing to potential customers. The first step in this process is to create a consistent image for your company—one that will help you attract attention, build trust and loyalty, and ultimately result in more sales.
To do this, you'll need to invest time and resources into creating exciting and relevant content that has the potential to result in a conversion. Branding efforts must remain consistent across all platforms to build a strong identity for your company. Statistics show that companies with consistent branding can can expect an increase in revenue of approximately 23%.
While seasonal downturns are a great opportunity to refresh your brand, they're also a great opportunity to reinforce your trustworthiness. Customers are more likely to make repeat purchases when they feel like they can trust the brand they're buying from.
Stay Connected on Social Media
Social media is a powerful tool for business growth and stay top of mind during a seasonal downturn. With the right strategy, you can use it to create an engaged audience that will buy your products and services.
It's essential to identify the preferred channels used by the target audience and focus on social content on those platforms. It all comes down to getting a handle on your target audience. Who are they? What do they like? Where do they hang out online? If you don't have answers to these questions, then you're going to miss out on a huge opportunity. Brands that consumers can relate to are seen as those that care about their customers. A strong social presence is not only an opportunity to share information with the audience; it is a chance to hear what they are saying as well.
Social media channels provide a simple and cost-effective avenue for reaching out to potential customers. Failure to take advantage of it translates to lost sales.
Use Influencer Marketing to Make an Impact
Influencer marketing is a powerful way to reach your customers. It's an opportunity to build brand awareness, drive sales, and create loyal customers. Influencers have huge followings and their opinions are widely sought after. They're also big fans of the things they love, so they're going to talk about those things!
Influencer marketing depends on the endorsement of individuals who have built a loyal following online to influence buyers in making purchasing decisions. Radio influencers are trusted personalities that have been part of consumers' lives, oftentimes for many years. They also tend to have massive social media followings relevant to your local area.
Ninety-one percent of millennials trust influencers as much or more than family and friends. In comparison, 90% of all marketers say the ROI from influencer marketing is comparable to or better than other forms of marketing. An influencer can help your brand to make a more significant impact. Check out our influencers HERE.
Deploy a Digital Marketing Campaign With Fresh Creative
When it comes to digital marketing, the key is to get creative.
Rethinking color schemes and graphic elements on your company’s website can help your brand attract and engage customers. A strong, consistent message presented across all digital platforms is necessary to help consumers recognize your business.
The best campaigns involve a lot of innovation, thinking outside the box, and taking risks. The key is to think about what's going on in your target audience's world—what are they passionate about? What do they care about? Where is their attention focused?
Reach More Customers By Retargeting Ads
To get the most from your marketing campaigns, you should be using programmatic ad retargeting. In a retargeting campaign, ads will appear in front of consumers who have previously visited your website but did not take action. A seasonal lull is a perfect time to encourage potential customers to return to your website using retargeting.
A programmatic retargeting campaign allows you to reach more customers with less effort and cost. Retargeting campaigns are easy to set up and run, so you can focus on growing your business instead of spending hours each week managing the technicalities of online advertising.
An effective retargeting campaign should be targeted at the right audience at the right time. You can target users based on their previous browsing history and shopping behaviors, as well as demographic information such as age group and gender.
Integrate Radio and Digital Ads
Radio and digital ads are a good addition to your marketing strategy. The best way to reach your target audience is to provide them with the information they want in the manner they prefer to receive it. Your marketing must reach customers where they are in the buyer's journey to have the most significant impact.
Your marketing strategy should be designed to reach customers where they are in their journey to buy, and radio advertising accomplishes this beautifully.
When used in conjunction with a digital campaign, the reach of radio advertising is multiplied.
Get Professional Marketing Help
Awareness is the key to brand success at all times of the year. Wise steps taken during a slow time will pay off when the market heats up. Working with a media partner to develop a creative marketing plan now can make all the difference.
During these slow periods, people tend to have less money and/or time to spend on things like marketing. So if you're not taking advantage of this time to build awareness for your brand, it won't matter if you launch something new or exciting in six months—you'll still be way behind the curve.
Don't let yourself fall into this trap! Take advantage of the times when people aren't thinking about buying something new—or even shopping at all—and work on getting them excited about your product right now!