Seasonality refers to periodic fluctuations that regularly occur in a predictable pattern based on a particular season, quarter, or month.
In marketing, seasonality is more than just throwing a few joyful light-hearted festive posts on your social media accounts.Why is this so?
Because each season comes specific noteworthy holidays, events and activities, which cause consumers to behave differently, hence, provide opportunities for businesses to thrive.
Examples of seasonal opportunities that have the power to boost your revenue and connect you with your audience include; Halloween, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, New Year’s Eve/Day, Valentine’s Day.
1. Spend enough time forecasting
Sound predictions of demands and trends are no longer luxury items, but a necessity for most companies. If you’re to cope with seasonality, sudden changes in demand levels, price-cutting maneuvers of the competition, strikes, and large swings of the economy.
Forecasting can help you deal with that.
2. Keep a keen eye on search trends
Depending on your industry, your audience, your goals, and even the size of your company, it’s essential to identify and keep a keen eye on search trends.
Google Trends can be a beneficial tool to help highlight the broader search [or seasonality] habits over a given time frame.
Whatever you use, it’s important to use a variety of tools together (from Google to your CRM system to a customizable analytics template) to track your customers’ behavior, any correlations among a specific audience, and your performance.
3. Scour websites, blogs, online forums and discussion boards
It is important to analyze key trends often, statistics or research on blogs, news sites or forums that gather data and break down industry reports into a format you can easily understand and digest.
4. Use different tools and analytics systems
It is also smart to use different tools and analytics systems such as Google trends (which I also mentioned above), Google Adwords to better pinpoint exact keywords and queries and identify the direction seasonal trends and opportunities.
Last one but not the end, adjusting your message, budget, and approach for seasonality.
Seasonality has a significant influence on the strategies that organizations put in place. Additionally, purchasing habits tend to shift based on the activities that consumers participate in, and online businesses need to take this into account well ahead of time. While seasonal marketing is all about having excellent timing, unique content, and a perfect campaign execution that earns engagement, and ultimately, sales.