How To Take Advantage of Holiday and Seasonal Ads

With the holidays and seasonal vibes all around us, both in the real world and digital spaces, you’re probably surrounded by ads. Depending on how it’s done, ads could fall flat or be just right, prompting a click through, a conversion, or a sale. 

Maybe now you’re wondering why you didn’t jump on the seasonal ads train for your own business! Don’t worry, while it’s a little late for this year, each season brings its own opportunities to make the most of your resources and your audience. Now’s the time to learn about the best way to take advantage of holiday and seasonal ads so that you’re ready the next time an opportunity comes your way. Let’s get into it!

What Is Seasonal Marketing and Advertising?

By definition, seasonal marketing and advertising could be centered around several times during the year: holidays, seasonal changes in weather, important annual events, and both busier and slower seasons of work for a business. “Season” can mean whatever makes the most sense for your business.

With this wide scope in mind, then, using a seasonal approach to advertising would be a way of marketing your business using online ads and centering those ads around specific dates or time periods. And no, you don't need a seasonal business to make a seasonal marketing campaign work for you. Look at it as a way to connect with customers throughout the year in a meaningful way that also pays dividends and adds to your bottom line. 

At the same time, if holidays are your busiest times of the year, then yes, you definitely want to strategically plan advertising campaigns surrounding those predictable annual events and dates. Whatever your approach, seasonal marketing allows you to tailor promotions and messaging to coincide with key times of year that customers associate with particular needs, wants, or planned spending. It’s a natural cycle or pattern that you can capitalize on to help capture interest, boost brand awareness, and drive sales.

It’s also a time to get innovative and find new ways to interact with your audience and promote your company. Whether you advertise on social media, you choose targeted local ads, or opt for pay-per-click advertising, there is a whole world of advertising opportunities to choose from when it comes to building a seasonal or holiday advertising campaign.

What are the Benefits of Running Seasonal Ads?

During certain times of the year, consumers expect and even look for advertisements from companies, both new businesses and those they already know. They’re often primed and ready to receive promotional offers, and more likely to act on them. You can take advantage of this natural coalescence by timing ads to hit those who are more likely to respond at the time they’re more receptive. 

Here’s a rundown of some top ways that seasonal and holiday ads can benefit your business:

• Increased engagement: consumers are ready to see and act on ads, you just need to tap into their interest and excitement
• Higher conversion rates: aligning your campaigns with the current mood and consumer behavior can turn casual browsers into buyers
• Brand awareness: consistency and planned or themed advertising campaigns keep your brand relevant and recognizable, building brand recognition
• Competitive advantage: effective, timely seasonal advertising puts you ahead of competitors and lookalikes who don’t run seasonal ads
• Increased revenue: well-planned and targeted ad campaigns around seasonal peaks in demand can lead to increased sales
• Rewarded loyalty: engaging with prior customers via seasonal or holiday ads reinforces and rewards their loyalty to your business

Holiday and seasonal advertising is also the perfect way to build relationships with folks who already visit your website, read your emails, or view your social media posts. They’re going to recognize your company when they come across targeted ads that are strategically placed on sites they already visit. With the help of an advertising specialist, you can create an entire segment of your campaign that’s dedicated to these repeat customers. It’s a smart move to use the resources you already have available in your efforts to grow.

Key Holiday and Seasonal Marketing Strategies

Of course, all of your purposeful efforts must begin with truly knowing and understanding your audience. You can only target their online haunts if you know where they’re likely to be when online. That means conducting thorough market research to know your audience’s preferences, seasonal purchasing habits, and holiday or seasonal behaviors. 

This invaluable information gives you insight into what motivates and excites your customers and allows you to use that data to then tailor build your advertising campaigns into something that your audience will naturally like and interact with. But to be compelling or even relevant, you need to know who you’re dealing with and what matters to them.

You’ll also want to have clear, measurable goals and objectives outlined when you start out on this journey. Whether it’s to increase sales and brand awareness or to generate leads and conversions, goals help to craft your advertising campaign strategies. They also give you a standard by which you can measure success and track progress–all vital aspects of effective advertising efforts.

Once you’ve gathered all the information you need and it comes down to the actual advertising itself, here are some top ways to ensure that your efforts yield good results:

• Identify key times of the year to run your campaigns
• Craft engaging content paired with irresistible offers
• Relate your messaging with themes and values that resonate with your audience
• Utilize storytelling to build a connection
• Make use of multiple advertising channels and opportunities
• Tailor messaging and content to each advertising channel and demographic
• Feature a limited time frame to drive urgency and prompt action

It’s also vital to utilize tracking and analytics tools to ensure that all your efforts can bring in data about what works and what doesn’t. Those metrics will show how closely your results match your stated goals. Through these vital statistics, you’ll be able to learn more about your audience and how best to appeal to them.

Work done, results in, and it’s time to measure and analyze data to see where your seasonal advertising efforts paid off. Resulting metrics–sales, site traffic, engagement, conversions, etc.–can help you to see where you did well and can also provide insights to improve future holiday and seasonal advertising campaigns. 

All in all, seasonal and holiday-focused ad campaigns give you a valuable opportunity to take advantage of the natural excitement and engagement that accompany these special times of the year. Strategic actions can help businesses to make the most of the opportunities and improve the success of future efforts.

How Holiday and Seasonal Advertising Impact ROI

Return on investment (ROI) and return on ad spend (ROAS) are both marketing terms associated with formulas that can help you see if the assets used for an ad campaign yielded good results. But they’re slightly different in their approach and scope, with ROI being more focused on overall profitability and ROAS homing in on revenue generated per dollar spent on ads. They both have a place here, and a solid digital marketing agency will be able to help you calculate both metrics in order to inform future campaigns.

But whether you are into the weedy details or you prefer larger, rounder findings, it’s vital to know whether the money you put into your seasonal and holiday ad campaigns is worth it in the end. In our findings with our wide range of clients, we can say that yes, holiday advertising makes a very clear difference to overall ROI across the board. 

Now, all the above said, it is true that holiday and seasonal ads can be pricier than during off-peak time periods. But if you use the right strategies, you can still come out on top. It all starts with analyzing past performance to have a clear understanding of what works and determining where to invest ad dollars. Next, you want to use creative, on-brand, often story-driven ads that can cut through all the advertising clutter and make it to your target audience. Targeting repeat customers or shoppers who’ve already engaged with your content will keep your business on their minds. Lastly, consistent monitoring can help to make the most of efforts, enabling you to make minor adjustments to maximize ROI across the seasons for the best outcome possible.

Where Should You Run Holiday and Seasonal Ads?

Where oh where to start! Whether social media is your best bet, and you opt for Instagram and Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, or LinkedIn, or you decide to run display ads, mobile ads, pay-per-click ads, product listings or targeted local ads, finding the best place to start begins with knowing your audience. You want to target valuable ad spend dollars to online places where your current or potential customers already are. Ideal ad channels could also vary based on the products and services you offer and how they’re best showcased–video, images, key descriptions and more. Your locale and where you offer services will also help to determine where your holiday ads should be featured.

When Should You Run Holiday and Seasonal Ads?

Holiday shopping–and the hype around sales–is starting earlier every year, it seems. That’s true for other seasonal events too. And to get ahead of the curve and get noticed before the onslaught of ads appears, you really need to plan accordingly. It takes market awareness and a social media presence to get a feel for what consumers are looking for and reacting to. Since mobile shopping continues to drive consumer behavior, ensuring that your ad campaigns are mobile-optimized will also help to streamline the user experience and potentially impact sales.

Of course, if you want to start your campaign earlier than others, then you need to push back your timeline even further for preparations to get underway. A digital marketing agency worth their salt will be able to provide you with a schedule and regular progress updates so you can stay on top of planning. And while peak holiday ad season will always be key to your advertising strategy, off-peak ads can also offer benefits, like familiarizing folks with your brand and priming them to make purchases when you activate your seasonal ad campaign in earnest. 

Now that we know some of the overarching things to incorporate into any seasonal or holiday ad campaign, what are some events or times of the year when these campaigns may be worth employing? Here are some general ideas to run with:

• Religious and/or secular holidays that specifically align with your brand identity
• Seasonal or weather-related campaigns focused on products and/or services
• Social, cultural, commercial, or patriotic dates, anniversaries, and events (graduation, back to school, Mother’s and Father’s Day, 4th of July, Black Friday, etc.)
• Other busy times of the year unique to your industry (accounting, gardening/landscaping, construction, etc.)

Your Digital Marketing Agency In Cleveland and Beyond

Whatever your business and whatever products or services you offer to clients, there is an ideal time of year to advertise and achieve the biggest return on your investment. Our research makes it clear that advertising that surrounds the holidays is a proven go-to, but for a more nuanced approach, you need to work with a digital marketing agency that understands your needs and is ready to work for your success.

Alt Media Studios is that agency. We offer professional digital marketing in Cleveland and beyond. From expertly placed and targeted ads to tightly honed online content and polished landing pages, our team of ad specialists, graphic designers, content writers, and Cleveland SEO experts has you covered. We do it all, in-house, affordably and efficiently. We use professional analytics tools to ensure that your advertising dollars and our efforts are well-spent, and we analyze data to learn from the results–every campaign aims to be better than the last. We use our insider knowledge to launch impactful ad campaigns that reach our clients’ goals and build their businesses.

While this holiday season is already upon us, take this reminder as a prompt to get started early on your next ad campaign. Now is the time to set your business up for future success. Contact us today to learn more about our advertising services and to get started on your next campaign. While you’re at it, if your website needs a spruce up before your big ad push, ask about custom web design–we can help there too. We’re so ready to see you grow.