Here’s how to master your next seasonal digital marketing campaign

Summer is a slow season for many businesses, especially those that have a B2B niche. If things are a little sluggish for you right now, here’s an idea: use these quiet months to make your next big season a big boost for your business. Here’s how you can start preparing for your next big seasonal content marketing campaign:

1. Now check your seasonal rankings

Do you have a page (or pages) with seasonal offers, gift ideas and special offers? The demand for this type of content may be seasonal, but the rankings should be permanent. Therefore, I always recommend deleting these pages or deleting them throughout the site.

You want Google to always go to these pages so that your rankings will be up when the searches start to climb.

If you can not find your site ranking list for your target seasonal queries, it’s time to set it up, even if the actual season is still months ahead.

Source: screenshot created by the author

Furthermore, Spyfu provides a comprehensive analysis of all SERP movements for you to identify key patterns and locate a competitor that does the best job while maintaining their organic visibility for seasonal searches:

Source: screenshot created by the author

Read more about this feature here.

When it comes to SEO, seasonality it can be tricky but it should definitely be planned in advance as organic SEO takes time to deliver results.

2. Start creating seasonal assets (content and social)

Your high season is going to be a busy time for you and your team, so start creating (and even planning) your content assets beforehand.

If you like content ideas over a brainstorm, I always turn to Text Optimizer, which does an excellent job related to concepts and angles you can focus on:

Source: screenshot created by the author

The tool depends on semantic analysis.

Content marketing involves many channels, so the more you are willing, the easier (and more productive) your seasonal campaign will turn out to be.

Furthermore, there are some cross channel content marketing tools that can help you create and organize your seasonal content. For example, with Boosted by Lightricks you can easily create videos in different formats:

Source: screenshot created by the author

This way, you can create content assets that fit all of your channels. There is also a handy Brand Kit feature that allows you to maintain a consistent visual identity across all your assets:

Source: screenshot created by the author

The app is available on iPhone and Android free. You can choose to upgrade for $ 4.99 per month. I used the free level (and the screenshots above are taken if you use the free version of the app).

The platform too provides a list of ideas for seasonal content and hashtags to make your campaign even more effective.

There are a few more video creation apps, but I don’t think any of them let you have free access to so many great features.

Another great content creation tool that offers you many free features for free is of course Canva. I have been using Canva for as long as I can remember without ever upgrading.

Source: screenshot created by the author

Here is the guide for planning a Christmas Marketing Campaign.

3. Evaluate your previous seasonal campaign performance

If you have published any seasonal content over the years, you can:

• Look for an opportunity for an update (‘Can I reuse this asset this year?’ As well as ‘How can I make it better?’)
• Evaluate how effective it was to attract traffic, as well as to make the click in conversions

Google Analytics provides an easy way to identify landing pages that have done the best job of attracting traffic during any given time:

• Go to the acquisition report and select one channel (for example “social” or “organic search”)
• Choose the date range of your seasonal campaign from the past year
• (Optional) Check the “Compare” box and select “Previous year” from the menu
• Click on the “Landing page” tab in the table below:

Source: screenshot created by the author

This gives you an overview of the page with the most traffic in your previous campaigns. You can further limit this by using word filters (for example, tap there “blog” to see the best seasonal content).

You can use conversions to Google Analytics Goals and Funnels. Another tool I use to keep a close eye on incoming traffic and its conversions is Finteza. Because it makes it incredibly easy to limit the data to determine which traffic source sends traffic and how well it converts compared to other pages.

Source: screenshot created by the author

Read more about Finteza’s conversion funnels here. Finteza costs $ 25 per month and there is a 30-day trial available to play with the instrument before you commit.

4. Consider starting a tradition

If one of the previous content assets was particularly successful, consider extending this idea to a new project! We all remember the overwhelming success of “Elf yourself“, Ask Santa, and NORAD mini-projects that could engage (and convert) thousands of people annually.

A separate (single leaf) website will be easier to brand and promote without creating strong ties with your main business. If you need inspiration, check out Namify:

Source: Nominated

5. See what your competitors have done (or not)

Competitive analysis is important because it motivates a business owner to do more and do it better. That’s why I always take competitive analytics into any of my marketing planning.

There are many ways to research your competitors and what they do. My first step is to always check Ahrefs and what other searches they are looking for:

Source: screenshot created by the author

Ahrefs is the only platform in the industry that also provides an estimate of the traffic that each search query sends. Here is how they calculate it. Ahrefs lowest level is $ 99 per month, but it is definitely an essential tool when doing SEO.

Similar web is another great tool for competitive research. I like to look at their “Referral Traffic” report to determine which sites send traffic to my competitors:

Source: Similar web

This basic report is available for free.

It’s also a good idea to set up Google Alert needs to change if your competitors are doing something new.

6. Create your editorial calendar

It seems like people start preparing for big holidays earlier every year. It’s not uncommon to see a social media ad in October. It can actually cause excitement and irritation.

So the important question remains: when should I start publishing seasonal content?

It can depend on niche to niche, so I always suggest typing your target seasonal search research Google Trends:

Source: screenshot created by the author

It also helps to compare a number of your target search queries. In this niche, for example, it seems that the question has been fairly consistent over the years:

Source: screenshot created by the author

When it comes to organizing and planning your content assets, there are some great calendars. plug in to choose from. I mostly use CoSchedule because it allows me to also schedule the updates on your social media channels, and to assign certain content assets to different contributors.

CoSchedule costs $ 29 per month. It supports scheduling to Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Instagram. I prefer the tool because it combines on-site content planning (the allocation of content assets to be written) and social media scheduling. It enables me to create a very well-matched content marketing campaign and to organize it easily editorial workflow across many channels.

Instagram also provides a useful guide for planning your seasonal content strategy here:

Source: screenshot created by the author

Closure

Seasonal planning is an excellent way to take advantage of most of the seasonal interest rates and build more sales. The earlier you start preparing for your big season, the more time you have to handle a larger amount of sales. Strength!

Ann Smarty is the founder of Viral Content Bee, Branding and Community Manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas. She can be found on Twitter @seosmarty.