Some businesses thrive during the summer: landscapers, resorts, and ice cream shops, for example. Others languish in the summer heat, wondering where all their customers have gone. When the sun sizzles your business doesn’t have to fizzle; even if you’re not a “summer business,” you can take advantage of warm weather and get creative to boost sales during the summer months. The following small business guide to summer marketing will help you reel in customers all summer long.
Summer outdoor marketing
One of the best ways to reach customers during the summer is to market in the places they frequent. Outdoor marketing can and should represent a large portion of your summer marketing efforts. Outdoor marketing allows you to saturate the market with your brand and simultaneously motivate response. Here are a few ways you can take advantage of outdoor marketing this summer.
Vinyl banners
Print large format vinyl banners, which are practically impossible to ignore and relatively cheap to produce and distribute. You can place vinyl banners in busy shopping districts, on busy roadways and near heavy-traffic intersections, on the beach, in view of resorts, by golf courses, and anywhere else customers flock during the summer months. Banners can also be placed on the sides of buildings, at festival booths, and outside your retail location (or even near your competitors’ locations).
Posters and flyers
Posters and flyers are likewise excellent outdoor marketing tools. They can be placed on just about any window, door, wall, or bulletin board you can find. Of course, you’ll only want to distribute posters and flyers in areas your customers are likely to visit this summer. You can also print club card flyers to hand out to passers-by and encourage them to visit your night club. Add a coupon incentive to motivate immediate response. QR codes and even augmented reality can be added to your posters and flyers to give customers an interactive experience – or just to take them to your website, app, or social media page.
Stickers
Stickers can go where no other marketing materials can. Print stickers for automobiles, bicycles, and clever public places: utility poles, ceilings, park benches, gas stations, and mirrors. Use stickers to brand your company and showcase its attitude. Some of the most clever outdoor marketing campaigns the world has seen have been based exclusively on creative stickers.
Door hangers
No matter what your customers do outdoor during the summer and no matter where they vacation, they always return home. You can take advantage of great weather to blanket targeted neighborhoods with door hangers. Door hanger marketing is a cheap way to ensure your customers are exposed to your brand and special offer this summer. Have fun with door hanger distribution by recruiting volunteers to go door-to-door, then reward them with an ice cream, pizza, or cocktail party after. The party will be cheaper then paying for distribution, and you’ll also gain an opportunity to earn word-of-mouth marketing from your volunteers.
Promotional products
Coolie cups, frisbees, water bottles, coolers, and many other summer-related products can be stamped with your logo and other information, then distributed to your customer base. Promotional products are perfect ways to get your brand in front of throngs of customers and add value to summer recreation. Think of promotional products for the outdoors that are relevant to your business and your customers to find a perfect match.
Festivals and events
Rent booth space at local festivals and hand out your business cards, rack cards, brochures, flyers, sales sheets, promotional products, and more. Place vinyl banners at sporting events and concerts. Promote a prominent presence at summer trade shows and conferences. If you set up a booth, make it creative, attention-getting, and memorable: a product demonstration, for example, will help motivate customers to take your business card and then follow-up the next week to learn more.
Social media campaigns
Offer prizes for the best summer photos on Facebook or other social media outlets. Your photo contest can center around your business and customers, so it’s relevant: the best vacation pics for a travel agency, for example, or the best classic car show photos for a mechanic. Be sure to collect addresses from those who enter so you can send emails, sales letters, postcards, and other marketing materials in the future.
Summer spins on traditional marketing
Customers might love to head outdoors during the summer months, but when the temperature becomes sweltering they seek the refreshing cool of air conditioned homes. That’s why you shouldn’t turn your back on traditional marketing during the summer; instead, add a summer spin to make your campaigns more exciting. The following lists some ideas for putting a summer spin on traditional marketing.
Postcard and sales letter incentives
One of the best ways to boost sales any time of year, including summer, is to promote special incentives. Discount coupons, VIP sales, buy-one-get-one’s, and other incentives generate response, especially if they’re time-limited offers. Send postcards or direct-mail sales letters to your customers promoting a special summer offer to make a splash.
Summer event magnets
Magnets are powerful branding tools because they’re incredibly useful; nearly everyone has papers and pictures they want to place on refrigerators, and magnets are the hanging tools of choice. You can print magnets that feature a local summer event schedule so it pulls double-duty and adds extra value for your customers, who will reference it to see what’s going on in the area. Every time they do, they’ll see your brand. You don’t have to list all community events, just those that are relevant to your customers. Do they love concerts? Print a local concert or even a bar band schedule. Sports? Print the local minor league baseball team’s schedule.
Summer catalogs
If you’re in the retail industry, it’s a good idea to print summer catalogs to showcase your latest and greatest new products. Some catalogs might feature summer-only seasonal products, such as shorts for summer fashion catalogs or outdoor toys for childrens catalogs. Others might feature year-round products but showcase them with a summer theme or sweeten the deal with summery incentives. Keep in mind that photography, editing, and layout can play major roles in how your products are perceived. Design your catalog to motivate sales, and sales will come.
Bold hang tags
Another great way for retailers to boost sales during the summer is to print bold, attention-getting hang tags. Big hang tags with brand colors or even contrasting colors that feature your brand, your story, or even a discount or BOGO offer. Hang tags motivate impulse purchases, which makes them especially valuable during summer months when shoppers flock to air conditioned shops. Remember that customers buy on emotion and justify with logic, so if you can design and print hang tags that help customers feel special, important, or lend an enhanced image – that is to say, if your hang tags promise the fulfillment of customer desires – you can dramatically improve summer sales.
Partnership packages
One of the best ideas for boosting summer sales is to partner with businesses that share your target customer base but don’t directly compete with you. You can form partnerships with multiple businesses to develop summer sales packages in which each partner offers a discount, but each partner also promotes the package – thereby doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling your marketing reach. You sell at a higher volume for less effort, make more profit, and the customer gets an amazing package a discount price. A golf course, for example, might partner with a resort and a restaurant to offer a two-day golf package with meals and lodging. A movie theater might partner with a spa and a grocery store to offer a romantic couples picnic, movie, and spa date day and night. The possibilities are endless – you just have to find willing partners (which often isn’t difficult).
Other summer marketing options
Print marketing isn’t your only option for summer marketing, but it’s definitely the most powerful. Still, print is even more powerful when coupled with other marketing channels: the web, social media, blogs, television, radio, and even newspaper and magazine advertising. In addition, don’t forget how local search engine optimization and mobile marketing can help on-the-go customers find your business fast.
The summer months don’t have to be slow months for your business, even if you’re not in a summer-specific industry. In fact, with a bit of creativity and a concerted, strategic, and intelligent marketing plan, summer can become one of your bestselling seasons year-round. Cover your bases with the marketing ideas contained in this post, and don’t be afraid to take risks: summertime is fun time, after all, and customers are looking to be amused and entertained. If you can do those things and still land sales, you might have created the perfect summer marketing campaign.
Now, it’s your turn. What are your favorite summer marketing ideas? What has worked for you in the past, and what would you like to try? Let us know in the comments!