With the weather heating up and restrictions lifting, we are hitting the height of summer 2021. But that doesn’t mean your marketing department can sit by the pool anytime soon. Although we are now in our second summer under COVID-19, things are looking up for many businesses with the path to industry revival in full swing. This isn’t a signal to go back to business-as-normal or business-as-usual, however. Now is the time to get creative and have some fun with your marketing and branding strategy. Summer can be a fantastic time to get customers active and engaged, the warmer weather and raised spirits leaving many feeling invigorated and more than a little impulsive. With customers feeling positive and open for business, you should be creating vibrant and encouraging online content that can draw them into your brand, acting as a hook in producing relevant and timely campaigns to get them over the finish line to invest in you. So, let’s have a look at how your brand can get the best out of its summer digital marketing campaigns.
The benevolent and spirited aesthetics of summer allow your brand a creative freedom that may be lacking compared to campaigns and visuals that run the rest of the year. This allows your design team - or whoever you source your designs too – to create visuals that run a little different than usual, opening possibilities to try something new or take your brand into dynamic design areas. The very best summer campaigns need to match the heat and the feel of the season. You need to create a striking, visual catalogue filled with beautiful, colourful designs that are as fun as they are informative, taking full advantage of the summer colour palette and the emotions associated with them to resonate with consumers and their summer mindset. Whilst your audience will still invariably be online in some capacity, it’ll be leisure on their minds. This calls for special consideration into your graphics and design so that you can grab their attention and get them engaged with your brand and its messaging, convincing them to convert. Lucky for you though, the aesthetics of summer aren’t limited or minimal. There are plenty of versatile summer themes and iconography for you to use for your brand, whether that is updating your colour scheme, creating new typography, or playing with a range of summer imagery. A focus on visuals and snappy slogans instead of lengthy blogs and messaging can really make the difference between the audience scrolling past or stopping in their tracks.
Although it may not seem like it amongst the answering machines and out-of-office bounce backs, the audience is still out there. You just have to find them. Whilst you don’t have to get on the next flight and track them across the globe or swim out to sea to make contact, you can reach them through social media. Within the online marketing world, there has often been anxiety that the audience isn’t online because they are too busy at the beach or in a field with no reception. But, that isn’t necessarily true. Whilst there may often be a summer sales slump during the hotter months with people looking less actively to buy, that doesn’t mean they aren’t online or that they aren’t willing to shop. The audience will remain on their phones, hopping on social media to post their summer activities, adventures, holiday snaps, and escapades. This allows you to create and optimise a campaign that is focused primarily on mobile phones and social media usage. Running ads on social media using your new imagery and visuals to directly target your audience, no matter where they are or what they are doing. The relationship between brands and social media also allows you to adapt and evolve over the summer. Let’s say you’ve based your campaign around scorching temperatures and clear skies with your catalogue of new summer imagery, only for the weather to pull a fast one and offer up nothing but grey clouds and torrential rain. Disaster, your messaging isn’t going to land now. Or so you’d think. Now you can use social media to create new ads and messaging that adapts to the weather and tap into that feeling of frustration your audience will be experiencing. Likewise, it allows your brand to join in on conversations happening around social media live and in real-time as they go viral. Whether it’s drama at Wimbledon, the headliner at Glastonbury, or the final of Love Island, your brand can dive right in and get involved this summer.
So, you’ve got your visuals locked and loaded, and you know how you can reach your audience, but what do you say? Similarly to visuals, the content and messaging you use around your summer campaign is open-ended and has plenty of room for creativity. Introducing summer phrasing and messaging along with your new selection of graphics can help your campaign create a kind of sensation with your audience. Although it would be great to convince your audience that your products would improve their summer, you don’t have to be limited by the service you’re offering. Instead, you could look at how your brand can slot into the customers life, or you could just look at capitalising on the season and its events. Content ideas for summer campaigns can range from travel guides, activity planners and ideas, to decorating tips, BBQ recipes, and summer look books. Or they could look at including the latest events from summer sports like the European Championships and Wimbledon, and the best of summer entertainment like festivals and the latest movie blockbusters. Having a robust summer content strategy can allow your brand to adapt and attack the season from more than one angle. Limiting your messaging to just topics like travel or the weather can risk your campaign falling at the mercy of restrictions or unpredictable weather. Creating a range of content that encapsulates more than one area will save your brand from any shortfalls. Similarly, it doesn’t even need to all be about you. In the last 18 months, we have seen more willingness of those online to create and share their own content during the pandemic, and that is something you can take advantage of. Creating incentives for user-generated content by offering giveaways or prizes is a good way to get users engaged with the campaign - all the while creating content in the process. All the audience has to do is use the appropriate hashtag or tag your account in their photo's! It's a simple exchange that could prove to be incredibly effective. Summer is a fantastic time to do this as you can encourage users to share photos and videos from their adventures and holidays, maybe even including your products in any pictures so that it’s not just content, but direct promotional content…
If you’re looking for the best way to utilise the open and expansive summer marketplace, then the team at Digital Alchemy are on hand to help. Whether by the beach or up a mountain, we are happy to chat and find the solution that works best for your brand. Looking for new custom graphics and digital designs to transport you to the Caribbean? Or engaging social media content that’ll make the customer swap that book they’ve been meaning to read for their Facebook feed? Get in touch today.
