While summertime may seem like a long way away, the season is critical for many consumer-facing brands. For businesses in sectors such as gardening, outdoor cookery and garden furniture, the process of ensuring that your products are front of mind with consumers must start well before the buds of spring begin to appear. Statistics have shown that the average household spend on gardening equipment has doubled in the last few years to £650 so getting consumer eyeballs on your brand and its products has immense potential for businesses.
So how can these businesses make themselves stand out? With mounting pressure to not only match but exceed the success of 2021 due to the pandemic, it will be key to prepare and implement a strategy that lays the foundation in the lead up to summer. In this piece we look at some of the tactic’s brands can use to deliver a sunny summer of sales.
Influencer marketing
Once seen as a luxury for brands, Influencer Marketing has now become an essential part of any marketing strategy.
As the world of Influencer Marketing has grown several niche areas and sub-sectors have emerged based on consumer interests. While everyone is familiar with ‘fitfluencers’ such as Joe Wicks, there are now increasing numbers of creators gaining huge followings for their posts around topics such as cleaning, cooking, families and interior design.
Engaging with influencers from a range of verticals such as these has the potential to broaden out the audience you are reaching, maximise awareness for your brand and promote your entire product range.
Click here to read more about how we utilised influencers to promote client Ninja’s cookware range.
Social Media Advertising
With 2023 having just begun and the pivotal summer period months away, companies will be at the beginning of their marketing cycle, with the first stage building awareness of their products. For any brand wanting to establish a strong online presence, you need to increase exposure and on a consistent basis in order to drive brand recall and recognition when consumers begin to consider making a purchase.
A paid social strategy allows brands to create hyper-targeted ads based on a range of elements from location through to device usage and interests. As well as having a significant impact over the short-term on brand awareness and conversions, the analysis brands can glean from Social Media Advertising can provide an additional layer of insight when it comes to the full picture of consumer behaviour. Truly understanding who it is that’s engaging with your brand, where and what content they are consuming can be used to inform future strategies and enables brands to optimise RoI.
Consider a range of social tools
Social apps are an effective way for companies to drive engagement from their target audiences and utilizing a range of platforms is key when devising strategies to maximise impact ahead of the summer. Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram will continue to play a vital role but brands should also be considering how they can deploy Snapchat, TikTok and Pinterest to name a few.
The use of AR within Snapchat can be an engaging means for consumer-facing brands to promote their product range. The exponential growth of TikTok not only gives brands access to a huge audience, but the tendency towards UGC on the platform can also help deliver engaging viral content with your business at the centre.
Pinterest is well known for its popular content on topics such as home design, decor and style inspiration. The 900+ Best Outdoor Furniture Trends is an example of how content creators produce collections of different product ideas to provide consumers with ideas and inspiration for their home.
With 444 million active users worldwide, Pinterest is an effective tool for product-led businesses to unlock avenues to new audiences using the app predominantly for home inspiration ideas and can be a real asset when considering a 360-marketing strategy as consumers turn to the platform for inspiration ahead of the summer months.
Creative Activations
Creative activations and eye-catching PR stunts can produce great results for brands that are looking to generate widespread awareness. Utilising creative thinking and a visually led campaign has the power to capture both press and social media user attention. When dovetailed together, sharing branded content across both platforms can help deliver maximum RoI, reach a range of audiences and has the potential to drive brand recall as consumers will remember your stunt.
For an engaging activation to succeed, brands need to ensure it aligns with their company values. With social media allowing posts to be seen by the masses with just one click, brands that are looking to generate a buzz will also want any attention to focus on their brand message. While creativity is critical for this process brands must ensure that their concept and message is easily digestible for both media and consumers. Our in-house creative team headed by our new Creative Director, Mike Chivers, allows us to further build on our creative expertise and offer clients a fresh perspective on their strategy.
Digital Marketing
Last, but by all means not least, Digital marketing tactics are a crucial tool for brands looking to drive website traffic and strengthen their sales pipeline. Seasonal categories such as outdoor furniture and appliances need to be preparing SEO landing pages two-three months before the peak of sales to ensure they are fully optimised. They also need to be producing content, optimising key pages and ensuring digital merchandising of content is updated to give them a head start when the search volume starts to grow as we get into spring.
In regards to PPC campaigns, brands should have ads running from late February/early March to start gathering early optimisation data and testing of ad copy. This will help maximise the time at peak when campaigns should be focused on efficiency and scale.
Click to read how we implemented an award winning digital campaign for Price Right Home to increase visibility and profit in a highly competitive landscape.
Are you a consumer brand looking to amplify your awareness as we approach the summer? Get in touch with our award-winning team today.