Seasonal campaigns are a great way to promote your business and boost customer engagement. Heat up sales with these 5 summer marketing ideas and learn how to give current graphics a background refresh.
With the summer season fast approaching, it’s always smart to plan ahead for your business. This popular time of year presents many opportunities for fun and entertaining marketing ideas. So, take advantage of the hot months and keep your customers engaged by giving out sizzling deals, partaking in local and outdoor events, offering exclusive items, or promoting summer-themed giveaways.
No matter your product or service offering, you can capitalize on the summer season and heat up sales.
Let’s dive into five ways to tap into the summer spirit for a marketing campaign that excites your customers all season long.
1. Take Advantage of Holiday Sales
Everyone loves a rewarding summer sale. The summer season is full of business-friendly holidays, from Memorial Day to Fourth of July to Back to School. These are all perfect occasions to take advantage of when advertising a sale, event, or new products. Just be sure to promote relevant items in the holiday sale. After all, offering a discount on heavy outerwear may not be ideal for a Fourth of July sale.
Consumers are also more likely to spend their hard-earned dollars with the help of coupons and other promotions. Leverage this spending behavior by sending current customers an eye-catching email newsletter to notify them of exclusive events and offerings, or by posting on social media with a holiday-themed hashtag to boost engagement.
2. Introduce Exclusive Summer Offerings
Whether it’s a new (or reintroduced) ice cream flavor or swimwear print, the best time to introduce new items or services is during the summer season. Specialty offerings are an effective marketing tactic to help increase customer traffic online or in-store.
By releasing exclusive and limited offerings, a business creates that sense of urgency to experience a new item or service before it’s gone.
3. Give Back to the Local Community
Create a positive association between your business and the local community by giving back to non-profits, charities, and other local groups. You can do this by donating a percentage of sales or profits, by sponsoring an event, or creating a standalone event that helps others.
Take a summer-friendly idea and tie it into giving back, such as a donating a percentage of ice cream sales to an animal shelter. Customers will feel good about their purchase if their money also helps out local community groups.
4. Host or Participate In a Summer-Themed Event
Put your brand or business out there by participating in a summer event. Since school is out for the season, there are more opportunities to connect with your customers.
Whether you’re hosting a flower arrangement workshop or partaking in an annual summer fair, putting your business out there is crucial to creating brand awareness. It’s also a chance to form a better relationship with your target audience.
5. Boost Consumer Engagement with Giveaways
Who doesn’t like free stuff? Giveaways are a tried-and-true method of increasing consumer engagement. Boost your social media following and gain new email leads by offering free items or experiences that are worth getting excited about.
Promote your goods and services and help your giveaways go viral with eye-catching and easy-to-read graphics that visualize the grand prize.
6. Versatile Summer Backgrounds to Use in Your Designs
If you’re interested in refreshing your current marketing materials to fit a new campaign, wow your customers with the help of these versatile summer backgrounds. A simple update on the color palette, typography, and background can make a whole world of difference between a stunning image or an obsolete graphic.
Summer-themed backgrounds work for a variety of uses; they can be used to accent an event flyer, supplement a sales promotion, add life to a party invitation, and more.
Detailed or illustrative backgrounds work best when paired with a shape overlay to provide ample room for event details, sales information, or promo codes. Background images with copy space make it easy to add text without the need to worry about legibility issues.
If you need some design guidance, our free Shutterstock Editor program features multiple customizable templates to choose from. Head over to the Templates (T) tab, choose your template size with the dropdown arrow, then select a template that matches the intent of your design.
Utilize the Search (S) function to browse through Shutterstock’s endless library of summer-themed backgrounds. Click on an image, hit Replace Background, and make adjustments to the default template with the Fill Color, Font, Effects, and Filters menus.
