5 Hot Ideas to Take your Summer Marketing from Fizzle to Sizzle

Ah, summer. Swimming pools, the beach, a nice cold drink on a sweltering day. No worries, right? Well, when the current economic times are combined with a potential summer slump, you might have a few marketing woes. To help turn your summer ROI from naught to a lot, here are 5 hot ideas.

1. Summer Brand Building

Make sure that your “packaging and messaging” suits current economic times.¹ Hone in on how you are different from your competition but make sure you don’t try to work a niche where you don’t belong. You can’t be everything to everybody.

2. Summer Themes

How about a Road Trip Theme or a Summer Sports Promotional Theme?² (free baseball caps with your logo or coupons to games) Blend the theme with your brand or your products. For example, my local Trader Joes has a clever promotion. “Take a Trip Around the World From Your Own Backyard.” The products featured? Their wines. They have different wines from different parts of the world labeled specifically for the promotion. (I’m going to several new places this summer and I don’t even have to buy a plane ticket!)

3. “Buy this, get that” Summer-related Promotions

Create promotions that are fun and innovative. For example, when anyone buys a book title that relates to summer or the beach they get a sample of free sunscreen.² Or, if your customers spend a certain amount they get complementary tickets to a summer-friendly place like the zoo or botanical gardens.

4. Partner with other Businesses

How about joining other businesses to create a powerful promotion package? For instance, this summer Destination DC has partnered with companies like Travelocity and American Express as well as setting up their first “Cookie + Gourmet Kids’ Restaurant Week.™” During the week families can get fixed-price menus and kid-friendly meals at popular restaurants.³ This year people are really looking for deals, so strive to put things together that really give people their moneys worth.

5. Use Holidays – Existing and Made-up⁴

Go beyond your local holidays – look worldwide. For instance, August 2th is International Friendship Day. You could give out postcards that honor great acts of friendship or an offer for your customers to bring a friend and they get half off. Even make up a holiday. For instance, a flower business made up “Get out of the Doghouse Day.”⁴

For any of your summer campaigns, you will boost sales when you create a special landing page for each promotion. Don’t hesitate to use social marketing tools like Twitter to update customers on daily specials or limited seasonal products. Even use text messaging to give customers easy access to viewing your summer specials.⁵

Resources

1. Mistakes Shape Recession Marketing
2. Hot Summer Promotions: Ideas and Tips for Sizzling Success
3. Destination DC Targets Travelers with Powerful Summer Marketing Campaign
4. Summer Marketing “Holidays”
5. Acra Will Integrate Text Messaging Into Summer Marketing Campaign