Selling The Seasons: Summer

As we celebrate this Memorial weekend with friends and family, we remember the brave servicemen who gave the ultimate sacrifice of the greater good of our Nation. Moral courage, the greatest virtue of them all, is memorialized today.

Memorial Day for most in the business world marks the beginning of summer, more specifically the summer season, an important, and depending on the industry a business operates, a crucial season

The summer is the season of the consumer, they are more active overall and school holidays leave more time for family activities such as travel, get togethers, summer camp and more. The industries which provide services or goods for these popular summer activities ramp up production, marketing, sales strategies and more bringing in significant returns.

On average, Americans spend about $2,229 extra per person during the summer months, making it the second most expensive season of the year. This spending typically includes travel, food, clothing, and entertainment.

The summer season is an excellent opportunity for your small business to expand. With the entire country in a habit of spending, looking to maximize family time and have quality experiences. The larger companies out there for sure take advantage of this. Studios release movies, artists schedule tours, brands launch new products. People are more likely to pay attention to something or catch on to a trend or viral product during the warmer months. Outdoor activities and industries servicing them also boom during the next couple months, some run exclusively during the season.

More time away from the commute, school and indoors equals extra time around the community, family and friends to spread the word about a new product, service or experience to try together as a group.

Many new business owners miss the opportunity and the value behind marketing seasonally. Creating ad campaigns or deriving specific products or variations of products which are relevant to the season. As an example, Sam Adams brought out their citrus wheat Summer Ale just in time for Memorial Day weekend and will sell it throughout the summer months to great success. Equinox sports clubs will be running a summer promotion throughout the City.

Having a product or campaign like this can be super profitable in several ways and your business can follow suit. Firstly, with pre-marketing, building hype for the product, new version or even a discount to the prospective consumer. A countdown or a pre-disclosed release date of a product builds anticipation and once the summer launch occurs customers are lined up to purchase.

The same can be done with pre-sales, enabling customers to order ahead of a product release. Publishers, film/documentary producers, and fashion brands do this flawlessly. How often have we seen trailers for films, an author pushing their book, or a runway show for a designer’s collection before the products even hits the shelves. Not only do the pre-orders or ticket sales raise capital, it gives these businesses hard data from the consumer, allowing them to pivot and become more targeted with advertising, price points, and communication.

Seasons provide more value than holidays, they are longer, and the experiences during them are felt by the consumer in most cases on a cultural level. Look to how the commercial market took Christmas, one day of the year, and turned it into a season of its own, the largest and most marketed time of the year. The value of the season to promote, reinvent and breakthrough to a new market cannot be understated.

You can do the same for your brand, by leveraging the coming summer season, the opportunity is there because so many have the time and desire to focus and potentially spend on the next big thing. Releasing a new product, a variant or hosting a promotion on existing products will bring an active consumer base incentive, excitement and anticipation about your product or upcoming launch to result in sales.

One of the keys to marketing is keeping the audience engaged, and the most effective way to do that is through suspense and anticipation. With summer right around the corner now is the opportunity to make it happen. Ask yourself, what is your strategy for selling your products this summer?