It’s not too late to step up your summer marketing strategy for your brand. The lazy days of summer do not apply to the digital marketing world. And as we see life return to normal, businesses need to be on their toes.
While 2020 was about companies surviving, 2021 is about moving ahead. Brands should launch into the second half of the year with increased social media budgets, partnerships with influencers (both micro and macro), as well as a steady stream of quality content.
Read on for tips on how you can step up your summer marketing strategy to ensure you keep and grow, your audience.
Make Your Visuals Pop
Posting eye-catching visuals may seem pretty straightforward. But are you doing it? We’ve discussed this in a previous post, Top 3 Content Creation Hacks For Digital Ads, but it also carries into your organic social media accounts as well.
Summer is the time for fun, but it’s also a fantastic opportunity to take your social media marketing strategy up a notch! You need to have eye-catching visuals to stop your audience from scrolling past. Maybe they are on the beach, on a road trip, or on a lunch break at work. Whatever the case, making your visuals pop is an easy way to step up your summer marketing strategy.
As you can see in the Instagram grids below, A Beautiful Mess, B Squared Media, and Tone It Up, all have a consistent color scheme. So how can you achieve this with your brand?
Summer means bright or bold colors and vibrant outdoor spaces. If you have some of these featured in your branding or secondary visuals guide – bring that out and show them off! If your brand is more subtle, a clean but strong visual (like Tone It Up’s branding), can go a long way. You are sure to get your audience to stop scrolling, watch your IGTV clip, read the post, or visit your website.
[Source: A Beautiful Mess on IG]
[Source: B Squared Media on IG]
[Source: Tone It Up on IG]
Whatever the case, making your visuals pop is an easy way to step up this summer with some strategically pre-planned posts that’ll get you right where you want to be: in front of everyone’s eyes and hearts!
Step Up Your Content
You’ve caught the audience’s attention visually in a post, but now what? Step up your summer marketing strategy by backing it up with great content! One way to do so is with BTS (behind the scenes) footage.
Audiences want to feel a connection to brands, and earning brand loyalty requires action. The humanity of brands needs to come through on social accounts as well and BTS content is a great way to get started.
Joy the Baker’s drool-inducing photos of baked goods definitely make you want to click the link in her bio. But it’s not just the food that keeps her followers hungry for more. Joy has a great blog that features ‘Let It Be Sunday!’ where she highlights what she’s thankful for and drops a bulleted list of links to whatever is on her mind (music, articles, books). Joy also posts daily Instagram videos and speaks directly to her followers as friends. Therefore, you get to know the human behind the name.
Personable content can be as simple as BTS content related to your brand’s employees. Consumers want to feel a connection to brands before they purchase from them. And this is a great way to step up your content.
Step Up Your UGC
Another great way to step up your summer marketing strategy is to really go all-in on UGC (user-generated content). This is two-fold: no budget is used and your audience is included in the fun.
Selling a book? Then your call-to-action (CTA) should ask readers to tag you in their IG story showing a photo of the book and where they’re reading it.
Selling crafty products? The best CTA is to have fellow crafters tag your brand showing what they’re creating and your brand’s product. Your brand will be overwhelmed with the response because most people love to share what they’ve created.
Selling baby-related items? Have new parents tag your brand with their baby in the photo. New Wave Supply Co. is a great example of a small business that is sharing customer’s photos (with permission) that show their product.
There are so many advantages of utilizing UGC to step up your summer marketing strategy. Audience engagement coupled with not touching that marketing budget are both wins.
Step Up Your Influencer Strategy
Influencers are not going away, in fact, they are a vital part of an effective marketing strategy. The top pros to this are:
- Gaining a new audience via a 3rd party (your influencer partner).
- Saving on your marketing budget by leveraging micro-influencers.
The right partnership expands your reach and diversity in consumers. Millennials have a strong distrust when it comes to traditional advertising. In fact, a Yahoo Finance report showed that 52% of millennials trusted influencers more than traditional advertising.
Better Marketing offers these great tips on how to develop the perfect influencer collaboration.
Summer Plans
We’ve given you some examples of how to step up your summer marketing strategy, so now it’s time to get to work!
Checking in mid-year is important with marketing strategies. As we plunge into summer, it vital to make sure your marketing plans do not take the lazy route. Instead, amp things up!
What do you do to step up your summer marketing strategy? Let us know in the comments below!
Latest posts by Rachel Michaels (see all)
- How To Create A Blog Worth Reading - June 22, 2022
- Manage Your Online Reputation Like A Pro - May 11, 2022
- 4 Important Types Of Social Proof - April 20, 2022
