“Summertime and the livin’s easy,” unless you work in marketing. While an HVAC company, travel agency, or boardwalk thrift shop may live by this mantra, many marketers struggle to create fresh content and engaging promotions that capture their customers’ attentions during the summertime lull.

The 4th of July has passed and far from simply preparing for the next round of federal holidays, there are strategies your marketing company can take to bring in the business just like during the busy holiday season. These tips will get you results like the Christmas season does… just in July.

Expanding your Branding

Promotions are prime to surviving the summer lull- take a page from Amazon’s Prime Day.

It’s no secret that consumers are more likely to make a more expensive, long-term investment when they feel like they’re receiving a deal.

Your brand may choose to replicate summer trends, such as conducting your own shark week themed e-newsletter for your next promotion. This summer surprisingly saw the release of blockbuster hits. Consider creating Dunkirk or Planet of the Apes inspired promotional advertisements or giveaways that show your customers that your brand’s hand is still on the public’s pulse.

If you own a bar or restaurant, open up the patio and share some pictures with a clever caption. Focus on the bright colors of summer to run promotions for easy summertime living and chilling out.

While promotions may be a great short term investment, use the long summer days to take stock of your overall annual marketing calendar and budget. Consider looking through last year’s data and creating ways to strengthen your marketing campaigns through the fall and winter months.

School’s out and lots of students are looking for internships. With school being out, there’s also amazing opportunities for some community sponsorships.

Consider taking this opportunity to become involved in your local community: donations to charities, sponsoring a youth little league team or hosting your own branded event open to the public.  

Instead of leveraging your advertising resources to acquire new customers, utilize your resources to focus on retaining existing ones. It costs 5x more to acquire a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. Consider these brand building strategies:

  • Respond to online comments and reviews
  • Conduct interviews with industry thought leaders to publish over your blog
  • Attend industry conferences when available
  • Begin researching material for an ebook, white paper or academic paper to distribute

PPC and Social Targeting

With a lack of holiday events or major industry events, it’s the ideal time to put some spend into an online paid media campaign. Combined with traditional and broadcast advertising, you can tackle a multi-channel marketing blitz to target low hanging fruit.

Tis the retargeting season and conducting a multi-pronged sales blitz amidst lackadaisical competition will surely bring in lots of revenue. Be sure to target customers along every path of the buyer’s journey and leverage a targeting pixel or analytics tracking to discover customers who’ve previously abandoned cart purchases and other lost leads in your funnel.

Leverage these SEO strategies for your summer sales blitz:

  • Make sure your website is mobile-friendly
  • Create seasonal ad copy to be a click magnet
  • Send out personalized thank you emails for all purchases

Content Marketing Strategies

There’s no better time than the summer to begin adjusting that editorial calendar.

For content marketers, the focus should remain on content that can be easily consumed by travelers and people hanging out at the airports on their phones. This brings up the need for more interactive content, visually striking content, and even written content over new mediums.

Consider repurposing content into a new medium or resharing a piece of previously viral content over social media, which has the chance to compound again.

If your brand has decided to get involved in the community this summer then take this opportunity to tell some brand stories. Brand stories are incredibly effective and a company picnic with pictures or videos will resonate with customers loyal to your brand.

Summer provides wonderful settings and stills to post photos over Instagram. Consider the fact that 75% of users will take an action after seeing a brand’s post over Instagram.

Leverage Facebook and Instagram to conduct a more aggressive visual content marketing campaign. Again, focus on content that’s easily consumable and increases your brand’s visibility.

If you’re struggling for content creation ideas, consider promoting upcoming industry events your business will be involved with or future projects.

Be sure to take the summer months to better understand your target audience and what channels they interact with the most. Leverage these channels to promote seasonal content and make your brand top-of-mind.

With longer days and later nights, there’s never been more time to reach the customers who are most important to your business.