Hot Tips for Summer Marketing
By Jennifer Slaughter, C.R. Gibson/iota
Away we go into the lazy, hazy days of summer. It’s the perfect time to relax and put your feet up, right? Not quite… It’s time to get your marketing house in order! SnapRetail and its TrafficBuilder program have important tools that you can use over the summer months to get noticed and drive traffic to your store.
By embracing the connectivity of technology and the power of social media, you can easily coordinate your efforts. Let’s take a look at some summer trends and how they tie in to your complete summer marketing and merchandising program.
Outdoor (casual) entertaining
Backyard barbeques, poolside parties and picnics all require the perfect serveware and drinkware accents. Consumers are looking for style and practicality (read: no fuss, easy to clean and durable products). Boldly colored and patterned melamine and acrylic pieces serve up all kinds of possibilities. And with the economy influencing decisions to dine and entertain more at home, casual entertaining pieces offer wonderful ways to maximize outdoor living spaces.
Merchandising: Create impactful table settings around color or theme in your store.
Marketing: Send an eblast campaign to your customers, and make sure it ties in with your merchandising theme for a consistent, seamless shopping experience. This example from Dena shows a sunshine-kissed collection in action.
Christmas in July
Nothing like grabbing attention with a Christmas display in July! It is unexpected, festive and fun. Offer your customers incentives for buying their Christmas gifts and party wares early, and get your holiday business off to a great start! Imagine the fun of trimming the tree in your flip flops…
Merchandising: Set holiday scenes around your store…your customers will be dreaming of a white Christmas in no time.
Marketing: Develop special incentives for your customers to shop early. Put together a Christmas email campaign featuring new products. Post “sneak peeks” of products on Facebook and Twitter. The new Working Girls ornaments collection by C.R. Gibson offers many fun and chic pieces to highlight.
The beach!
It’s finally time to hit the beach, either in your mind or in the flesh. Really, no matter what time of year, dreaming of the beach lifestyle is always in style.
Merchandising: Beach it up with products your customers can take with them as they lay in the sand or infuse coastal themes into product displays of everyday items.
Marketing: Get the word out via Facebook, Twitter and email. The Seaside Collection from Susan Winget is a wonderful place to start!
Farmer’s Markets
Fresh fruits and vegetables abound at farmer’s markets throughout the summer. Shoppers need their own (stylish) bags to carry home this colorful bounty. In addition, cities across the country are beginning to pass and enforce single-use plastic bag bans. There’s never been a better time to promote reusable shopping bags and totes—a handy combo of fashion and functionality.
Merchandising: This farmer’s market-style crate by iota perfectly merchandises reusable iotaSAKS.
Marketing: Position your store as a resource for shoppers to find the latest bags and totes for summer use at the market, at the beach (double duty!) and more.
With a little creativity and planning, plus some help from TrafficBuilder, you can build exciting summer marketing campaigns that deliver.
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