Ecommerce Content Marketing Strategies for Summer
The onset of summer often happens so gradually we miss the signs. But as days get longer, people alter their behaviors accordingly. They seek out sun, nature and new travel experiences. Students and teachers enjoy a break from classes. Families take trips. Backyard barbecues, picnics and poolside days become popular go-to activities for people of all ages.
Savvy merchants understand how important it is to capitalize on this seasonal energy. One way to do so is by implementing e-commerce content marketing strategies for summer. The key is striking the right balance between evergreen and time-sensitive content focusing on the sales opportunities summer brings.
Here are four ideas you can implement for summer.
Seasonal How-To Videos
The video will make up 81 percent of consumer internet traffic by 2021 according to some estimates. This presents an opportunity for e-commerce retailers to engage with shoppers in this medium.
How-to videos are versatile in the sense they can be evergreen or timely. Summer is an excellent time to release seasonally focused how-to videos pertaining to your brand and product catalog. For example, a furniture store could create a video showing homeowners how to set up their homes and yards for a summer party.
Gift Guides: Holidays and Life Events
Summer is a hallmark time for memorable life events: holidays, graduations, family reunions and more. Most of these occasions necessitate bringing a gift. Summer-themed gift guides never go out of style because, when executed correctly, they help consumers make quick decisions without having to hunt through pages and pages of products. You can promote these helpful pieces of content via social media to reach busy consumers on the go.
Summer is also an ideal time to conduct an enterprise ecommerce platform comparison to make sure your current solution has the bandwidth and functionality to perform through the upcoming holiday spikes during summer’s traffic lulls. Your platform should also support your content and social media strategies for maximum impact.
Vacation-Focused Content
The classic American road trip or family vacation may seem like an antiquated notion. But more than one-third of people in the U.S. (35 percent) took a vacation 50 miles or more from their home with two or more immediate family members in 2017. A majority of these travelers took more than one vacation. This means there’s marketing gold in these hills.
The most successful vacation-focused content will anticipate travelers’ wants and needs before, during and after their vacations. What wants and needs can your product lineup fulfill in terms of helping people have a smooth, fun vacation filled with picture-perfect moments? And how can you present this information without taking a direct sales approach?
Here are just a few examples: A clothing e-commerce company may publish travel guides for certain seasonal destinations, complete with weather-related advice pertaining to fashion. A sporting goods retailer may round up hotspots for hobbyists traveling to a new area, like golf courses, rock climbing summits and running trails. A cosmetics brand could write a blog post about simplifying your beauty regimen for traveling, especially considering flights restrict containers of liquid in carry-on bags.
The key to executing any of these e-commerce content marketing strategies for summer is to produce genuinely timely, helpful content—no matter its specific format or subject matter. Content is more than just a way to promote your brand or product catalog; it should lend genuine value to shoppers as they go about their lives. This ensures you’ll be producing something people actually want to consume, rather than thinly veiled sales pitches.