Easy Summer Marketing Ideas for 2022
It’s finally the first day of summer! You know what that means: sunshine, barbecues, trips to the beach, and new marketing campaigns. This is one of the busiest seasons for shopping and splurging, so in today’s blog, we’ll be giving you a few ideas to help ramp up your summer marketing.
Get Out and Get Involved with Local Community Events
Getting outside and engaging with your community is one of the best things about summer. Locally-based marketing can help you implement an excellent and effective seasonal strategy. The best part, besides working on your tan and meeting new people, is that you don’t have to plan the events yourself – it’s already been done for you by the organizations!
Another thing you can do is take it one step further and actually sponsor a local event. This is highly effective at increasing your exposure before, during, and after the event is done. You can also advertise your involvement through print or digital ads, social media, or your newsletter.
Add Summer Slogans and Colours
This can be done during any season, but summer has some of the best themes of the year. Add a touch of surf, sand and sun to your ads with phrases and puns like “fun in the sun,” “beachy-keen,” “beat the heat with these cool deals,” “make a splash with us,” or “ride the tide this summer,” etc. Update your visuals by including summer colours or seasonal flowers, activities and scenes. Summer never feels as long as winter does and there is an expiration date to what you can post, so take advantage of all the play on words and fun colour palettes that are available.
You can also hashtag your social media posts with summer-themed tags, such as #sunsoutbunsout, #funinthesun, #summerlove – you get the idea.
Run a Summer Contest or Promotion
Who doesn’t love entering a contest and winning free stuff? Whether you’re promoting a special event or you’re trying to increase your engagement and follower count, contests and sweepstakes are an excellent way to achieve your goals.
Don’t forget to have fun with it! Use this opportunity to connect with and collaborate with local events, cultural centres, sports teams or anything that aligns with your own brand and vision. This example isn’t summer-themed, but my dad once took us to a Toronto Raptors game and since they scored over 100 points, we were able to get free slices of pizza with a purchase of pop at Pizza Pizza. Not a bad idea!
You can add a summer twist to this by offering a promotion or a percentage off goods and services if the temperature exceeds a certain amount, or if your local sports team wins a summer tournament.
Take Advantage of Summer Holidays
Of course, this list of summer marketing ideas wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Canada Day and the Fourth of July (or National Ice Cream Day…) Summer is filled with friends, fun, festivals, good food and events, and there is a wealth of marketing ideas and approaches that can help you reach a new audience and promote your business. Take advantage of these holidays: offer a promotion or change your target ad colours – it’s a good way to refresh your copy and creative to keep things dynamic.
As if summer wasn’t already awesome enough for marketing inspiration, you can round it off by promoting Labour Day and, you guessed it, Back to School!
Back-to-School and Ready for Fall
This is arguably one of the biggest shopping events of the year, even if it comes with an air of dread for the kids.
There are a lot of angles you can play with back-to-school, and it will all depend on your business and what you offer. When I was in university, there was a GoodLife Fitness close to campus that always offered a back-to-campus special that discounted personal training services for people looking to get back into shape. If you’re a coffee chain, you can offer $1 off coffee for parents who dropped their kids off or picked them up from their first day of school, or you can give a special discount for teachers. There is so much room for creativity with this time of year, so get brainstorming and have fun!
In addition to these, check out our Top Trends in Digital Marketing as well as for Social. If you want to take this time to give your workspace another seasonal clean, see our blog on Cleaning Your Workspace!
See you next time,
Petra Nyhuis, Account Manager