School Holiday season is a time for many workers with children to unwind with thoughts of the workplace and its pressures put to one side. However, in the world of marketing and social media, there is really no such thing as down time, in fact the summer holidays are potentially even busier periods for social media! When parents are on holiday this may mean they have more spare time to browse social media platforms.
Before you launch your School Holiday marketing campaigns, you need to plan them out. Our recommendation is to put together a content and activity calendar. This will enable you to keep track and ensures you are well prepared to deliver on targeted marketing campaign activity, such as those crucial social media posts. Ad-hoc marketing, without any forward planning, is more challenging to manage and can have a negative impact on delivering the results you want it to. It can also create confusion of your message and therefore confuse your target audience. Having a marketing calendar of activity helps when drafting the social posts, you are going to create to support the activity you have planned.
School Holiday Marketing Campaign Ideas
What makes a School Holiday campaign one that deliver results? Your starting point should be goals. What is your aim for this campaign. Once you know this you can start to plan. Take a look at our blog… Marketing Strategy On a Page (we wrote it a long time ago but it is still very relevant).
Once you’ve nailed your plan move onto your thoughts around consistency in messaging and about linking your marketing to the products or services you are selling.
Some of the campaigns that work well are the ones that encourage engagement and gives you the opportunity to reach existing and new customers as well as an opportunity to gather customer data to build into your contacts database.
People love freebies, and summer is the perfect time to entice your audience with a nice giveaway or competition. Think about what your brand has to offer to competition winners – it could be free products, a free trial of your service, or a discount code for your store. In return, your brand’s social media pages will potentially see higher engagement and reach from people sharing your competition post or tagging their friends for an entry in the giveaway.
Consider any in-store displays and advertising. As part of the in-store or online displays, think about any specific School Holiday products and bundles you might want to offer. These can be promoted in-store or through your marketing channels.
School Holiday Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to communicate to your customers and market your School Holiday campaign.
When you are producing an email marketing campaign, our tips for things to look out for and be aware of include:
- Visual impact: make sure it is visually appealing, on-brand and in-line with your campaign. Before we even look at the content of an email, we are drawn in (or not), using images. Consider seasonal variations of your branding that feature the same logos, primary colours, and fonts, but with extra summer flair!
- Offer up ideas and tips for the perfect School Holiday. By doing this you are giving something back to your contacts, which will mean they will be engaged for longer. For local businesses you could provide summer tips about your town. Best places for ice cream or where to go to cool down.
- Never forget the call to action. Consider what you want them to do once they have read the email – order a product, book a day out. Whatever it is, make sure the call to action is visible, eye-catching, and easy to follow.
School Holiday Social Media Campaign
Social media channels are the most direct and effective ways of communicating out to your customers, as well as a method of attracting new ones through raising the number of followers on your accounts. Ideally you want to convert your followers into subscribers to your email database or to download your app.
You can use your social media accounts to reinforce your School Holiday marketing campaign and ensure your posts are promoting and mirroring your wider campaign activity. For example, if you are running a competition, make sure you are creating social media posts that promote the competition and remind followers to enter. If there is any option to grow your email list
You could post helpful summer tips related to your business. You can do it for almost any industry: Skincare? Sun safety tips! Pet industry? How to keep your pets cool.
If it’s something that is more interactive, you can use social media as the source to share other people’s posts, pictures, and videos. You can also create bespoke hashtags and encourage your followers to share content using the hashtags you have created.
Summer Holidays can be a time to show the “human” side of your business on social media. Holiday snaps of management or employees relaxing poolside or a tweet about a barbeque or game of beach volleyball can be a great “soft sell” technique showcasing the “authentic” side of the company’s brand.
Whatever social media channels you use to promote your business, make sure that the content that you create is the type of content that works best on those channels and don’t be afraid to try something new either. We all know that images and short videos work well on Instagram, but how about trying out Reels and live stories? Twitter is great for short, sharp messaging, but why not try a poll?
Stuck for ideas? Try our 30 FREE Social Media Ideas, we’ll drop them straight into your inbox.
Review, Review, Review
You’ve run your campaign; you get to the end, and you move onto the next campaign. STOP! Before doing that, take an opportunity to review your results.
Ask yourself these questions…
- What will I STOP doing? Which marketing activities didn’t work and therefore I won’t do it for the next campaign.
- What will I KEEP doing? These activities worked well, and I will continue them for my next campaign.
- What will I START doing? I have a new idea I’d like a try in my next marketing campaign.
This process will allow your marketing plans to continuously evolve.
The Social Media Essentials membership was designed to help business owners like you find the resources you need to smash your social media goals. In our club we will provide ideas and support in the form of a monthly video, private Facebook group and editable Canva templates.
And it’s FREE.
Click here to find out more.
If you need more help getting your teeth stuck into social media or other marketing, please drop us an email to hello@pieceofcakemarketing.co.uk and we drop you information about our done for you services.
