InsightsKick-off Your Marketing Campaigns for Spring
The Chinese New Year is behind us and Spring is upon us. Are you prepared with a strategic marketing campaign that will make the most out of the season? If not, don’t worry we are here to help. Here are five digital and experiential tips along with inspiring examples of seasonal marketing done right.
1. Choose Your Spring Thematic
Each season has its own themes which encompass activities and festivities. Winter is typically focused on various festive holidays like the New Year and Christmas. For Spring, align your marketing campaign with seasonal themes and values such as starting fresh, focusing on health, or preparing for summer. Also, don’t forget about the holidays such as St. Patricks’ Day, Easter, and Mother’s Day. Taking advantage of the seasonal themes can help your message to resonate with your audience more personally.
2. Produce Themed Digital Content
Visuals are powerful and incorporating them into your marketing efforts with thematic elements can help to engage more people with your brand this Spring. Content types that are popular include themed graphics, GIFs, shareable videos, and pictures. While some of these can be rather easy and affordable to create such as GIF’s and pictures, others like video are more complex and will require a larger budget. With that being said, videos have the potential to make a greater impact than the simpler pictures or GIFs. However, all can be used in their own right to help your brand achieve your goals. A great example is the “Happiness” campaign AIC ran for Mother’s day in Singapore. AIC is a service care provider, and they created a video using the storytelling tactic. The main character is an 80-year old woman who is a mother and grandmother. She shares how important it is to her to be a part of her community and to maintain her independence. The simple, yet powerful story has been shared over 350,000 times.
3. Leverage a local event
Another great approach to raising brand awareness and driving engagement is leveraging a local event to promote your brand. Examples of local events include fairs, exhibitions, or festivals, which you can leverage through a sponsorship or other kind of partnership. One example of this tactic can be seen in Foodpanda’s HK Sevens campaign.
The event they leveraged was the 2016 Hong Kong Rugby Sevens which generates a lot of buzz every year. Foodpanda took advantage of it by offering their customers a chance to win tickets every time they placed an order through the Foodpanda app. The more customers ordered, the more likely they were to win. 
This worked great because it encouraged people to download the app, as well as motivated them to use it. You can implement this tactic by leveraging an existing event this Spring.
4. Run a Social Media Contest
Running a social media contest is an ‘old’ but still efficient tactic. The example above proves that it can be a great way to create engagement and reach a new audience. Here are a few tips to an effective campaign:
Make sure that the incentive (free products, gifts, trips…) is good enough to convince people to participate. Ensure the incentive is relevant to your product and messages. Make sure it's easy to participate in the contest. Ensure your contest requires engagement from users: comments, shares and / or follows.5. Organise an outdoor experiential event
Organising an outdoor experiential event is also a great way to stand out from your competitors and directly interact with consumers. You’ll need to pick a location where you are likely to get foot traffic from your target audience. Then, create an experience that ties to your brand and engages your audience.
Here’s a great example from McVities in UK. They set up an edible installation for Father’s Day. It was a structure made out of 500 individual Jaffa Cake gift boxes. They gave away more than 3,500 during the celebrations! The company shared their reasons for choosing the campaign. They found out that Father’s Day is forgotten by 57% of Brits and that the majority of Dad’s would like some kind of gesture made. Furthermore, 39% of Dad’s wanted something food-related. McVitie answered these findings, with this engaging and impactful campaign. It was good because it looked into the market research of their target market and used that to inspire their event. It was relevant, emotionally engaging, and well-received.
Don’t let Spring slip by you without taking advantage of the marketing opportunities this time of year. Make an impact by coming up with Spring-themed campaigns, producing themed digital content, running a themed social media contest for a local event, or organizing an outdoor experiential event. These tips can help you to start fresh this Spring and grow, precisely what this season is for!
