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No matter what your eCommerce brand sells, sharing seasonal content is an absolute must. With well-timed marketing, you have a chance to capitalize on seasonal relevance and spiking consumer demand to drive traffic to your products.
Discover how you can navigate eCommerce seasonality and leverage seasonal content for long-term visibility and sales growth.
What Is eCommerce Seasonality and Why Should It Drive Your Content Strategy?
Most eCommerce businesses experience fluctuating demand throughout the year. There are times when demand is especially high compared to your average sales figures, and others when demand seems to wane. That’s normal.
eCommerce seasonality refers to this natural rise and fall of consumer demand around holidays, seasons, and cultural moments. Most of the causes of fluctuation are out of your control. What you can control is your response.
As you look back over your sales and marketing data, you’ll be able to identify the periods when demand typically spikes. Predictable patterns of higher buying intent and search volume often appear at specific times of year. By scheduling appropriate content around these periods, you can take advantage of the shifts and outperform your competitors.
There’s a common misconception that you need to have seasonal products to share seasonal content. But seasonal fluctuations are universal. Even if your brand doesn’t sell holiday-specific products, you will experience demand shifts that are worth planning around in your marketing efforts.
How Do You Build a Seasonal eCommerce Content Calendar?
Effective seasonal eCommerce content goes beyond sharing a Happy New Year post or announcing a back-to-school sale. To make a real impact, you need to be intentional about what you’re posting and how it affects customers. Seasonal content shouldn’t be separate; it’s part of your content strategy, and the end product should reflect that.
Follow these steps to create your seasonal content calendar.
1. Start With Historical Sales Data
It’s easy to list off periods when overall consumer demand generally goes up. There’s back-to-school season, summer vacations, and the winter holidays. However, your eCommerce brand’s peak seasons don’t necessarily line up with these periods.
Rather than simply assuming which times of year are most important, start by looking at your historical data. Compare eCommerce sales and marketing metrics month-by-month over the last few years to find patterns. You need to identify the peaks for your business.
As you’re comparing monthly sales data, rank the top three periods when demand spikes. They may, in fact, be the holiday shopping season, back-to-school, and summer, or you may notice more product-specific patterns.
Whenever they are, rank these seasonal periods from greatest to lowest impact on your eCommerce revenue and plan your content depth accordingly. Focus more on in-depth content on higher-impact periods and put less emphasis on lower-impact periods.
2. Map Content to the Customer Journey
As always, please ensure your seasonal content connects back to the customer journey. Customers at different stages respond to different messages, so you need a variety of content to connect with all of them in your seasonal campaigns.
Each stage maps to different content channels:
- Awareness:Â Create seasonal blog articles and social media posts.
- Consideration: Send out emails and guides related to the concerns and priorities consumers have in this season.
- Conversion: Share seasonal promotions that link to tailored new landing pages.
When creating targeted marketing campaigns tied to your eCommerce seasonality, tailor content for all of these channels.
3. Align Content With Inventory
Before you start planning your campaign, check in with inventory management. Align your retail calendar with inventory management so you’re never driving seasonal traffic to products that aren’t in stock. Coordinating with the operations team ahead of time helps you make the most of your increased traffic during holiday sales.
Don’t wait until the last minute, either. Brands often start seasonal marketing campaigns only two to three weeks before demand peaks. But winning brands start earlier. Content should go live six to eight weeks before a seasonal sales peak to make sure you have enough time for search-engine indexing and promotion.
What Content Should You Include in a Seasonal eCommerce Calendar?
Your seasonal content doesn’t have to be all about the holiday or event, though that can certainly be part of it. Try these types of content as part of your seasonal eCommerce campaigns.
Holiday and Event-Based Content
When holidays roll around, online shoppers are always looking for tips on what to buy. They’re overwhelmed, unsure, and under pressure, at least until they find your helpful holiday content.
Share holiday season content staples like:
- Gift guides
- Countdowns
- Curated collections
At elk Marketing, we’ve found these types of tailored articles and posts consistently perform well, especially in Q4 for the winter holidays. Don’t limit your holiday content to the winter, though. Smaller seasonal events like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and back-to-school often have less competition and strong conversion potential.
Trend-Driven Content
Trendy isn’t a dirty word. Some business leaders assume that chasing trends is a recipe only for short-term success. But when something’s trending, there are more eyes on it. You can capitalize on that and build it into increased seasonal sales, especially if you get in on it early.
Get ahead of seasonal trends using search data to identify rising queries about four to six weeks out from the season. Then build content around those trends before your competitors do. That lets you get your content out there when customers are most likely to be online shopping during sales peaks.
Pair your direct promotional material with editorial content as well. Seasonal marketing can be more impactful when backed up with useful content like how-tos and buying guides. Sharing content that’s relevant and valuable at the right moments builds trust with your target customers, which also boosts your organic reach.
Email and Social as Amplifiers
The last thing you want is to put a lot of care into your seasonal content, only for it to get lost and go unseen by your potential customers. Organic reach is tricky, but it’s not all out of your hands. Try boosting the visibility of your content through email and social media.
Email can increase conversions. Instead of batch sends to your entire list, create segmented seasonal campaigns based on past consumer behavior. Use other segmentation strategies if you don’t have the relevant customer purchase data.
Use social media to boost awareness. Too many eCommerce brands treat seasonal social media posts as an afterthought. Instead, carefully plan visual assets that complement your blog and email content, then share your social media posts at the same time.
Make the Most of Seasonal Peaks
Sharing seasonal content offers more than a momentary boost; it can fuel long-term visibility and engagement for your eCommerce brand. elk Marketing understands how to leverage seasonal content and other search engine optimization strategies to make sure your products show up where customers are searching and position your brand for increased sales year-round. Contact us at elk Marketing today to get started on a customized plan to grow your eCommerce business.
FAQs
Should eCommerce brands create seasonal content even without holiday-specific products?
Yes, even if you don’t sell holiday-specific products, it’s worth creating seasonal content for your eCommerce brand. Nearly every product category across online businesses experiences seasonal fluctuations in demand, and you can capitalize on eCommerce seasonality by sharing well-timed content. Seasonal content can boost your visibility on search engines, capture high-intent traffic, and keep your brand relevant year-round.
How far in advance should seasonal content be planned?
You can’t wait until right before a holiday or season arrives to start planning your seasonal content; you’ll run out of time. Try to begin planning your content around six to eight weeks before you typically see the sales peaks. A longer schedule gives you time for content production as well as SEO indexing and promotion.
Does seasonal content help with organic rankings?
Yes, consistently publishing timely content can boost organic search rankings for your online store. Search engines are constantly evaluating topical authority to decide which websites rank highest, and sharing seasonal content strengthens your brand’s authority in your industry. Mix seasonal content into your evergreen posts as part of your marketing strategies to improve your long-term organic visibility.
