Do these feelings sound familiar? Excitement in the air when summer finally arrives. Bittersweetness when you trade shorts for new fall jeans and reflect on summer memories. Joy at the warmth of a home-cooked meal with friends and family while winter snow falls outside. Rejuvenation breathing in crisp, clean air on a green spring morning.
Chances are you’ve experienced how impactful seasons are on your—and your customer’s—state of mind. Each season inspires different decision making and buying habits. An effective seasonal marketing strategy leverages the strength of a solid video plan to drive the right message at the right time. Ultimately, your company builds a better connection with your target audience.
Knowing how seasons effect your customers will help inform your annual video marketing plan. Consider holidays or special days unique to your customer’s industry (for instance: moving season for real estate or back-to-school time). Because we’re talking about video here, it is also important to know the facts about how seasons effect video production.
- How setting your seasonal marketing plan in advance will benefit your business. Go →
- Important considerations while building your seasonal plan:
- How to get started. Go →
WHY SET YOUR SEASONAL MARKETING PLAN IN ADVANCE?
Cost:
Planning your marketing in advance is best because it allows you to distribute costs over the course of the year or through a retainer agreement with your video partner.
Efficiency:
Organized content leads to a smooth campaign rollout. Breaking it out into seasons or business quarters can help you better coordinate to hit your marketing goals. Plan your video shoots ahead so you can efficiently distribute your campaigns at the precise moment your audience starts thinking about the next season. Doing so too soon or too late can cause you to miss crucial sales opportunities. Timing is everything.
Effectiveness:
People make purchases based on their emotions. How does a product or service make them feel? Do they feel they can trust the brand? Aligning your video campaign with your customers seasonal mindset will improve the reception of your message. Video—a medium that shows and tells—is the most effective way to appeal to your customers. The right video at the right time will maximize the impact of your campaign.
Create Urgency:
Embrace holidays to create urgency among your customers. You can tie these in with limited time pricing or special offers.
SEASONAL PLAN BUILDING
Audience
The first step is to assess your audience. Who do you intend to reach? If you already have a solid idea of who your customers are, great! If you need some help, customer research can be useful. Take the time to reach out to existing customers and ask some questions.
You could: Collect data through a survey; schedule a conversation with your favorite customers, or—better yet—interview them on camera for a customer testimonial (which is a double whammy because it gives you great video content while you conduct research!). Then use the data to start some buyer personas for reference.
Seasonal Insights
Now that you have your target audience in mind, consider these Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter feelings, associations, holidays, and events. Also discover seasonal effects on video production shoots and how to plan ahead. For a quick reference, feel free to view or download the INFOGRAPHIC.
With the infographic or list below as a reference, make a list of seasonal activities that influence your customers. (Note: You may need to add to this list if you have a niche audience.) Narrow it down to what your company can realistically target through the year.
Spring
Feelings and Associations:
Crisp, fresh, new beginnings, positivity, creativity, pastels, fresh blooming flowers, green initiatives, innovation.
Holidays and Events:
St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day, Moving season begins for real estate, enter allergy season.
Timing for Video Production Shoots:
Weather is starting to warm.
Trees are light green and budding, grass is sprouting.
People are eager to get outside.
Rain and soggy grass can affect shoots.
Campaign Ideas:
This might be a good time to launch an awareness campaign, or to nudge those contacts near the end of the buyer journey into committing to a purchase.
Create a video introducing your company’s green initiatives. Whether you’ve just started or have already been doing it for years, this is a great time to showcase your green thinking.
Launch an awareness campaign for an innovative new product or service.
Planning ahead:
When scheduling an outdoor shoot, consider tucking in a backup day on the video production calendar in case of rain.
Summer
Feelings and Associations:
Vacation, happiness, freedom, positivity, longer days, backyard barbeques, memory making, confidence, ways to cool off in the heat, bright, sunny, colorful, patriotism, pride.
Holidays and Events:
4th of July, Father’s Day, Memorial Day.
Timing for Video Production Shoots:
Great time for bright, sunny outdoor shoots.
Trees are green, grass is full.
Extreme heat is a factor to consider, so keeping to the beginning or end of Summer can be wise when possible.
Campaign Ideas:
This is the time to capture any footage of people enjoying themselves in the outdoors, whether it be your storefront, a neighborhood park, driving a convertible, or hiking through fields and streams.
Service feature or product demonstration.
Showcase your vacation or incentive program to employees.
Build a recruiting video series.
Planning ahead:
Need your video to mimic summer out of season? Depending on the situation, lighting experts can add just the right color temperature to give off the feeling of the sun. Costume can decide on a bright, lightweight wardrobe.
Fall
Feelings and Associations:
Fall is a time of transition or change. Preparation is top of mind (for the winter or for what comes next). Trees change colors, leaves are falling, backyard fires, flannel, feasts, family, football, introspection, bittersweetness, reds, oranges, yellows, and browns.
Holidays and Events:
Back to School, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday.
Timing for Video Production Shoots:
This is also a great time to capture outdoor shoots as the weather starts to cool off and the lighting becomes softer.
Capture brilliant autumn leaves.
Be aware of shorter days, so there’s less daylight for production time.
Campaign Ideas:
Autumn leaves add an element of change or preparation to your outdoor shoots (or outside the windows of your indoor shoots).
Customer testimonials or case studies to reflect on past success.
Tell your brand story with an “about us” video that reflects on what got you started.
Outdoor interviews can set a reflective mood.
Planning ahead:
Fall is often the best time to begin your holiday shoots. A professional video crew will know just the right video techniques (props, wardrobe, lighting, green screen) to express that warm, holiday feel even though it’s still around the corner.
Winter
Feelings and Associations:
Nostalgia, memory-making, closeness, warmth, comfort, joy, feast, family & friends, bundling up indoors, holiday travel.
Holidays and Events:
Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, Super Bowl, Chinese New Year, President’s Day, Quarter 4 ends while Quarter 1 begins,
Timing for Video Production Shoots:
Great time for your indoor shoots.
Campaign Ideas:
If you have a storefront, let video invite customers in to the warm, welcoming interior of your building. Actors should have a wardrobe to match the time of year (think sweaters, hats, coats, boots). Depicting someone in a tank top would feel out of place.
Let them stay in by tempting them with online shopping offers. Be prepared by putting together a video with a snow day offer in advance.
Planning Ahead:
If you have an annual seasonal sale or event that you advertise, capture b-roll footage from this year to put into next year’s campaign. That way it’s ready to roll.
Spring is just around the corner! While everyone recovers from the holidays, get ahead by scheduling your outdoor shoots with your video partner now.
Building Your Schedule with an Experienced Video Partner
Now that you have a list of campaign ideas that work for your business, it’s time to begin building out your video marketing schedule.
We recommend starting with the launch date for each campaign, then working backwards to create a timeline. List each activity that needs to be completed on your calendar and give your team a realistic amount of time to plan, develop, launch, and track each campaign. During this process, it is important to talk with your video partner. Video experts can set realistic expectations for cost and production time.
From what we’ve seen in Hollywood movies, it’s easy to envision a glamorous production set. Few realize there are actually three stages to make a video: pre-production, production, and post-production. Of these, the latter is often the most underestimated because it happens behind the scenes. A lot of work goes into weaving footage, graphics, animation, and sound into an impactful video or series. (Learn about Silverback’s proven production process.)
Experience is key. A knowledgeable video partner can help you by setting a timeline for video delivery that fits within your campaign schedule. If you choose your partner carefully, they can also fulfill the whole campaign through planning, production, launch, and tracking. In addition, professional producers know that something like capturing the feel of winter in a scene in early September requires different prep work than shooting in December.
There are ways to mimic the mood of other seasons with creative solutions like:
• Expert lighting
• Props and wardrobe
• Professional talent
• Green screen
• Video special effects, like color correction or animation
Video experts are sensitive to the subtle characteristics needed to evoke the right feelings to tell your story effectively. That said, these professionals can also advise against “faking” a certain season in situations where there’s no substitute for the real thing. Footage of families joyfully sledding down St. Louis’s famous Art Hill should be real. And to capture that scene, a video partner is ready to roll when the first snowflake falls and the forecast for snow is high.
This is why having a dedicated video partner can help you not only with your campaign schedule, but the success of the overall seasonal marketing plan.
Your Video Campaign Message
To build a message that both resonates with your audience and hits your goals, outline the following for each video in your campaign:
• The story you want to tell or the customer journey
• Feelings and associations your campaign should evoke in your target audience
• A clear call to action that you want your customer to take
Watch this AT&T Small Cells video as an example.
Story: AT&T wanted to make municipalities comfortable with small cell technology. Where big cell towers take up a lot of space and can be disruptive to small communities, they wanted to show how inconspicuous, flexible small cells are a better fit. The up-and-coming community in Festus, Missouri was a prime success story.
Feelings and associations evoked:
Confidence, positivity, excitement, community pride, innovation.
Spring/Summer was the optimal time of year to launch this video campaign to evoke the vibrancy of the Festus community. The viewer enters the scene over the bright, cheery Festus Main Street. From green aerial vistas to individual citizens interacting seamlessly with their phone technology, this video positively blends technology and life. Interviewees are confident, surrounded by wide, open outdoor Festus scenes. Choosing outdoor video production during Spring/Summer plays a huge role in the overall feeling expressed.
Clear call to action:
A clean AT&T logo animation wraps up the video portion of this communications campaign nicely. This video was embedded on a web or landing page that contained additional details and the call to action.
This is just one example how using the feeling of a season can set the mood in your story and in the mind of the viewer.
Getting Started is Easy
As you can see, each season offers unique opportunities to communicate with your audience. Having an experienced video production partner on your side will help you target the right message at the right time.
Partnering now ensures you a prime spot on the production schedule, along with benefits—like cost, efficiency, and campaign effectiveness—that advance planning brings. Consultations don’t cost a thing. To talk to a video expert, give us a call at 866.828.8384 or…
