Top 10 Creative Easter Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses

 

By: Michelle Loredo

The spring season is almost here and people are getting ready to celebrate the Easter Holiday!

In 2019, according to the National Retail Federation, adults planned on spending an average of $151 in Easter related items and expected $18.11 billion total expenditure for the year. The top three reasons that people shopped last year were due to tradition, store sales and social activities with family or friends.

This year, the Easter holiday will fall on the weekend of April 12, 2020. Here are 10 marketing ideas inspired by articles found on the Small Business Trends website that can help your small business Easter marketing strategy:

1. Get an Early Start: By starting your business’s promotion earlier than your competitors, you’re “beating out the noise.” This means, customers will see your business promotion first even if they aren’t actively looking for Easter related material. One way this can be done is by sending promotion “one” season ahead of when the selected holiday takes place.

   Example: Send Easter promotion slightly after Valentine’s Day for Spring/Easter promotion. This can help boost sales during the target season. 

2. Organize Content From the Start: Organizing your content before any seasonal promotion helps with the efficiency of your marketing strategy. Time allows to craft a plan that incorporates past ideas that were successful and creating new ideas based on what works with the businesses clientele.
   
   Example: Creating an Easter series that targets families. Constant content posted on social media showcasing employees and their Easter activities.
   

3. Making Your Campaign “Vibrant”: The springtime is associated with bright and cheerful colors. For your campaign, be sure to include the season’s aesthetic that customers associate with holiday.

   Example: Store displays should have cheerful Easter colors such as classic rose, pastel yellow and electric blue.

4. Build Reusable Assets: Investing for the future is the name of the game when it comes for marketing seasonal holidays. Your campaigns should give you resources for analysis and future use such as, email lists and social media pages concentrated around the chosen holiday. 

   Example: Email lists that you can use for other seasonal promotions.   

5. Web Presence: Having a clean and up-to-date website is beneficial to your business year-round. Items that should always be up-to-date on your business’s website are spelling and grammar, removal of backlinks that are not beneficial or broken and display of chosen holiday promotion.

   Example: If you have chosen Easter as a holiday you want take part, then add Easter decorations and or images on your website that allude to the holiday.

6. Social Media Presence:  Social media should always be up-to-date across all channels dedicated to your business. During seasonal periods, match the holiday and or season that you’re promoting. On social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) update the headers, posts and advertisements with a consistent color scheme for the season.

   Example: For Easter, the color scheme for the social media posts can be pastel yellow and electric blue. It is also very important to improve the relationship between your business and your existing and potential customers. Keep high and fast engagement with them on-and-off line.

7. Seasonal Based Services: Depending on your business, customizing services can be very beneficial. Customize your services based on customers’ needs at different times of the year.

   Example:  If you own a flower shop, you can promote special flower arrangements that are specific for Easter family gatherings. 

8. Work Tax Season into Your Marketing Plan: Tax refund season happens from March through April and Easter falls just in between. Marketing tax incentives and sales around this time can beneficially help your sales go up.

9. Competition: It never hurts to see what your competitors are doing. By looking at what they are doing, you can gain insight of what you want to include and exclude from your marketing campaign. It can also give you an idea of how customers will react to the Easter marketing efforts. This can also help you differentiate from your competitors.

10.  (Try) New Ideas: Each season gives an opportunity to experiment with different ways to reach your customers. Choose a new idea that aligns with your business and that will add positive contribution. Some new ideas that you could try are starting a YouTube channel, reaching out to influencers or creating a new social media platform.
    
    Example: If you’re a restaurant owner, you can start a YouTube channel that has special series for each season and events that is based on both internal and external celebrations.