Member Article

Tips to maximise your Easter marketing

With last year’s Easter sales boosting retail spend by almost 5 per cent [1], the use of promotional products is an effective way of raising a brands’ profile. Indeed, according to the British Promotional Merchandise Association, it is a marketing strategy worth a staggering £840 million every year. Allison Cardona, the CEO of the Custom Cookie Company gives her tips on how marketers can make the most of this time of the year and increase their competitive advantage.

Be relevant

Ensuring that a campaign is engaging, relevant and practical to the target audience is essential in any marketing strategy. A way of doing this could be handing out ‘freebies’, including promotional products branded with a company’s logo.

For example, a barista could hand out free embossed coffee mugs or a jeweller can give away cleaning kits. Food, in particular, has a wide appeal and as Easter is intrinsically linked with sweet treats, a hand-crafted snack, such as a cookie, is a perfectly timed product for ongoing brand awareness.

Personalise

Connections are more impactful when a product or service is bespoke – it creates added value and is more likely to deliver results. What’s more, a gift, service or campaign branded with the company logo is key for increased memorability and growing market share.

Just think, if a company were to deliver plain, unbranded Easter snacks to customers they may appreciate the gesture but will be unlikely to remember the company behind it. An offering which is branded – with either a logo or corporate colours - delivers an immediate impression, forging a powerful association between organisation and individual.

Get creative

With the emergence of spring, Easter signals a time for renewal, warmer weather and longer days. For astute marketers, the season can offer interesting opportunities for inventive and unexpected brand positioning. These should be reflected in the promotional product offering, with select items that are personal, useful and above all, fun.

Why not incorporate an egg painting event or treasure hunt into your marketing campaign? Using sweet treats, such as cookies baked into clues will not only boost engagement, but demonstrates a commitment to creativity and originality, gold dust for marketers.

Harness Social Media

Social media remains a great way to reach customers with the click of a button or a like. It also increases external advocacy and engagement because users do not feel like they are being sold products directly, but simply asked to participate in a fun activity.

Allowing a brand to be more humorous and experimental, a company might run a sweepstakes competition, photo contest or a caption challenge for a chance to win seasonal sweet treats. Use specific hashtags to monitor to boost interaction and monitor its real-time reach.

[1] www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2015/04/early-easter-boosts-retail-sales (figures from the British Retail Consortium)

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Custom Cookie .