For many businesses, summertime is the peak time to attract new customers and engage existing ones. Summer is the time of year when people leave their house the most, and get out to explore, so you want to be ensuring you’re taking advantage of this by marketing and promoting your business as much as possible.
We’ve put together some great ideas for small businesses this summer, to help you grab the attention of your customers and hopefully bring in sales. As with all marketing and promotion – don’t be afraid to get creative and get those imaginative thoughts flowing!
The best ideas are those that are unexpected and fun, or memorable to your customers. So embrace the summertime and take a read of these promotional ideas that are perfect for the summer season.
Idea 1: Send out a summer offer
If you haven’t introduced a summer offer or a summer discount code, now is the time. A simple seasonal gesture, such as 15% off all purchases made in July and August, can really help push people through the door and help close those sales. You can send out the offer in a variety of ways, from a email newsletter, to traditional letterbox flyers. The choice is up to you! You could even have your summer offer printed onto your staff uniforms using our printed t shirts – so that customers can’t possible miss out!
Idea 2: Give away a free gift
Free merchandise or a free gift, is a great idea to increase sales and get customers inside the store. We sell a variety of personalisable merchandise at Garment Printing and a lot of this is ideal for giving away as free gifts to push your summer marketing to new heights. Printed t shirts work fantastically, but we also do tote bags (another favourite) and even printed personalised sunglasses or caps. Choose the items you think will appeal to your potential customers the most, or whichever items are most relevant to your product or service. For example, if you own a pub, why not give away free beer coolers to use in your beer garden? If you own a gym, you could give away water bottles for free! Let your imagination run wild, the more creative the better!
Idea 3: Plan a promotional event
Planning a one-off promotional event is another great way to attract new and existing customers this summertime. People are always looking for places to go during the summer, so if you can put on a fun event and invite people along, chances are they’ll take you up on your invitation! Your event could be something small and intimate, or your could even do a ticketed event with a guestlist. During your event you could go the extra step and giveaway promotion merchandise, or even run competitions during the event to win items like personalised t shirts or tote bags.
Idea 4: Do pop-up marketing
Pop-up marketing is when you do something for one day (or even one hour) and pop-up a stall or shop to promote your services somewhere new. Summer is a great time to experiment with pop-up marketing, because the weather is better, so your choices of location double (if not triple!). A great idea that we love is to rent out an ice-cream van for a lunch hour, and give away free ice-cream cones for one hour in a prime location. It requires a little investment from you, but the exposure your business or brand will receive is so valuable!
Idea 5: Update your staff uniform for summer
If your staff wear a uniform, why not update it to something fun for the summertime? Getting every matching summer caps, or matching sunglasses is a fun way of engaging your staff, and it’s a great way to promote the business and how fun you are too!
Idea 6: Get on social media
If you’re not already on social media, then why not? Summer is the perfect time to join social media sites such as Instagram and facebook, because more people post on social media during the summer than any other time of year! Remember to regularly post about your business, but remember to use hashtags and tag your location too – this way your business posts will be much easier for people to find!
Idea 7: Create a photo opportunity
To go alongside the idea above, if you’re already on social media then why not try and get more people promoting your brand? By setting up an irresistible photo opportunity in your business you’re giving people the chance to post a photo of themselves and also use your brand hashtags too. Make sure you also brand up your photo opportunity, so everyone who sees it online knows where to go if they want to take a photo too. A photo opportunity could be anything! You could get one of the premade ‘instagram frames’ made up if you’re on a budget, or you could go big and get a flower wall made, or even a beach-style comedy head-hole backdrop. There’s so much opportunity for fun with this idea!
