Fall is in the air. It’s the season for change, the time for reflection, and the time to start planning for the holidays. As a business owner, it is the season of balance and preparation. You’re managing your day-to-day work while looking months ahead to be ready for the end-of-the-year and Black Friday rush. At Business Warrior, we wanted to help take some of the stress off your shoulders with some fresh fall advertising ideas. 

Why is Seasonal Advertising Important?

Seasonal advertising is more than capitalizing on holidays like Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Mother’s or Father’s Day — it’s changing how you advertise your service or product year-round. 

It’s about targeting hot search terms before people know they want them, capitalizing on them while they’re popular, and then transitioning into the next big thing. In other words, seasonal ads are your best bet to capitalize on highly-searched terms before people stop being interested in them for another year. 

For example, most American families aren’t going to want to buy beach umbrellas when it’s November. They’ll instead be interested in holiday decorations, gift ideas, sweets and candies, winter gear, and heavier clothes. If you shift your marketing strategy to match those wants, then you drive up your potential of generating more interest and more sales in your product or service. 

That’s seasonal advertising: creating a strategy that is unique to your business and works with the four different seasons. It can be as straightforward as changing what you’re advertising, like the example above, or it can be creative and bring in seasonal elements, such as fall leaves or summer sun. 

Perfect Fall Advertising Ideas for Any Business

You don’t need to be in retail to capitalize on fall advertising ideas. Just because you can’t circulate your products based on the season, doesn’t mean you can’t be an expert seasonal advertiser. These ideas work for every business owner, no matter your product or service.

Say Goodbye to Summer

In the beginning of fall, you can theme your ads and their content as a send-off to summer. Get more customers through the door by giving them discounts on summer specials, if you had any, or start a new one! Announce these end-of-season specials with marketing emails and deals, and on your social media accounts.

Push for Engagement

Pushing for engagement is always in season. The best part about it is that you don’t even need to advertise to do it. Encourage customer interaction on social media whenever possible by celebrating national food days, seasonal holidays, posting quizzes or elimination games — anything that pushes for more comments, shares, and reactions. 

You can try amplifying your social media presence with a custom hashtag and a unique giveaway as well. This will not only help bring more traffic to your social accounts but also make your brand more memorable to customers.

Embrace the PSL (and Other Trends)

For so many people, the PSL (pumpkin spice latte) is synonymous with fall. You can’t have one without the other. Instead of running from the cinnamony smell, embrace it

That means bringing in pumpkin, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and running with it. Joke about it in content, make references, add photos, memes — anything that’s on trend with the fall season. It doesn’t have to be all about PSL either. Bring in fall colors, autumn leaves, acorns, pumpkins, football — anything that is fall is fair game. 

Participate in Small Business Saturday

Don’t forget about our favorite fall holiday: Small Business Saturday. It’s on Saturday, November 27 this year, which means you can get a full week of content from it. Consider participating by offering deals and promotions to celebrate your business and thank customers for visiting your store! We recommend highlighting them on social media too (it drives engagement)! 

When to Transition From Fall Ads into Holiday Ads? 

It’s September, which means the holidays are right around the corner. You may be thinking, “there’s still a couple months between now and Thanksgiving.” From a social standpoint, you’re absolutely correct, but from a business standpoint, a couple of months goes by like that. 

As a business owner, you don’t want to miss the holiday sweet spot for ads. Too early and people don’t care. Too late and everyone’s already bought from your competitors. So when do you transition out of your fall advertising ideas and start your holiday marketing campaigns?

Here are a few general tips that are good to keep in mind when planning your holiday marketing strategy:

• Plan early, and plan more than you think
• Simplicity to key
• Be ready to react and adapt
• Use a more content-driven approach
• Be prepared for more competition
• Avoid false urgency

With all of this, remember to market to both new and existing consumers, as both are just as important during the holiday rush! 

Am I Set Up to Run Ads?

If you’re starting to get into the ads game, there is a lot to set up and keep track of. Before you start turning your fall advertising ideas into an actionable campaign, download Business Warrior to make sure you have everything you need to get started. Your personalized dashboard will show you if you’re ready to run Google and Facebook ads and so much more. It’s a must-have for first time advertisers! 

From there, grab your PSLs, sprinkle some cinnamon on your ads, and have fun ushering in the new season with your customers.