BOOST YOUR MARKETING WITH HOLIDAYS! Clint Fontanella on Seasonal Strategies

Summary

Podcast Summary: "BOOST YOUR MARKETING WITH HOLIDAYS! Clint Fontanella on Seasonal Strategies"

Podcast Information:

• Title: Small Business Quick WINS w/ Jay Schwedelson Presented By Thryv
• Host: Jay Schwedelson
• Guest: Clint Fontanella, Content Expert at Thrive
• Episode Title: BOOST YOUR MARKETING WITH HOLIDAYS! Clint Fontanella on Seasonal Strategies
• Release Date: February 13, 2025

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Introduction to Seasonal Marketing

In this engaging episode of Small Business Quick WINS, host Jay Schwedelson teams up with Clint Fontanella, Thrive’s content expert, to explore the powerful impact of seasonal marketing on small business growth. The duo delves into how leveraging both traditional and unconventional holidays can significantly boost customer engagement and drive business success.

The Power of Seasonal Marketing

Jay opens the discussion by emphasizing the significance of aligning marketing efforts with seasonal events, even if they seem unrelated to the business’s primary offerings. He states, “Your marketing is at the center of your business. It drives your business” (00:00). This sets the stage for a comprehensive conversation on integrating seasonal themes into various marketing strategies.

Leveraging Traditional Holidays

Clint concurs, highlighting that seasonal marketing allows businesses to view their customer lifecycle through a different lens. He mentions, “Seasonal marketing is a way to say, 'Hey, let's think about the timeliness of it versus some of the other components in marketing'" (03:20). The discussion moves to practical applications, such as using heart emojis in email subject lines around Valentine’s Day to increase open rates. Jay provides a relatable example: “Love is in the inbox and this deal won't last” (03:36), illustrating how thematic elements can capture customer attention without being overtly salesy.

Tapping into "Fake" Holidays for Maximum Engagement

One of the episode's highlights is the exploration of “fake” or lesser-known holidays that can provide unique marketing opportunities. Jay introduces the concept with enthusiasm: “There are these fake holidays... even if they're not fully recognized, incorporating them into your marketing can do really well” (05:02). He cites Random Act of Kindness Day (February 17th) and National Pi Day (March 14th) as prime examples. Clint shares a personal anecdote about a company leveraging Pablo Picasso's birthday to promote custom prints, which unexpectedly increased site traffic (05:55).

Practical Strategies and Examples

The conversation includes actionable strategies for integrating seasonal themes into marketing campaigns:

• Emojis and Thematic Language: Using relevant emojis and catchy phrases related to the holiday can make marketing messages stand out. For instance, Jay suggests email subject lines like “3.14 reasons you'll love this deal” for Pi Day (07:05).

• Aligning with Sporting Events: March Madness serves as another powerful tool for engagement. Jay remarks, “Jumping on board that with your marketing... is a win” (07:24), suggesting that even non-traditional businesses can find creative ways to incorporate such events into their campaigns.

• Audience-Centric Approach: Clint emphasizes the importance of understanding your audience’s interests. He advises, “Researching your customer journey and just thinking about... is a slam dunk if I can” (08:26). This ensures that seasonal marketing efforts resonate authentically with the target demographic.

Leveraging Technology for Seasonal Ideas

As a practical takeaway, Jay recommends using AI tools like ChatGPT to brainstorm relevant holidays and promotional ideas tailored to a specific business. He explains, “Whatever industry you're in... ChatGPT will give you back a list of all the upcoming holidays with dates and how ridiculous these fake holidays are” (09:04). This approach allows businesses to discover unique marketing opportunities they might not have considered otherwise.

Conclusion and Actionable Takeaways

In wrapping up the episode, Clint directs listeners to Thrive’s blog for more seasonal marketing content, ensuring that small business owners have access to continuous support and fresh ideas. Jay encourages listeners to experiment with seasonal themes to break the monotony of their marketing efforts and enhance customer engagement.

Key Takeaways:

1. Embrace Seasonal Marketing: Align your marketing strategies with both traditional and unconventional holidays to capture customer interest.
2. Be Creative and Authentic: Use thematic elements like emojis or catchy phrases that resonate with the holiday while staying true to your brand.
3. Leverage AI Tools: Utilize tools like ChatGPT to identify relevant holidays and generate promotional ideas tailored to your business.
4. Understand Your Audience: Research your customer base to ensure that the seasonal themes you adopt align with their interests and preferences.
5. Stay Consistent with Content: Regularly update your marketing content to incorporate seasonal elements, ensuring sustained engagement throughout the year.

Notable Quotes

• Jay Schwedelson: “Your marketing is at the center of your business. It drives your business.” (00:00)
• Clint Fontanella: “Seasonal marketing is a way to think about the timeliness of it versus some of the other components in marketing.” (03:20)
• Jay Schwedelson: “Love is in the inbox and this deal won't last.” (03:36)
• Jay Schwedelson: “There are these fake holidays... incorporating them into your marketing can do really well.” (05:02)
• Jay Schwedelson: “National Pi Day... 3.14 reasons you'll love this deal.” (07:05)
• Clint Fontanella: “Researching your customer journey... is a slam dunk if I can.” (08:26)
• Jay Schwedelson: “ChatGPT will give you back a list of all the upcoming holidays with dates and how ridiculous these fake holidays are.” (09:04)

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Stay Connected: For more insights and actionable tips on seasonal marketing and small business growth, visit Clint Fontanella’s blog at thrive.com/blog. Subscribe to Small Business Quick WINS to ensure you never miss an episode packed with strategies to elevate your business.

Transcript

[Jay Schwedelson]

Just want to jump in here real quick and let you know that this podcast is exclusively presented by Thrive. Thrive is an amazing tool that small businesses, thousands of small businesses leverage to run their business in so many ways. And they have this incredible thing called Marketing Center. Now, if you're not familiar with Marketing center from Thrive, great news. For the start of the year, they're doing a special offer right here of a 25% off discount of their Thrive Marketing Center. This thing allows you to run all your ads, boost your online presence, understand all of your customer interactions, and if you want to check this out and get this discount, it is super easy. All you got to do is go to thrive.com that's t h r y v dot com wins. That's thrive th r y v dot com slash wins. And I'm telling you, your marketing is at the center of your business. It what, it's what drives your business. So check out Marketing center from Thrive [e-mail] wins. Welcome to Small Business Quick Wins, presented by Thrive. This podcast is exclusively designed for small business leaders like you. Prepare to get invaluable insights from every episode, equipped with actionable tips made for immediate implementation in your business. Tune in as we feature firsthand lessons from fellow small business owners and thought leaders. I'm your host, Jay Schwedelson. Over the last 25 years, I've grown multiple small businesses that have generated over $300 million in revenue. Along the way, I've learned pitfalls to avoid and quick wins that can transform your business immediately. I'm excited to share it all. So if you're ready to win on Main street, let's dig into this episode. We are back for Small Business Quick Wins, presented by Thrive. And today we're going to be talking about kind of jumping on the bandwagon of holidays and how to take advantage of them, these small holidays, and also these kind of fake, fabricated holidays and how you can actually drive a lot of engagement, a lot of interest for your company to get your customers to pay attention, prospects to pay attention. And I have the great Clint Fontanella back. He is the blog person extraordinaire at Thrive. That's T H R Y V. He's a content expert. Clint is coming back for a second time on the show. Clint, how you doing?

[Clint Fontanella]

Thanks. Well, Jay, I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me back. I'm excited to talk some seasonal marketing stuff. And yeah, let's. Let's dive into whatever we want to dive into.

[Jay Schwedelson]

So the first thing to Think about is, let's say Valentine's Day that's coming up and a lot of companies, small businesses, maybe you have an H VAC company or a real estate company or this, that or whatever. You're like, oh, we're not selling chocolates, we're not selling flowers. We are really not going to participate in something like Valentine's Day. But the mindset that we're all in is this is what's top of mind. And being able to kind of leverage that top of mindness in your marketing, even though you're not selling products and services related to that, can really drive engagement. Do you buy into that, Clint?

[Clint Fontanella]

Definitely. I think it's like looking at your customer life cycle under a different lens. Right. There's a million ways you can look at your life cycle and everyone comes to your business the same way. I think seasonal marketing is a way to kind of say, like, hey, let's think about the timeliness of it versus, you know, some of the other components that we can focus in on in terms of marketing.

[Jay Schwedelson]

Totally. And I'll give you an example. Right? So let's say you are the H Vac company or that CPA company or whatever business that you're in. And now Valentine's is approaching little things like, for example, heart emojis in your subject line. They lift the percentage of people opening up your emails and you don't need to say, hey, I love you. Will you be my client? That's ridiculous. But you could say things like, you know, love is in the inbox and this deal won't last. Right. You can position whatever it is that you're promoting to kind of take on the vibe of that moment. Because believe it or not, as we're scrolling through our inbox, that's what grabs our attention because that's where our mind is. Do you do that like in the blog for Thrive? Will you bring in some of that holiday stuff?

[Clint Fontanella]

Oh, definitely. I mean, we do it. We try to cover some seasonal content as well. We try to, you know, kind of give tips to small business owners. Be like, hey, if it's this time of year, here's what you can do. And a lot of it is like you said, it's like add, add some, add some fun to add some creativity to it. You know, when you're looking at your email inbox, right, you're going to see a line of black text. What's going to stand out is those colorful emojis. Same thing as we can think about, you know, your event marketing, your Social media marketing, there's a million different directions you can go in when you think about the holidays. It isn't like you said, just going headfirst into something that's not genuine for you. You're just kind of adding that one little twist on it that's saying, hey, this is the time of year everyone else is doing it. We're not going to go overboard, but, you know, you know, we're going to participate, we're going to be fun like everybody else.

[Jay Schwedelson]

So, you know, what's really interesting is that we see in all the data it's easy to jump on board with Valentine's Day and then let's say St. Patrick's Day, throw a little shamrock in your subject line or in your social post. That's easy. But there are these other days, I call them fake holidays. There's probably some sort of official term for them, right, that are out there that are actually recognized and people are aware of them, even if they're not fully aware of them. That if you actually incorporated into your marketing, um, it can do really, really well. I'll give you an example. Did you know February 17th is random act of Kindness Day? Did you know that?

[Clint Fontanella]

I did not. I didn't have that one on my calendar.

[Jay Schwedelson]

Jay Slacker now. But it is that. And you can bring that into your marketing, right? And be like, good vibes only. Celebrating Random Act Kindness Day. We have a special offer just for you today. Definitely, right? Wouldn't you, like, wouldn't that get you a little energized to kind of check out that offer?

[Clint Fontanella]

Definitely. I mean, I got one the other day from. I forgot the company, but it was a company that was selling custom prints for paintings, and they were saying, hey, it's Pablo Picasso's birthday. Help us celebrate by, you know, whatever deal they had at the time. And I was like, I never thought about Pablo Picasso's birthday, and now I am. And honestly, it got me to click into their site, see, like, what's Pablo Picasso's artwork looking like? So I totally agree. I think there's those, like, fake holidays that you can just kind of tap into your in crowd. It also shows that you know your customer, like, hey, you're thinking about this and we're thinking about this, and you might be interested in it too.

[Jay Schwedelson]

You're. You're so spot on. Because something like Pablo Picasso birthday, somebody out there is listening, like, well, I work construction equipment company. I would never do that. Or we sell some sort of boring, you know, plumbing equipment. I would never do that. But what people don't realize is that whoever you're marketing to, whoever you're trying to get your message across to, that is a human being. And we all care about the same stuff. We do. And if you treat people like a human being, they will react, they will engage. So I'll give you another one. March 14th. Do you know what March 14th is?

[Clint Fontanella]

That's not the ides of March, is it?

[Jay Schwedelson]

No, I'll give you. It's better than that. It is. If you think about the date, the date is 3.14.

[Clint Fontanella]

I should know this one.

[Jay Schwedelson]

It is National Pie Day. Come on. That's great.

[Clint Fontanella]

Of course, I love National Pie Day.

[Jay Schwedelson]

Who doesn't? How many digits can you do, by the way? How far can you go?

[Clint Fontanella]

I think I got, like, one and then maybe two. Before I was. I couldn't get PI Day, dad. So I can't really say I got that far. Jay.

[Jay Schwedelson]

I only got 3.14. But there are people that memorize, like, 100 digits. So I was with somebody once, and they did. They go, I can go 100 digits. And then they said it. I go, how do I know if you're right? I have no idea.

[Clint Fontanella]

Can I also just ask? When are you going to need that? Other than if someone asks you, like, is that your contract? Like, where does that practice play out in life for you?

[Jay Schwedelson]

It would be good if they're on this podcast, because this is their moment. This is it right here, right now. You could have, for example, headlines of your promotions or of your email subject lines or whatever, like, 3.14 reasons you'll love this deal. Right? All of a sudden, you're jumping on board with a little bit of nonsense, but it stands out. It breaks up the sameness. And along the same lines, you. Heading into March, the biggest sporting event of the year other than the super bowl, is in March. It's March Madness. Right? And that's the college basketball tournament. And I mean, that is another. It's not even a holiday. But jumping on board that with your marketing doesn't matter. If you're marketing to businesses or consumers, isn't that a win?

[Clint Fontanella]

Yeah, 100%. I mean, that's. It's. It's a. It's a slam dunk if I can. No, it's a. Yeah, I'll get booed off this podcast quickly with that. No, if you're. If you're able to tap again, I think about going back to researching your customer, researching your customer journey and just thinking about, like, yes, does my audience live and breathe basketball. No, but maybe, maybe our college team is in there. Maybe we're in a location of the country, they're in the, in the tournament and we can kind of play off that as well. So I mean, I think there's again, to your point, there is, there's no harm in kind of leaning into these seasonal things as long as it's genuine and as long as you're not again, put pushing forward an image or a voice that you know is not true or not.

[Jay Schwedelson]

Right? Yeah. And I'll give you everyone a really quick tip before we wrap up here. Whatever industry you're in, whatever your company does, go on chat GPT and say my company focuses on, you know, plumbing equipment. My company focuses on real estate services. Whatever it is, what are the upcoming holidays including? And you write including non real holidays, fake holidays that would make sense for my company to promote around and can you give me any ideas of offers that I could offer for my company? And you tell exactly what your company does and ChatGPT will give you back a list of all the upcoming holidays with the dates and how ridiculous these fake holidays are. And it's something really to consider testing because it will drive additional engagement. There you go. Easy. All right, so Clint, I appreciate you, man. How should everyone track you down? Check out the blog. Where is it all at?

[Clint Fontanella]

Yeah, so it's right at the Thrive website, thrive.com blog. You can find me there. That's pretty much the best way to find me on there these days. So I go check it out there. If you're curious about more seasonal content, just all small business marketing, that type of stuff, we have usually pushing out new content now every single week.

[Jay Schwedelson]

Love it. All right everybody, Happy National Pie Day and go eat some pie on that day and appreciate you being here for small business Quick wins presented by Dry. Well, that was fun and great news. We got way more where that came from. Subscribe. Make sure you get the latest episode each week for more actionable tips from today's top small business leaders and hook us up with a five star review if you've got at least one new idea you may consider using. Lastly, if you want to ensure you never miss a message from your customers Again, check out thrive.com wins to get your free account with Command center today.