seasonal marketing

How to Turn a Seasonal Tradition into a Hot Holiday Product

The changing seasons influence every aspect of our lives — from weather conditions, temperature, and the environment to what we eat and how we dress up. All of us have embraced one or two particular seasons of the year as part of our yearly tradition.

These seasonal traditions impact the way we live and even what products we purchase. Whatever the trend of the season, that is what we want to get. This is even more prominent during the holidays. There are seasonal menus or fashion trends everywhere. Stores come up with hot holiday products to join the tradition.

With 15% year-over-year eCommerce revenue growth this holiday season, how do you take advantage of a seasonal tradition and turn into your store’s new hot holiday product?

Today, we have tastefully outlined an in-depth list of seasonal traditions around the world, the types of holidays that you need to pay attention to, some examples of seasonal products to get inspiration from, and several seasonal sale tips with ShopBase Apps to get you started.

Why Use Seasonal Traditions as Holiday Products?

  • Connects with customers’ emotions

The seasonal appeal feeds into your customers’ holiday excitement. This gets you their attention and emotional connection to explore your online store and see what other interesting things you have to offer during the holidays.


  • Meets customers’ expectations and boost sales

Ever wonder why pumpkin spices suddenly appear on coffee shops during holidays? Seasonal holiday products are almost always expected by customers. Your customers look for them because of the holiday spirit. Thus, boosting your chances of more sales.

  • Builds engagement and loyalty

They also make a stronger connection to your online store. You become more personable and relatable as a brand. It is the kind that people want to engage with. It opens up a conversation like people might comment about your seasonal products. These connections go a long way in building your relationship and gaining your customers’ loyalty.

  • Makes holiday products seem “worth it”

The added seasonal flare to a holiday product makes it appear to be worth the purchase even if they’re a little more expensive than the regular products. It becomes more appealing like something extra that is worth the money to spend than just buying the generic items.

  • Renews interest from old customers and exposes to a new audience

Changing up your online store to embrace the holiday spirit can help you draw the attention of your past shoppers back to your company. It also helps you expose your online store to attract new clients who were unaware of your brand previously.

  • Supports brand differentiation

During the holidays, the competition is much fiercer than the usual and every online store is wanting to get the customers attention. Turning a seasonal tradition into a hot holiday product can help you stand apart from the rest of the busy holiday crowd and differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Types of Seasonal Traditions

A seasonal tradition can fall under one or a mix of the following categories:

  • By Season: culturally integral to one or more seasons: winter, spring, summer, fall.
  • By Festival: an event customarily observed by a community or a group of people which centers their common aspects. These events are commonly related to arts, crafts, food, and sciences.
  • By Holiday: a day assigned by either custom or law on which regular activities, such as work, school or business, are customarily lessened or suspended.

List of Seasonal Traditions

Here’s a list of popular seasonal traditions around the world that your online store could partake:

Seasonal Traditions by Season

  • Autumn Traditions

Easter
Halloween

  • Spring Traditions

Easter
Holi (Festival of Colors)

  • Summer Traditions

Summer camp
Barbecue circuit

  • Winter Traditions

Mistletoe
Christmas and holiday season
Matzo Ball
Jack Frost
Kwanzaa
Santa Trackers

Seasonal Traditions by Festivals

  • First Quarter Seasonal Traditions

Mardi Gras – February/March
Brazilian Carnival – February/March
Holi (Festival of Colors) – March
– Lantern Festival – March

  • Second Quarter Seasonal Traditions

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival – April
Songkran Water Festival – April
Gay Pride Parade – June

  • Third Quarter Seasonal Traditions

Sukkot‎ – September
Running of the Bulls – July

  • Fourth Quarter Seasonal Traditions

Halloween‎ – October
Oktoberfest‎‎ – October
Thanksgiving‎ – October/November
Diwali‎ (Festival of Lights) – November
Day of the Dead – October/November

Seasonal Traditions by Holidays

  • National Holidays

Independence Day – Varies by country
Labor Day – Varies by country or state

  • Secular (Non-religious) Holidays

– International Women’s Day – March
– Lunar New Year – January
– Arbor Day – Varies worldwide
– Earth Day – April
– Father’s Day – Varies by country or region
– Halloween – October
– International Day of Peace – September
– Mother’s Day – Varies by country or region
– Cinco de Mayo – May

  • Religious Holidays

– Passover – March/April
– Yom Kippur – September/October
– Advent – November/December
– Lent – Varies
– Holy Week – Varies
– Pentecost – Varies
– Eid ul-Fitr – June
– Eid al-Adha – August
– All Saints’ Day – November
– Saint Patrick’s Day – March
– Saint Valentine’s Day – February

  • Unofficial Holidays

– April Fool’s Day – April
– Black Friday – November
– Friendship Day – August
– Cyber Monday – November
– Mischief Night – October
– Star Wars Day – May
– Super Bowl – February

Examples of Seasonal Holiday Products

Here are some examples of how seasonal traditions were turned into hot holiday products to get you inspired:

  • Chocolate Easter Eggs for Christmas

There was a Sesame Street song called “Give Your Friend an Easter Egg for Christmas”. It involved a skit where a bunny tried to sell off his Easter eggs as Christmas gifts. The Kinder brand has Easter chocolate eggs, but you can now buy them as Christmas gifts too.

Chocolate Easter Eggs for Christmas

Buy Eggs Online takes advantage of Easter by offering Easter eggs with Christmas designs.

  • Advent Calendars

Keeping an advent calendar a seasonal tradition to honor Advent. It is a special calendar used to count the days of Advent in anticipation of Christmas. Many reusable Advent calendars usually start on December 1.

Advent Calendars

Amazon offers Crayola Advent Calendars during the holidays.

  • LGBT Pride Christmas Decorations

The common symbol of LGBT Pride is the rainbow or the pride flag. During the Holiday season, you can be inclusive by offering rainbow colored products like Christmas trees or decors.

LGBT Pride Christmas Decorations

The Ornament Shop sells an LGBT Rainbow Christmas ornament to commemorate Pride during the holidays.

Steps to Run a Holiday Product from Seasonal Traditions

1 – Choose the relevant seasonal traditions

Not every seasonal tradition, holiday or event will apply effectively to your online store. Select a few ones that are relevant to your brand and those which reflect your objectives and vision. If you just constantly run after every event or occasion, you will probably cut into your profit margins and that’s not a good sign of a successful business.

What you can do is to look at your own historical data. List down the dates where your online sales have surged for the past two or three years. From there, identify recurring dates and investigate why these dates generate more revenue every single time. Find out if they match certain seasonal traditions.

If they do, understand why your target market is particularly interested in that seasonal tradition or holiday. For now, you can start with just one or two seasonal traditions and then come up with hot holiday products to sell.

2 – Utilize the season’s symbols or other references to create new holiday products

Symbolisms are particularly important when it comes to traditions, holidays, or celebrations.  

The concept of symbolic culture highlights the way in which how human culture is interfered with using signs, icons, and concepts. Say, for example, a heart shape to transmit the emotional feeling of love. Some symbols can be even used to obtain a better knowledge of a specific society.

You can use these symbols to add elements to your existing product and amp it up as a new holiday product. For instance, you can transform a mug into a football or helmet shape to target Super Bowl fans.

football

If your target audience is certified Super Bowl fans, you can offer a football helmet mug as a hot holiday product.

3 – Review your calendar

At this time, you need to review the seasonal traditions or holidays that you have carefully chosen. You need to check your own calendar to know if you have ample time to create the holiday product, and then plan and execute.

This will ensure that you have the right resources, enough time to promote, and good lead time to produce and deliver. You don’t want to over-deliver a promise and then not meet the expectations of your customers, especially during the holiday rush.

4 – Evaluate your profitability and viability

You won’t want to waste offering a holiday product if there’s no demand at all or if it won’t be profitable for you. You need to know your profit margin. This will tell you how much profit your online store can make for every dollar in the sales of your holiday products.

You also need to measure your holiday products’ viability. Knowing a product’s viability will help you know that your holiday product will not just get purchased, but it can also perform well enough to be recommended to others.

5 – Plan and schedule in advance

Now that you’ve decided what holiday product to sell, you can now plan out exactly what needs to be done to make your holiday product a success. Planning is a crucial task that involves a lot of aspects to make sure everything will be executed properly and smoothly.

Planning in advance also means that the scheduling of tasks and the distribution of responsibilities will be taken into account. Decide what tasks to be executed, when they will be executed, who will be responsible for their execution, how will they achieved, and where will they occur.

Here’s a 20-point checklist to prepare your store during the holiday season.

6 – Promote! Promote! Promote!

Promotion is a critical aspect of your holiday product’s success. The holiday season is a festive celebration, and you need to get festive as well. Embrace the holiday feel. This tends to attract the curiosity of holiday shoppers and intensify their emotional shopping experience, thus, boosting conversions.

There are lots of ways and places to promote your holiday products. Start by utilizing your own store’s website. You can use a welcome pop-up to promote your holiday product so that a popup notification will be automatically displayed whenever a visitor arrives at your site.

holiday products

Suggested Holiday Tool: Display a holiday welcome popup the moment shoppers enter your website. SiteKit has the best feature to show holiday themes pop-up to complement the holiday spirit and grab your visitor’s attention.

7 – Up-sell the holiday product with your regular products

When you create your holiday products, you can use up-selling and cross-selling techniques to boost your sales. You can upsell the holiday products as an upgraded version or a more expensive product. As an alternative, you can cross-sell these holiday products as complementary or supplementary items.

What you can do is to display an up-sell popup so that whenever shoppers add an item to their cart your holiday product will also be displayed as an add-on offer. You can also bundle the holiday product and give discounts to entice the shoppers to add it immediately.

Up-sell the holiday product with your regular products

Suggested Holiday Tool: Boost Upsell will help you design a beautiful up-sell popup to offer your hot holiday product as a bundled discount together with a regular offer.

Be profitable with what’s in season

No matter where you are, the culture you have, the color of your skin…seasonal traditions, holidays, and special occasions have become an integral part of everyone’s life. Online stores shouldn’t miss these seasonal traditions, especially that more and more customers are expecting you to offer seasonal deals and holiday products.

Research the main trends and seasonal traditions that your online store can join in to attract new customers and to keep the relationship alive with your past customers. Stay on top of what’s in season and what’s not with our guide on how to turn a seasonal tradition into a hot holiday product.

This handy guide will also help you navigate the demands of creating your own holiday products, setting up campaign promotions, and making sure you have all the right resources at hand. By embracing the holiday spirit, you can be connected, engaged, and profitable during the holiday season.

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