Marketing Inspiration For September 2021
While August can be a slow month for many businesses - with the obvious exception of gardening, outdoor maintenance and pool services - September is often one of the best months of the year. Especially for businesses which sell back-to-school products and services. Like many people, I see it as the start of the second half of the year because it’s the runup to the Thanksgiving and Christmas season. Here’s this month’s marketing inspiration for September 2021.
When you’re planning your September 2021 marketing campaign, choose those activities which resonate the most with your ideal customers, and which are aligned with your brand strategy. Bear in mind that these ideas are suggestions and inspiration for you to reference to when you’re feeling stuck for ideas.
What this means for my own business is my focus this September will be on Self-Improvement Month, Women’s Friendship Month, Recycle Week and American Business Women’s Day. Because these most closely align with my own target audience – passionate, purpose-led women who want to scale their businesses. I’m also planning a surprise for the International Day of Charity!
Build Your Email List
Email is one of the best channels for maintaining and strengthening customer relationships over time and is a high-performing channel when it comes to sales which frequently outperforms the alternatives.
September and October are perfect months to focus on list building activities. Then when you’re ready to start your holiday marketing campaigns, you’ll have gained new subscribers and maintained and strengthened existing relationships.
The reality of website traffic, even highly targeted traffic, is that most new visitors will never return. Unless, that is, you do something to keep them coming back. Building your list and sending compelling emails will help you to retain the traffic you’ve worked so hard to earn by providing subscribers with an incentive to stay in touch.
If you have an ecommerce business and haven’t taken the time to adopt email marketing, you’re likely leaving money on the table. Email plays a pivotal role in encouraging a customer’s second purchase and beyond. Having customers return is important because it reduces the average cost of acquiring a customer.
Back To School Promotions
And just like that, students will be going back to school. This year, shoppers are planning to spend more, particularly as more students come back to in-person learning.
Spanning late July through to early September, back-to-school was worth more than £1 billion, up 27% year-on-year according to Mintel research from April 2019. KPMG estimates there will be a 9% increase in back to school spending this year in what is traditionally the third biggest shopping event of the year after Christmas and Black Friday.
Bear in mind that it’s not only children, students and parents who are interested in back-to-school shopping. There are opportunities to target other customer segments too. Educators will be searching for classrooms supplies and are engaging in new school year planning earlier than ever. They’re especially active on social media in late June and July, so promotional campaigns which begin during the early weeks of the summer break will help you to get ahead of the noisy space that comes in August and September.
Back-to-school vibes are infectious, and adults across the board are looking for inspiration about how to make positive changes in their lives. In recent years, there’s been a trend for a September Reset. For many, the autumn is as much about new beginnings as January, and people set new goals. For parents, it is about getting life back to normal and, for people without children; it is about making positive changes before the onset the festive season and the year draws to close.
Awareness Events In September
The following could lend themselves to a month-long promotion that could include blog posts, sales, social media posts, contests and more.
Organic September - a month-long campaign which aims to raise awareness of Organic products, and the brands, producers and farmers who bring them to us in the UK.
Festival of Learning - the biggest celebration of lifelong learning in England.
Self-Improvement Month - opportunity for us to assess how happy we are with who we’ve become and to take the necessary steps to become who we aspire to be.
Women’s Friendship Month – a month to celebrate those female friendships we couldn't live without.
Wilderness Month – Proclaimed by former President Barack Obama to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Wilderness Act, which changed America’s public land conservation laws and led to many national and state parks across the country.
Childhood Cancer Month - Founded in 2010 by former President Barack Obama, the aim is to raise support, funding and awareness of childhood cancers and the impact for sufferers and families of sufferers of childhood cancer.
Important Awareness Weeks In September
The Great British Beach Clean is a week-long citizen event, where hundreds of beach cleans take place up and down the UK between 17th and 26th September.
Now in its 18th year, Recycle Week is Recycle Now’s flagship annual event which is a celebration of recycling across the nation running between 20th and 26th September.
Important Awareness Days In September
5th - International Day of Charity
6th - Labor Day in the US and National Read a Book Day in the UK.
7th - Youth Mental Health Day (YMHD)
9th - NFL opening night
13th - Positive Thinking Day
15th - Pension Awareness Day
21st - International Day of Peace and World Gratitude Day
22nd - American Business Women’s Day and Autumn begins
What to Pin In September
You’ll often hear me talk about what a powerful yet highly underrated platform Pinterest is when it comes to generating traffic for businesses and blogs alike. This is because people use Pinterest to search for tomorrow’s ideas making it a significant driver of organic traffic across many industries. If you're not convinced, consider that 90% of weekly Pinners make purchase decisions on Pinterest and 77% of weekly Pinners have discovered a new brand or product on Pinterest.
Back-to-school, Autumn and Halloween are huge on Pinterest so if these are of interest to to your customers, be sure to pin your seasonal content several weeks in advance. You can find Pinterest’s Halloween guide here.
Looking Ahead
Start preparing for Halloween. Typically, 40% of Britain’s spend money on Halloween (£479 million in 2019) while 68% of Americans do. The US market was worth $878 billion in 2019. For some of my clients, 31st October is an important retail date and they’ve been busy developing Halloween themed products. But even if your business doesn’t have a direct link to this event, it might be worth thinking about how your business could put on a Halloween-themed event or activity.
Related Post: Halloween Marketing Ideas For Your Small Business In 2021.
Final Thoughts
September is often one of the best months for sales. But that said, we all have times when we could do with a little inspiration. I hope you’ve found these marketing ideas for September 2021 helpful? If you’re looking for inspiration for your July and August marketing campaigns, you’ll find more ideas here and here.
I love to hear the creative ways you’re using these ideas and if you have suggestions for other readers. Do let us know in the comments box below. Otherwise, I’ll be back next month with marketing ideas and inspiration for October 2021.
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