The North Pole is about to enter its busy season, and so are fresh produce marketers! The holiday season can also be known as the “Eating Season,” which creates a unique opportunity to craft the right message for your audience.

The best way to measure what matters to your audience is analytics. Data tells a story, and that story can help you craft a message that can increase demand and sales!  Read on to learn more about how to best use analytics to help you plan your marketing efforts for the upcoming holiday season.

 

Your website should have information about how many visits each page receives, how long each visitor stayed, and how they found your site. We use HubSpot to measure our own website’s analytics at DMA, but Google Analytics has great information as well. Look at your website’s performance around the holidays from previous years. Make a note if any holiday-specific recipes performed well.

 

Showcase your most popular holiday recipes on your site! Spotlight these recipes on your site by showing them first, or putting them in your “featured recipe” spot. Plus, promote them on social media to reach a wider audience.

 

We love using Google Trends! This is a free online tool that shows search trends on Google. It can shed light on what people are typing in the search bar, as well as when and where terms are popular.

 

Google Trends can help inform your overall Search Engine Marketing (SEM) strategy, and let you know when to promote and how. For example, if you have an easy apple pie recipe, Google says the most popular time of the year for the term “easy apple pie recipe” is the week of Thanksgiving. So, create a Google Ad for that term, and drive traffic to your site.

 

Pinterest has a great tool called Pinterest Trends, which is similar to Google Trends, but is specific to the social platform. As you’re researching, make note of what kinds of recipes are in the results on Pinterest – some of these recipes are more unique, or even on a harder difficulty level. Because Pinterest is popular for those who love to entertain, it’s an ideal spot to discover what the hosts of the “Eating Season” are looking for.

 

If your brand isn’t on Pinterest, what are you waiting for?! Pinterest is the ultimate inspiration destination for recipes. Create pins using trending terms, then promote these pins for maximum exposure.

 

Need help getting started? Give us a shout! We’ve got a workshop full of marketing elves team of experienced marketing professionals ready to help make the upcoming holidays your brand’s best Eating Season ever.