Weather-Based Marketing - Turning Real-Time Signals Into Sales

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September 12, 2022 Marketing

I don’t know about you, but on a sunny day in the middle of winter, I like to buy summery things from local businesses. Maybe it’s because I’ve been staring at snow and icicles out my window for months, or maybe it’s just because if I’m ordering shorts online anyway, I might as well do it where Mom-and-Pop can benefit.

Whatever the reason is, weather-based marketing is alive and well as a way for local businesses to drive sales. If you’re not using weather in your marketing strategies, trust me: you should be! However, no one knows what the weather tomorrow will be like! How do you go about it then?

You can start by finding a reliable source for weather forecasts. You can get the latest updates about the weather at Tomorrow, a hyper-accurate weather intelligence platform.

Here are a few other strategies to help you get started with weather-based marketing:

Turn On Conversation

There are a lot of ways to talk about your brand with customers. The easiest way is through conversation, which means you should be asking questions, listening, and responding to what they say. If you’re not sure how to start the conversation, consider these examples:

Create an online presence by creating content on social media or blogs that has value for your audience.
Respond timely to customer service inquiries with relevant answers or solutions. Don’t just respond; respond immediately!
Ask customers how they feel about your product or service after they use it so they can share their experience with others who may be interested in purchasing from you in the future (and also offer them something as an incentive).

Target Your Audience

When you’re planning your content, you want to make sure it is targeted at the right audience. Your content needs to be relevant and timely; otherwise, your audience will move on and forget about what you have to offer them.

To make sure that doesn’t happen, you need a way of measuring key aspects of your consumers. So when it comes time for them to buy something from your business, they know exactly what kind of product or service would work best for them.

The first step in creating marketing materials is learning more about who these people are. This includes knowing their demographics (age range), psychographics (lifestyle habits), behavioral traits (buying preferences), and even psychometric traits (personality).

This information can be collected through surveys or interviews with customers themselves or even competitors within similar industries. It can then be used as part of an equation that will help determine how best we should approach our target audience. This can be in terms of messaging strategies alongside other factors like budgeting constraints, etc.

Create Hyper-Local Segments

To begin, you’ll want to create hyper-local segments based on weather data. For example, a retailer that sells garden accessories might create a segment for customers who have recently purchased items such as shovels and rakes. From there, you can use this information to target them with specific marketing campaigns or discounts.

This is especially important when your product or service is time-sensitive. For instance, say you run an outdoor ice skating rink in San Diego (which seems like an excellent idea). If it’s raining outside during the winter months, people may be less inclined to visit your facility because of its outdoor location. If they do go out anyway, they’re more likely to have rain gear on due to discomfort in the wet conditions.

As such, creating a segment based on snowfall and ice buildup could be useful for targeting marketing campaigns. These are for those individuals who are most likely interested in visiting your business during these weather conditions. Also, they can be purchasing rain gear beforehand so they don’t get too cold while on the rink.

Maximize the Weather

When it comes to weather-based marketing, there are a lot of ways you can use the data. For example, you can use it to engage with your customers. The weather is an integral part of your customer’s day-to-day life, so using that information in a way that’s relevant and helpful for them will help you build stronger relationships with them.

Another way is by creating hyper-local segments based on weather conditions or forecasts. As we mentioned before, people are most likely going to buy something if they need it when the weather outside is bad (think sweaters and snow boots).

You may want more sales during those times of year or seasons where there’s an increase in demand for certain products or services. Using this data could be very beneficial for maximizing profits for your business!

It also plays into creating better marketing campaigns. Now all companies have access through software platforms. These allow us to access everything from live streams straight off the website dashboard. You can see all sorts of different things happening around us right now.

Leverage Real-Time Data to Engage at Every Moment

Real-time data is the ability to collect and analyze information in real-time, as it happens. It can be used by marketers to optimize marketing campaigns and improve customer engagement.

To truly engage your customers on a weather-by-weather basis, you must have access to real-time data that gives you granular insights into their behavior. This can include their desires, needs, and wants.

If your business is not utilizing real-time analytics at this moment, it’s time to get started!

Capitalize on Real-Time Weather Data

The most important part of weather-based marketing is to focus on real-time data. Real-time data is more accurate, actionable, and immediate than other types of data. It’s also relevant and useful to you as a marketer.

Real-time information is more accurate because it can be measured instantaneously at the precise moment that an event occurs. For example when rain falls or dew forms. The more precise your measurements are, the better you can monitor conditions in your area and make sure that all stores have the right products available at all times.

Accuracy also helps with actionability. With real-time weather updates, we can tell you exactly when customers will want certain items (like umbrellas). This is instead of guessing based on historical patterns or averages across regions over long periods (which may not apply now).

You know what kinds of sales promotions are likely to increase revenue based on current conditions. These algorithms do all the work so there’s no guesswork involved!

Conclusion

While not every business has the budget to include weather in its marketing, we hope that our insights help you identify other signals that might be worth paying attention to.

For example, if you’re a health and fitness company, you could use location-based data to target people who are at the gym. Or if you’re an eCommerce store selling clothes, you could offer coupons when it’s sunny out or there is a major sale going on nearby. The possibilities are endless when it comes to using real-time data for hyper-relevant marketing messages.