The seasonal fashion calendar

Master creating digital content for the seasonal fashion cycle

To get started, have a look a year view of a calendar and note down any obvious reoccurring dates that take place in your business annually. For example,  spring/Sumer launch, mid-season sale or Christmas launch.

The events that you plan will hardly differ year on year unless there is a worldwide event that you cannot control as we have experienced in the last year. Nevertheless the seasons will generally follow a pattern. The great thing about the evolution of online shopping is that the demand for seasonal products run all year round. So it’s a great chance to have a variety of product available that you can plan content for and therefore manage when to promote them.

Let’s take a look at a  typical year in an online fashion business. 

An example of the quarterly business cycle could look something like this:

September

(The  January of fashion)  

Autumn/winter collection launch

October

Autumnal offers

Mid season sale

November

Seasonal promotions  Halloween, Guy Fawkes  

Black Friday

A lead up to Christmas

Pre Christmas Sale

Sale

The big January sale

February

New spring season collection

March 

Spring promotions

Mid-season sale

April

Summer collection

May

Summer promotions

June

Mid season sale

July 

Sale 

August 

Autumn winter pre launch

This structure is no secret to any fashion business. 

It is a generic competitive cycle that works year in year out. This may change in the future as we begin new ways of working but for now it is dictated by season and repetitive annual events.

Start planning your content

Step 1

Write down a brief plan for the following:

Establish what a typical year in your online business could look like. It’s ok if this is brand new for you, try to take some time out to research other businesses similar to yours and see how they structure their content quarterly. Remember we all go through the same season land seasonal events each year. If starting out create what works for your your customer based on research and your business.

Once you have your structure in place add the dates  and events to your content plan template.

Step 2: Review how each campaign will work across your omni-channels

It might look something like this:

Website content: 

Social media posts

Social media stories

Display advertising

Email newsletters

Blog posts

Affiliate marketing banners

Remarketing banners

Video advertising

Give each channel a colour code. You can use this as a reference to assign to a campaign later on

Step 3: Write up ideas for content

Let’s be realistic, it will be difficult to write out content for a whole year! But you can approach this quarterly and work on three months at a time. After you have through a one year cycle the process will become easier and you will have the year before to refer to and compare to. Steps to writing content ideas, start with a brief

What to include in a brief: (illustrate)

Launch date:

Budget:

Campaign title:

Teams involved:

Duration: 2 weeks

Target audience & purpose:

Channel visibility:

Brief description of story:

Images or video assets required.

On brand message:

Marketing message:

A brief  like this is music to the ears for your design team. With this information they can set out to work and perform at a faster pace with better result because they have enough detail to role out content

Key takeway:

Tailor this system to work for you, make the process as easy as possible for all parties involved. A structure like this is transferable onto online work flow tools that can help you cross collaborate between departments.