Ho ho ho, the holidays are upon us. The stores have cleared the spooky shelves and replaced them with products ringing with Christmas cheer and you already know when you start hearing our Queen of Christmas, Mariah Carey, it’s time to get serious about your holiday strategy.
Waiting until the last minute to plan your holiday marketing campaigns can cost your business money. The holiday shopping season typically starts in mid-October, but if you haven’t started planning, don’t fret, I’m going to share a few strategies to maximize your reach and get more sales this holiday season.
Creative content will take your business far this holiday season.
Set Campaign Goals
Your goal is the centerpiece of your holiday plan. Before doing anything, you should always determine your goals. This is the time to ask yourself what product/service you’re focusing on and what you want to accomplish this season. Once you determine your overall goal, you can start establishing specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound goals (SMART goals) that support the intended outcome.
Goals should follow a structure similar to this one:
Increase sales for holiday marketing campaigns by 15% by December 20, 2021.
Establishing a SMART-goal statement like this one gives you a structured way to measure and quantify your goals.
Define Your Target Audience
Do you know who your target audience is? This is the point where you should try to get clear on who you’re selling to, where they hang out, and what their preferred method of communication is. Start with your current customer, look at their characteristics and use that information to develop a buyer persona. It’s always helpful to take a look at your competitors to see what they’re currently doing and how they relay messages to their audience.
Create Your Campaign
After setting your goals and defining your target audience, you’re ready to create your campaign. A great marketing campaign includes more than one marketing channel. Get your creative juices flowing and start building a plan that is aligned with your goals and your target audience. Holiday marketing is not one-size-fits-all and with a guaranteed overflow of holiday marketing, this is your time to stand out.
Social Media
Billions of people are on social media every day making it one of your easiest and most flexible metrics of marketing for getting your message across. The viral content on platforms like Tik Tok and Instagram shows that social media is your blank canvas, you are the artist, and showing your true, authentic self will take you far.
Decide which platforms work best for your audience and get creative. Maybe you will want to host a holiday contest. You could go as in-depth as asking users to upload a video of themselves answering why they want the product or service or as simple as doing a product-a-day giveaway with a raffle as the winner selection method.
Social media gives you the opportunity to stay connected with and directly involve your customers in your brand. Leverage video marketing to show your true personality and connect with your audience. Trust me, everyone loves video.
The Marketing Helping reported that video posts on social media get 48% more views. Let your customers know how much you appreciate them and their business by creating a video marketing campaign around a popular trend or starting your own hashtag campaign like UPS did in their #WishesDelivered campaign. Customers had the chance to post their holiday wish under the hashtag #WishesDelivered and UPS would fulfill the campaign. They even received support from other nonprofits like the Boys & Girls Club of America, The Salvation Army, and Toys for Tots. This tweet from Attn shows a perfect utilization of social media, a hashtag campaign, and video to inspire excitement and joy.
This dog was just reunited with an active duty soldier after an amazing journey from overseas to the U.S. #WishesDelivered
Made in partnership with @UPS pic.twitter.com/lQiu77DUTr
— attn (@attn) December 19, 2018
Social media and video together are a definitive way to take your holiday marketing campaign to the next level.
Email Marketing
Holiday Email from Cox & Cox
Social media is always seen as a great place to market products and services, but Instagram has shown us time and time again that this shouldn’t be your only method of marketing. Email gives you another way to stay connected with your audience. Instagram and Facebook have been down this year more times than I can count and whether it was for minutes or hours if that was your only marketing channel, you were completely cut off from your audience. Use your email to set up a targeted holiday email campaign. Give your customers a chance to beat the rush and get a lower rate by offering a discount code that can be used on the website.
Email is arguably more effective than social media, with tools like marketing automation you can set up abandoned cart workflows, target warm leads, and set up a seasonal welcome email for the new subscribers you’re going to get. Opt for a festive holiday design and spread holiday cheer all season through email.
Ads
The holidays are the perfect time to inspire and connect with shoppers and ads are a great way to do that. PowerTraffick reported that small businesses earn an average of $3 in revenue for every $1.60 they spend on Google AdWords. Need I say more? Ads are the way to go, specifically Facebook and Google which hold the largest share of digital ad spending. Ads give you another avenue to incorporate video marketing. Remember, this is the season of giving, season, love. Tap into those emotions with your ad campaigns.
Tell Your Story
We’re people. Let’s be honest, we love a good even better if it’s a story we can relate to. The nostalgia consumes us and we’re hooked. That’s the key. Be yourself and embrace the power of authentic messaging. Coca-Cola used Augmented Reality (AR) to scan a QR code from a can of Coke and a computer-generated polar bear-themed, arctic, immersive experience would appear. Google’s Santa Tracker takes the love and Santa Claus and gives kids a fun way to see what Santa’s up to leading up to Christmas. Every year, until Christmas Eve, visitors can view the “North Pole,” to see what Santa’s elves are up to as the holiday approaches. Disney’s from our family to your campaign shows a young girl getting her first Mickey Mouse plush toy. The story takes us throughout the years as she grows until she passes the toy down to her granddaughter who at first didn’t appreciate it but later restored it for her grandmother. The point is, storytelling and authenticity are the way to go this holiday season.
Holiday marketing has the potential to bring tremendous traffic to your business. The holiday lights are hanging, Christmas cheer is coming in meaning it’s time to get your holiday marketing campaign started.
Read more blogs from The Kool Source.
- 5 Marketing Trends to Look Out for in 2022 - December 23, 2021
- A Complete Guide To 2021 Holiday Marketing - November 11, 2021
- 4 Photoshop Fails You Have To See To Believe - September 29, 2021
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