Mistakes to Avoid in Holiday Marketing Campaigns 2021/2022
The holiday season is the time when brands get set to wind up their financial registers and get ready to make as much revenue in the year as possible.
Juggling between taking time off for the year-end holiday with friends and family and wrapping up the business, it takes more energy to pay attention to the growing trends, more advanced social media touchpoints and client expectations. As a result, businesses aren’t able to carry out successful holiday marketing campaigns to bring about the aspired outcomes.
In September and October, it’s the time to skyrocket your holiday digital marketing campaigns, considering more recent market transformations (accelerated due to COVID-19). Owing to the turbulent situation nearing the holiday season, brands often miss out on big opportunities due alertness to advertising strategies. It can be easy to make mistakes in marketing, like failing to reach the target audiences at the right time!
Let’s discuss the mistakes that you need to avoid while executing holiday marketing campaigns so that you can drive the best results around the Christmas and New Year shopping period.
Linking to Website Home Page Instead of Landing Pages
To drive more conversions, you should direct customers to the most relevant pages on your website and feature your holiday offers. But how? Make great use of targeted landing pages to bring clients with unmistakable offers during the holiday season.
For small to medium business owners, no one has the time or capability to redesign a considerable portion of their website each year. But utilising landing pages maintains the content with a fresh approach that is appropriate and relevant.
Check out some tips to get you started:
- Maintain a strong website design to keep up with your main competitors
- Feature holiday offers on the homepage and banners in addition to the landing pages
- Add links or navigation back to the primary website in case users didn’t notice their expected offer or service
- Use clear call to actions
Breakdown of Nurturing Processes
While you and your business take a break, it’s essential to remember that there are more users online than ever during the holiday season.
If you are an eCommerce site that has had users purchasing from you within a few days before the holidays, you can be assured that users will be following up with your brand with questions. They are going to ask you about things like dispatch dates, order details, and product information. Most likely, you will also be receiving inquiries about modifying shipping speeds or delivery addresses after the order has been dispatched. It’s crucial to have someone handling these requests as they come in. They can provide quick replies or coordinate your CRM with your inbox to manage these questions, and stay on top of your customer service (which is important as people get stressed around the holidays).
Even if you do not offer eCommerce, establishing automated replies and nurturing marketing campaigns through the holiday period is essential for most brands. For example, you could have Facebook Messenger’s auto-reply set up to deal with basic FAQs, which will help your clients know that they can depend on your business to deliver even when you are on leave.
Email marketing campaigns that remind consumers of what your business offers is also an exceptional way to increase sales during the holiday period.
Not Focusing On Social Media
As a small business, your social media marketing strategy should be one of your leading holiday marketing strategies as an affinity building opportunity. Holiday-centric posts (and related content) tend to bring out stronger engagement levels than usual posts during events. The more users that like and share your holiday content, the greater online visibility your business will have. Holiday marketing campaigns are an excellent opportunity to get more recognition from people who may have followed your product or services. It’s a good idea to enhance your social media activity during the holidays and also brighten your page to reflect the festive mood of the event.
Remember to get your social media promotion campaigns approved before you close your doors. If you need to run social media ads to boost sales by both focusing on cold traffic and running retargeting campaigns, you can start them today, and submit them for approvals as delivery platforms take some time to process and audit the ads. You can set start and end dates for each ad campaign you create on most social platforms. Your ad campaigns won’t go live until the designated dates, so there is no risk of the ad launching early accidentally.
Neglecting Emails
The end of the year is a great yet hectic time for many – the world is celebrating the New Year or Christmas with their family. Connecting with loyal customers isn’t required by any means, but even a brief personalised note thanking them for their support can lead to a strengthened relationship. You should maximise email marketing during this time when consumers are ready to buy.
In addition, sending out an email blast in the holiday season before everybody is back to the daily grind lets you stay on top of their minds when they are prepared to get back to work and need your products or services. It’s also an excellent way to showcase anything different you have going on – businesses, new products/services, or even a new business framework. If it’s new and impressive, the holiday season is an ideal time to talk about it!
Figuring out the holiday marketing mistakes above will enhance your marketing campaigns if you work to avoid them! You should certainly look back to evaluate and learn from past campaign analytics, and take a proactive approach to maximising sales over the Christmas holiday period. This will help you create improved holiday digital marketing campaigns with better performance. The main takeaway? Planning ahead is imperative. Avoid a quick and aimless campaign, by taking the time to develop and optimise your marketing campaigns in alignment with latest trends and Christmas cheer.
