Merry Marketing! Tips for a Successful Holiday Campaign

It’s holiday time! Stay ahead in marketing with a successful marketing campaign this holiday season.
Feeling the Christmas cheer and excited for the holidays? When it comes to engaging in digital marketing, now is the time to stay ahead with your holiday marketing campaign. Don’t just cross your fingers, get your marketing strategy straight as online users will be rolling their carts far and wide this holiday season.
Social media is one of the main platforms to best maximise your holiday marketing. With over 2 million people on Facebook and 500 million people on Instagram, you can work with just a small budget to make a great impact through sharing stories and targeting successfully. Let’s get the snowball effect rolling with these strategic holiday marketing tips.
Plan, plan, and plan!
If you know what you want, you’ve already got half the job done. The first step of your holiday marketing strategy should be to brainstorm and discuss the aim of your campaign. Do your research, and decide whether you want to introduce your product or service to new people, or to inform existing customers about a current sale or particular product. Know your goal to develop a targeted call-to-action. Decide on which marketing channel to venture on and develop a well-judged and well-measured strategy.
One of the common practices for planning is to go through ‘code freeze’ and stop additional back end developments. Avoiding large backend site will reduce the risk of a higher bounce rate. Ensure easy access to Frequently Asked Questions, customer support chatbots, testing emails, and of course your website. Handle as many API calls to avoid losing customers, and focus on email marketing and ad campaigns. Plus, make sure to do testing as a customer to track how everything is working. Remember, always document your wins and losses so that insights can be used to refine your next seasonal marketing campaign.
Targeting
Once your goal is clear, you need to grab your audience’s attention and persuade the right people at the right time. It’s always a great start if you create a contact list of your already existing users. You can research your contacts and find friends of friends who will likely have shared or similar interests. Moreover, it’s a good idea to also look for people with the interests you define outside the list. Narrow your audience by categories of gender, location, and age range. For example, if you are selling baby products, look to target men and women within the age range of 22-38.
Keep it simple
Just calm down and don’t rush! Once you start taking control, you will be able to make your outcome simple. Especially if it is your first holiday season, start small. The amount of support and operations you will have during holidays depends on the bandwidth of your team. Follow the principle of pitching one idea, one benefit, and one emotion in each message of your campaign. The idea is the outcome of your product, the benefit is what the buyers get out of it, and use of emotion is what gets them in.
Always monitor your performance
In digital marketing, our motto is “test, learn, repeat”. Monitor your ads and learn from your efforts. In case any issues arise, make sure that your team is ready to solve it. Always focus on amending customer service, shipping, fulfilment, and collecting user data. You can customize subscription forms to gather necessary information. The competition in this period is higher than ever, so your email marketing is crucial when people are ready to spend. Make your newsletters interesting to your target audience with novel content and positive holiday cheer. Get creative and deliver your target audience exactly what they need this holiday season, straight into their inboxes.
Influence is what you need
According to a research study done by Sproutsocial in 2016, social media enhances branding by 30% during the winter season. Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are best for ad campaigns. There are 500 million business pages on Facebook alone. You can do useful online training for small businesses with the Facebook Blueprint easily learn about ad creation from the ground up. An Instagram business account is the platform to start and inspire, where 60% of people discover new products and 75% users take action. Instant shopping through Instagram works well with the magic of influencing. Twitter is where you can take on serious business, as 500 million tweets are sent a day and 66% of Twitter users are able to discover new small and medium sized businesses.
Let your product or service spread the word
People know how to spot a good deal. Shoppers go for special offers and lowest prices, with mobile devices offering limitless possibilities at any hour of the day. Lead your customers to buy with your brand for its quality, backed by a logical offer. The holiday season is when you can establish connections and get customers return to purchase during the off season. Get the word out on your product, and maximise into the new year. It’s better not to be too persistent or bombard clients and leads with proposals, let’s face it, everyone is busy this time of year. If you’re not focusing specifically on retail sales or maximising e-commerce, the holiday season is a great time to reach out and build awareness.
Capitalise on existing customers
Holidays are times when new and returning customers are earned. The path for a new customer is different from existing ones. If you lose touch with your existing customers, there is no guarantee that they will come back. Simple. So, stay present in their community and be an active business. Always remind your customers of your loyalty, service, and appreciation of their patronage. Email marketing and SMS campaigns plays the role here. You can include a promo for a gift offering for their loved ones, or even promote product recommendations. It’s best practice to make your content personalised, simple to achieve with targeted (and re-targeted) audiences.