The holidays are a time of celebration and giving.
It is also a time that many businesses use to advertise their products, services and even employees.
A thoughtful holiday marketing plan can increase sales significantly and help create a stronger bonds with your customers. But this can be tricky because you’ve got to balance being creative with fitting your holiday marketing strategy into someone else’s plans.
And there would be many competitors vying to woe shoppers, it can be quite challenging to stand out.
In this post, we’ll share some of our favourite tips for creating clever holiday marketing strategies to rise above the noise.
Understand Your Target Market:
In order to create the most effective marketing strategy for a particular holiday, you need to first find out what that holiday means to people and then decide who those people are.
You can accomplish this by using social media polls or surveys as well as talking with friends and family members who live in different parts of the world so they can tell you how they celebrate Christmas during their time of year (or New Year’s).
You’ll also want to ask them questions like: “Tell me about how you spend Christmas Eve” or “What do you hope Santa brings this year?”
Once these answers have been collected, it will be easy for marketers like you know exactly where each consumer stands on every aspect of their plans leading up until December 25th!
Launch Your Campaign Earlier:
When it comes to creating a holiday marketing strategy, too many businesses wait for the actual holiday time.
Before December even arrives, your target market should be considering your company and their Christmas purchasing. Your team must start working on its seasonal marketing plan early, preferably in August or September.
A Christmas marketing initiative might start far in advance of November or December.
While many shoppers choose last-minute purchases, some people search for gifts in advance. Send out holiday marketing and seasonal deals in advance to draw in this population. This strategy will encourage these early buyers to buy your product.
Evoke Nostalgia:
Holidays evoke feelings of magic and nostalgia for simpler times, when there was plenty of snow and Santa Claus really existed. Why not create your marketing effort to appeal to nostalgic holiday memories?
Use vintage fonts, black-and-white images, and images that make you nostalgic for bygone eras. This year, your campaigns can be guided by nostalgia, whether you’re creating an in-store display or an online landing page.
Make the Most of SMS Marketing:
In recent years, SMS and mobile marketing have grown more and more important for e-commerce.
During the 2021 Christmas season, sales made through mobile devices totalled more over $88 billion, according to Adobe. More than half of all online sales were done on mobile devices over the course of six days: Thanksgiving Day, December 18, December 19, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and the day after Christmas.
Create email marketing campaigns that are responsive to mobile devices and mobile-friendly your online store. Your clients may effortlessly click a link and get to a product page on their phones if you choose to employ SMS messaging for holiday text marketing.
Express Your Gratitude:
Consumers might take a long time deciding what — and where — they want to spend their money when it comes to buying gifts during the holiday season. Thus, even devoted and long-term consumers might purchase elsewhere this holiday season.
You must continue to be top-of-mind if your company wants to draw new and returning customers into your store. A great holiday marketing plan emphasises thankfulness to keep customers committed and devoted to your brand.
Show customers how important they are to your store.
While there are numerous ways to express gratitude to customers, sending an email or a physical card are two straightforward actions that can encourage customers to conduct their holiday shopping with your company.
Know How to Leverage Social Media:
If you don’t have a serious social media strategy, it’s time to get one.
Social media is one of the most effective ways to reach customers and generate leads for your business. You can use social media ads on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to promote products or services that are relevant to what people are talking about at any given moment.
If you’re not sure where to begin with your marketing efforts, try using influencers who already have large followings on their platforms (for example: celebrities).
Then ask them if they’d be willing for you to feature them in an ad campaign that promotes both yours and theirs brands together! This will help increase awareness among potential clients while also helping build trust between both parties involved through transparency—and this will help ensure future collaborations down the line!
Include a Strong Call to Action in Your Marketing:
A call to action is a phrase that tells the reader what you want them to do.
It’s usually at the end of a sentence and it should be clear and concise, with no ambiguity. The best way to include one in your marketing campaign is through social media posts, emails or calls-to-action on your website (like “Sign up now”).
Set Up an Email Newsletter:
You can set up an email newsletter for daily tips/brainstorms/ideas/best practices around your product. This is a great way to give people a reason to sign up and make sure you’re not just sending out generic information that everyone else has.
Give people something of value in the first few emails, like a free report on how to increase sales or lower costs, or even just some inspiration from other people who have been successful using your product.
Make sure there are links in each email so they can easily unsubscribe if they don’t want what’s being sent anymore (and make sure they know how).
Offer Free Shipping:
This is a great strategy because it gives customers a reason to buy, and they’re more likely to do so if they have time and money left over from their regular purchases. It also helps build trust with your brand, which makes people feel comfortable buying from you online or in person (and could lead them back).
Plus, free shipping can help boost sales by giving consumers an incentive to make multiple purchases rather than just one big one at checkout.
Give Back
Give back this holiday season by finding a cause that resonates with your brand and community and donate a portion of sales to that cause for the duration of the promotion.
For example, you can donate a portion of revenue from your holiday sale to a charitable organization. Also, encourage your customers to donate by setting up PayPal or online accounts to make payments.
The Conclusion:
Well, there you have it—great holiday marketing strategies for 2022! We hope you’ve enjoyed reading about these creative ways that businesses have been using social media to market their products and services this holiday season.
As always, we encourage people to use their creativity when thinking up new strategies for themselves and others. Good luck with your holiday marketing strategy this year!
What do you think? Let me know by commenting below!