The holiday season is just around the corner and everyone is becoming more and more busier as it approaches. As for you, you might be thinking what to do with your marketing campaign. Well, I suggest that you also start preparing because doing it early can increase your chances of avoiding procrastination caused by unexpected problems coming up on the last-minute. These holiday marketing tips and promotion ideas aim to help you refine your efforts to ramp up sales during the most profitable time of the year.
Plan ahead, and plan more.
Almost 50 events are now being celebrated around the world during the holiday season. This opens the door for a lot of good opportunities to help improve and establish businesses. This is due to the influx of traffic to online stores which is being motivated by sales and promos. This is such a busy time and it requires brands to be fully prepared or else they will be overwhelmed by the surge of customers or be beaten by competitors. Some of the things that must be secured are easy-to-access FAQs, customer support chatbots, and tested emails and website.
Holiday planning must cover not only a business’ landing pages, email marketing, and ad campaigns ready but also its channel strategy. One must also ensure that everything works smoothly through promo codes/checkout, etc. The initial planning of a successful holiday marketing campaign usually starts in Q2. This may seem too early but know that time can pass by so quickly, so, it is important to allot extra to time to be able to plan ahead of time.
Simplicity is the key.
Holiday planning should not be so complicated. In fact, you can start small with your holiday campaigns, especially if this is your first holiday season as a brand. Base your strategy on the capability of your team and the amount of support you have with your operations. All you need is to be able to come up with an idea which your product or service can give, a benefit and an emotion which draws the customers and helps them remember your brand. The efficiency of how you implement this strategy will determine whether consumers will choose to shop with you for the holidays.
As an additional strategy you can also use social media to connect with customers. With this one, you will have to come up with something engaging that shopper will be enticed to share through their social media accounts to feel like they are a part of something. This tactic helps you build not only a connection but also trust and an audience.
Prepare and Adapt Quickly.
Problems may be inevitable during these hectic times. So, you also have to be prepared to troubleshoot especially for worst-case scenarios. You should secure a team that will remedy any issues on your website, ads and anywhere else. You should also consider reviewing your customer service, shipping, and operations teams to assure that minimal to zero problems will arise in the future. This is also another reason why you have to plan ahead of time; so that you can make changes due to unforeseen issues as early as you can.
Have a Content-Driven Approach.
One of the latest trends in the retail industry today is the use of content marketing as a way to reach customers. Through this, brands are being enabled to offer more personalized shopping experiences to customers such as holiday gift guides and shopping assistants. Adding a content strategy element to your holiday marketing ideas can help you a lot as well, especially if you keep search engine optimization (SEO) in mind. This will encourage drive organic traffic to your website as customers will be able to search for products that you sell even if they’ve never shopped with you before.
Brace for tougher competition.
The greatest challenge that you may face during the holiday season are the competitors which may be doing the same or even better strategies compared to you. But, don’t be discouraged because all you have to do is re-enforce your email marketing to draw more customers to your online store. Make sure that it will give you an edge in communicating the benefits of purchasing with your products and services over your competitors.
Be creative and target an interesting/unique area that you know about your demographic and focus on that rather than do the traditional (easy) holiday-related subject lines. Make sure you have secured your effective retargeting campaigns ahead of the holiday season.
The holiday season may be stressful for some businesses but it can also be filled with enjoyment especially if you have enough preparation and strategy to stand out against your rivals. Remember that it is not about how grand your holiday marketing campaign strategy is but how it can give a remarkable experience to your buyers.