How to get the most out of your marketing during the holiday season.
Does business tend to be hectic right up to Christmas, then slows down for the first couple of weeks of the new year? This doesn’t have to be the case! By using active social media marketing and online marketing during the holiday ‘quiet period’ (when most businesses close between Christmas and the new year), you can make new connections so that your business carries the busy pre-Christmas momentum through to the new year.
1. Social Media Marketing
During the Christmas period, social media is awash with holiday snaps and seasonal well-wishes. With all this online chatter, it can be hard for a business to get noticed. My advice here is to be unique; think about what is happening besides Christmas.
Some ideas are:
– Straight after Christmas comes the Sydney to Hobart yacht race, the Boxing Day Test, then the Australian Open. If you are an avid sports fan, these might be great tools for you to use to promote your business.
– If you aren’t into sports, you could perhaps focus on the season during this time of year. Coca-Cola does this well with its regular ‘summer feels’ campaigns.
– Isn’t summer also MKR season? Speaking of TV – does anyone really miss Home and Away during the offseason??
2. Email Marketing
While your inbox may have already blown up with all sorts of Christmas or Boxing Day deals, it does tend to go quiet during the seven days straight after Christmas.
This is an excellent time for you to take advantage of a quiet inbox to promote your business.
However, unlike social media, where I recommend running non-Christmas themed campaigns, it’s a bit different when it comes to emails.
Wordstream recommends using the holidays in your email marketing campaigns, but to do so in a fun way. Also, ensure you pay close attention to your subject line. Remember, it has to entice the reader to open the email. Perhaps offer a post-Christmas deal in the email?
3. Website Marketing
Running targeted Google Ads campaigns over Christmas is a great way to generate more clicks to your website. The key to effectively doing this is to ensure that you are using the correct themed words and phrases. Words like ‘Christmas’ and ‘holidays’ are great, as is the phrase ‘Tis the season’.
Some generalised advice: invoke emotion in your holiday marketing. Most people get sentimental and gushy with seasonal love around Christmas.
Forbes believes that brands need to position their campaigns as festive to capitalise on the swelling consumer sentiment and nostalgia around Christmas. But you can also play with people’s Grinch-like personalities around Christmas too!
My final piece of advice is not to take yourself too seriously. Get in the spirit of the ‘silly season’ by poking fun at yourself or your business. A fabulous example of this is with HotelTonight’s “visit, don’t stay” campaign. Their campaign ran across multiple platforms and quite efficiently used humour, coupled with an off-centre Christmas theme.
For more advice and guidance on effective holiday marketing, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me.
