For many of us, the summer season is a not-so-distant memory; many of us were just at the beach a couple of weeks ago! It’s hard to believe it, but the holiday season is right around the corner. It presents marketers with a number of opportunities, and in the weeks leading up to it, it’s important to get your marketing tools ready.
This will look a little different from one company to the next. Here at enCOMPASS, we are preparing for Cyber Monday specials, holiday sales, and beyond. Below are a few general strategies we’d recommend considering, though the best thing you can do to prepare for the holidays is to give us a call and ask about custom solutions.
Preparing for the Holiday Marketing Season
Start planning now. You don’t have to formalize anything, and you don’t have to announce anything to the public, but do start thinking about the holidays—Christmas, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Kwanza, and also Cyber Monday and Black Friday—and decide which of these days represent good opportunities for your brand. You’ll want to plan your marketing endeavors around those special days, so circle the dates on your calendar.
As a general tip, we would recommend not focusing solely on Christmas, if only because there are so many opportunities to take advantage of. You may stand out the most by eschewing the big holidays in favor of something more niche, like Small Business Saturday.
Develop holiday offers. Your holiday promotions need to be centered on something, ideally some special value you can offer over a select holiday timeframe—unique products, big discounts, or anything to sweeten your value proposition. Smaller perks, like free shipping or waived processing fees, can suffice.
Build creative collateral for your holiday offers. No matter how great your offer is, it’s not going to promote itself. Start working even now to develop the creative components you need to spread the word and get people interested—websites, banner ads, video advertisings, strong calls to action. You may not want to deploy these assets just yet, but you also don’t want to be developing them last-minute.
Plan social media promotion. Social media advertising provides great ways to spread the word about your offers, so take advantage of them. Start planning your holiday season editorial calendars even now.
Don’t forget about PPC. Your unique holiday offers provide some excellent content for a PPC ad blitz—but keep a couple of things in mind as you select the right keywords. First, ask yourself whether your audience is searching for your brand, or simply for more general terms associated with your niche? Also think about when ad traffic will be highest. If you’re selling consumer products—especially things that might make good holiday gifts—you may see more engagement than usual on evenings and weekends, as people are doing their online shopping.
Perfect your email blasts. Email is another important way to spread holiday cheer, but the holiday season can often lead to an email deluge—so make sure you write subject headings that are quick, to the point, and powerful in conveying value.
We’d love to talk with you more about integrated marketing and how it can work for you this holiday season. Contact enCOMPASS to get the ball rolling.
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