How to Enhance Your Holiday Marketing Campaign
Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa, the end of the year means an opportunity for your company to introduce holiday marketing campaigns to land some big sales and start the new year right. The holiday season is, without a doubt, the biggest and most influential sales period for countless businesses around the world.
As companies roll out the red carpet for their customers both online and off, how will your company rise above and get noticed? Here are some holiday marketing tips to make the most of this lucrative sales season.
Holiday Marketing Tip #1: Start Early
You can’t try to build and send a successful holiday marketing campaign at the last minute and not expect to be crushed by your competition.
Although convention holds that consumers don’t traditionally begin their holiday shopping until after Thanksgiving, the murmurs of sales begin well before Black Friday. Consumers use their Thanksgiving downtime to casually acquaint themselves with impending online sales and deals.
Begin enticing your potential customers weeks beforehand so they’ll be ready with cash in hand when it comes time to shop.
Holiday Marketing Tip #2: Know Your Customers
You’ve heard this phrase “know your customers” thrown around for so long that it has nearly lost meaning. Learn to go beyond common demographics like income, gender, or region and understand what it is that makes your customers tick.
Do your customers procrastinate? Do they respond to incentivized offers? Which day’s campaign is most effective? What hours do your customers typically shop? Are their spending habits influenced by outside sources (sports teams, television shows, seasons, etc.)?
There will always be information that only you know about your customer base. Consider analyzing their behavioral patterns and psychographics in addition to the standard demographic characteristics that you observe. Take advantage of your position as a retailer to create personality profiles for your customers and create holiday marketing campaigns that hit their pain points.
Holiday Marketing Tip #3: Utilize Multi-Channel Marketing
Focusing on a single method of generating traffic simply won’t cut it in today’s crowded marketplace. In order to stay relevant, incorporating multi-channel tactics into your holiday marketing campaign is imperative.
In order to take full advantage of the online space, your company must understand how the six paths to driving traffic to a website (email, organic search, paid traffic, social traffic, referral traffic, and direct traffic) all play a role in the success of your company. Each strategy requires a unique touch, so make sure your strategies match the medium.
Paid traffic, for example, allows you to target your customers using keywords through Google AdWords and create relevant traffic when users search the web.
On the other hand, a particularly insightful email campaign can seed customers with cookies that will follow the user throughout their browsing experience by activating matching banner ads or social media cues.
Holiday Marketing Tip #4: Be Creative
Nearly all retailers will be taking advantage of the holiday season to roll out holiday marketing campaigns. Don’t be afraid to be creative and show your customers something different, as your campaign will be pitted against heavy competition.
Keep in mind that you’re not only targeting clients who are looking for deals for themselves but who also need a little help making purchases for loved ones.
Gift-giving guides, related products, and segmented sales areas for targeted demographics make the shopping experience easier for your customer. Use limited-time offers like daily deals to prompt sales and bundle deals or free shipping to incentivize larger purchases.
‘Tis the Season
A disproportionate amount of spending occurs during the holiday season, so investing heavily on holiday marketing to promote your brand and attached sales just make sense.
When audiences are ready to buy your brand, you should be everywhere they are. Engaging your customers with your holiday marketing campaign early gives your company lead time and the chance to have fun with your customers, build a rapport, outshine the competition, and dramatically increase sales.
