10-Essential Steps In Building A Successful Holiday Marketing Campaign

Don’t miss out on holiday shopping this year, take advantage by building a successful Holiday Marketing Campaign with these 10 steps.

10-Essential Steps In Building A Successful Holiday Marketing Campaign

2019 Total retail spending was up 3.7% to $1.007 trillion, 2020 will be insane with everyone staying home and shopping online due to the pandemic.

A holiday marketing campaign can do wonders, you know, especially for new and growing businesses. The massive availability of potential clientele’s attention and their eagerness is sure to get you exposure, if not sales. So, a holiday season promises a win-win situation either way, given that you keep your marketing game strong.

But developing an effective holiday campaign is not a piece of cake, especially if you’ve left the job for the eleventh hour. First things first, you need to prepare for the holiday season beforehand. Be it Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, or any other occasion – you need to mark your calendars and prepare for it at least two weeks prior.

Now, here comes the actual question: with what material do you prepare yourself? And more importantly, how to do that most effectively?

Well, this post is going to cover ten highly effective and essential steps in building a successful holiday marketing campaign. Let’s get to them right away.

 

1. Research and Plan 

Firstly, gather all your resources. Look up into the on-going trends of the industry market, both physically and virtually. Check where does your company stands and how it can best cater to the needs of people in current times. Certainly, your marketing team will need to put in their digital marketing knowledge to use and utilize online trend research tools to conduct this research.

But if you are relatively new to the field of business, we suggest you take the help of an experienced SEO and digital marketing agency, such as Avidon marketing group. They will help you conduct thorough research and craft an effective plan for a content marketing calendar. 

 

2. Target Specific Holidays  

As mentioned earlier, the more targeted your approach is, the better results your marketing campaign will yield. Using a targeted approach, you can connect with people who seek the services or products you provide but are unaware of your presence in the market.

Hence, identify the holidays relevant to your business. For example, if you sell aesthetic handmade greeting cards, Thanksgiving is an ideal holiday. 

Similarly, if you operate internationally, consider all possible holidays. Then shortlist the ones occurring in the areas or countries that you operate within. 

Now, if you’ve got a big enough budget and marketing team, you could conduct holiday marketing campaigns for all. If not, you can further shortlist the ones occurring in areas where you would like to boost your sales.

 Add all these to your content calendar. Now, you’re good to go with the following steps of developing a marketing campaign.

 

3. Develop a Customer Persona 

Next comes the development of customer personas. Fundamentally, these are ideal profiles that an organization or company creates. They may be fictional or semi-fictional, meaning that they may be based on imaginary people with imaginary preferences or based on real people with imaginary preferences that best fall into a company’s interest. Note that they are close to reality and practicality.

Marketers use these along with segmentation to yield better outputs of their carefully crafted marketing campaigns. For the team, it acts as a template or a guideline. So, when arranging events, marketing them, and selling products or services, all involved individuals can look into these and conduct their jobs accordingly. And in holiday marketing campaigns, it will help you in reaching out to exactly who seeks you rather than investing time and energy irrelevantly.

 

4. Craft a Strategy 

Your next big step towards developing a marketing campaign is crafting an effective strategic plan. To begin with, determine, what is the elementary target of your holiday marketing campaign? Do you plan to boost your sales, generate referrals, up-sell existing customers, generate leads, qualify leads, or what?

Once you’ve decided that, determine your medium of marketing. Here are your potential options:

  • Emails 
  • Email Newsletters
  • Social Media
  • Podcasts
  • Webinar
  • Search Engines
  • Videos
  • Websites
  • Online Advertising
  • And the list goes on.

Physical options that you have include events, PR, and outdoor. Another element that you need to take care of is your strategy schedule. Set up a timetable and decide what action you will take when. It will ensure a smooth flow of work.

 

5. Try Emotional Marketing  

Be it Easter or Halloween-each holiday has an association with feelings. People look forward to holidays so that they can celebrate with beloved ones, spreading joy and glee. Hence, when looking at things linked with these holidays, we automatically establish a connection. 

So, to boost the Holiday Marketing Campaign, one must benefit from this bonding by incorporating emotional content in your campaign. Or, you could add creative graphic design to provoke emotion. As a result, potential customers would feel inclined towards your service or product.

 

6. Focus on Uniqueness 

Holidays aren’t unique as they pass by every year. However, the trends and problems keep getting unique. So, you can make your campaign more compelling and relatable by introducing a new holiday trend. Or, you can address a prominent holiday-related issue and offer an outstanding solution to it. Be creative!   

 

7. Incorporate Story Telling 

According to a study, approximately 80-percent of the customers feel engaged by storytelling. The usage of simple language, presence of events, and characters conveys the message more efficiently than plain text. 

Plus, it helps the audience understand your perspective and develop trust in your campaign. Bringing out your brand’s history, values, mission, and services in the format of a story can turn more browsers into instant purchasers. 

 

8. Be Social & Interact!

When campaigning, make your context and phrases interactive. Nobody loves reading plain, boring content. You can turn your holiday marketing campaign compelling by questioning the audience and adding polls on social media. These interactive steps can make your audience feel more involved in the campaign.  

 

9. Expand the Channels 

On holidays, customers are present almost everywhere. You might as well be thinking about setting up the stall near the park. However, you are losing all the valuable customers present in the stores, festivals, and even houses. 

In today’s modish times, a majority of customers are surfing through online platforms, social media, and emails for holiday-related products. So, you must expand your channels to make your holiday marketing campaign successful. 

Promote your campaign by putting up posters throughout the town. You can invest in an advertisement in the national newspaper. 

Moreover, you should establish a virtual presence, especially in social media. Create official pages on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Plus, send promotional emails to potential customers.  

Again, even here, it would be of great benefit to hiring a reputable digital marketing agency, such as the Avidon Marketing Group. The agency can assist you in spreading awareness about the campaign virtually and gathering community. 

 

10. Offer Gifts for Loyal Customers 

Perhaps, the most effective method of boosting sales and promoting your holiday marketing campaign is to reward your customers. Now, it doesn’t refer to gifting every single customer. Instead, you can offer rewards or free items on the first 10-20 purchases. It will lure in numerous customers without costing you much. Good Luck!