Holiday Marketing

Are you ready for the holiday season?

Every year it seems to sneak up on us. You may have noticed some of the bigger chains are already starting to sneak holiday decorations into their displays, and Ballantynes have already auditioned for their Santa.

You won’t want to miss seasonal promotional opportunities, or holiday sales - especially as people are more likely to spend over the Christmas period than any other specific time of the year.

Here’s 5 campaigns/techniques you can use over the holiday period.

• Partner Up
• Create Holiday Bundles
• Offer Gift Cards
• Remarket to “Lost” Customers
• Interactive Campaigns

A really interesting way to leverage the holidays is for businesses to partner up with a business who has a complimentary product/service and offer a combined package, discount or other joint promotion. It's an excellent way to boost revenues, expand your potential customer reach by tapping into each other’s database, and drive sales when consumers are likely to spend more.

Example: Uber with their #DesignatedRider campaign. They teamed up with Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), and urged drunken holiday partygoers not to drive.

Fix’d property maintenance teamed up with a local electrical company and cleaning company to offer a Christmas bundle last year. As a group, they would sort out any last minute odd jobs, have your house tidy and organise Christmas lights all in time for the extended family to stay - how handy is that?!

Bundle different services together that will help reduce holiday stress, have more impact, or simply make sense to buy together.

For example if you're a salon you could include hair, makeup and free champagne when getting ready for new years. Or if you're a storage facility, you could bundle a month's storage fee with trailer hire.

People are always hungry for gift cards, especially in the holiday season. It's a great way to engage existing customers and encourage new ones.

One extremely effective strategy is to use gift cards as a carrot to up-sell your customers. If you offer a free $20 gift card after people spend a certain amount, they're more likely to grab a few extra items to meet that threshold. And if they end up giving the card to someone else, that's a new customer for you.

Many people shop around at Christmas time, especially online shopping. Do you normally purchase the first thing you see for a family member or friend? Generally not.

Do you save lots of items in different wishlists on online shopping? Capture those opportunities.

Capture “lost” traffic to your website by remarketing to them; you’ll stay top of mind and more likely to convert the “lost” customer. There’s a couple ways you can do this:

• Send a follow-up email for their abandon cart items
  
  
• Follow them with advertising on Facebook and/or Google (remarketing campaigns)

User-generated content is nearly always a big win if it's done well. The key is a common thread that ties all your users' posts together to each other and your brand.

• Use an app or visual prop. Invite people to share their pictures and stories of where, when and how they use your product.
  
  
• Invite clients to post photos enjoying the service that you offer. If you're a consultant, you could have a photo-worthy prop that could become a holiday symbol for your company like a giant candy cane paper clip.

Office Depot has done this pretty well over the last few years with their Elf Yourself campaign ps. The Elf Yourself will be back in 9 days time!