Seasonal Marketing Tips!
The festive season is upon us, and amongst the rush of everything else that is Christmas, you’re probably thinking “Where do I even start with getting my business out there?!” Here at GLOSS, a digital marketing agency based in Birmingham, our team are here to the rescue, providing you with some top marketing tips to make sure your business gets noticed.
1. Plan, Perfect, Perform!
You should start planning your festive campaign at least 2-3 months before the festive period even begins. This will give you an edge over your competitors. Believe it or not, many brands will leave their marketing planning until the month before, or even the week of! If you come up with a fool-proof plan before you even begin, you’ll have ironed our any issues and be a force to be reckoned with throughout winter!
Be specific! You can plan, plan, plan, but if you aren’t sure who your marketing is aimed at, then it can all crumble last minute. Will it be males or females? What age range will they be? What area will they be based in? What interests will they have? Target audience is an important one, as successful ads only come to informed businesses that know what they want.
It is important before planning any campaign to recognise what your end goal will be. Is your aim to gain more followers, attract customers, or boost sales? Your goal can be anything, but you need to choose and stick to it throughout, as any call to action your ads have will be centred around this.
2. “Did Someone Say FREE?!”
The next step on our list to a successful festive campaign is ads! Ads for lots of business owners are complex to understand. There are complicated algorithms, coding and so much more that goes into the magic behind putting your business at the top of a persons search result. The most important thing to find out when conducting research prior to your ad is the key words that your target customer will use. A key word could be a description of your business, and with this knowledge, you may still be a top search result without someone actually typing in your business name.
So, you’ve made it to Google page one! Congratulations, you’re over the hard bit! Now your next milestone is to draw customers to actually click on your link. To do this, be cheeky, be sneaky, and remember a little bit of clickbait never hurt anyone. You can say things like, “Did someone say FREE?”, “You won’t believe this deal”, “Get 40% off before it’s too late!”. These tag lines will entice customers to click onto your link if they think they are getting a good deal.
If you found yourself being completely lost you as soon as the word “Ads” was mentioned, then our Google Advertising specialists are here to assist you!
3. “Wow, You Get About!”
Apologies in advance to you technophobes, but the Google fun doesn’t stop there! It isn’t just ads that can help get your name out there, and get you noticed. You can invest in Google Shopping campaigns! This means that you will come up on the ‘Shopping’ tab on Google, as well as coming up as an advert at the top of the Google Search page. Ever wanted a little black dress but not sure where to buy it from, so you just fling those key words into Google and get a heap of offers from different stores selling your desired item? Well you can be that solution for a lost customer!
4. The Gift of Giving
Christmas is the time to give, and say thank you to those beloved people around you, so why don’t your customers who keep a roof over your head come under that category? Christmas is the perfect time to say a huge thank you to everyone that has shown your business support over the last year, and not to mention a great way to help you gain some social media followers… because no good deed is a true good deed, right?
A giveaway isn’t the only way to say thank you to your customers. You can use the entire festive period to dish out deals and increase your traffic! Whether it’s Black Friday, the 12 Days of Christmas, Christmas Eve, Boxing Day or January Sales, now is the perfect time to get your spam on! Anyone that has already subscribed to your marketing emails have an interest in your product, so why wouldn’t they want to know about deals you have on? Sprinkle some festive fun over your email marketing campaigns, and remember the subject lines mean everything!
5. Christmas Cookies
Have you ever gone looking for something online, then when you go onto Facebook later you are getting that advertisement again, creepy right? Wrong, that’s called cookies, and you need to get onboard. The idea of cookies is to remarket because no one wants to be out of sight, out of mind. Over the holidays, make sure that your membership duration is shorter, or even half of what it usually is! This means that if you normally choose your remarketing list to be 30 days long, reducing it to 15 will have your clients seeing your product much more frequently, and therefore it will have a more intense impact.
6. Holidays Are Coming!
Are the holidays for you a time to spend with your family? A stress from start to finish to be a mum and get everything perfect for your family? Time to feel grateful for all the nice things people do for you throughout the year. Or just a reminder that you’re single for the holidays? No matter what feelings the holidays bring out of you, the point is that they do bring some feeling – so businesses should utilise this! Are your target audience busy mums, retail workers, the beauty industry? If so, show empathy for how they must be feeling, and offer solutions – be the solution!
A great example of someone that uses the emotions of Christmas in their marketing campaigns is John Lewis. Year on year, John Lewis bring out a Christmas Advert on the TV, and it’s always a tear jerker. For years to come, people still say “wasn’t this the song from that John Lewis advert?” Strong emotions can cause persistent memories.
Another festive classic is the Coca Cola ‘Holidays Are Coming’ campaign. This one has been about since 1995, annually touring the UK in the festive Coca Cola lit up truck. The adverts usually show families in their woolly winter gear crowding around the van with the classic ‘Holidays Are Coming’ song playing in the background.
7. Get Seen!
It’s one thing getting your website highly ranked on Google, but why not let Amazon do the work for you? Amazon have a complex algorithm that will show your product to customers that have bought something similar or have made relevant searches to your product. Therefore, using paid ads on Amazon is important, especially over the Christmas period when their traffic will be at an all time high. James Thomson, President of Prosper Show, gave some great advice – “if you sell on Amazon, be sure to get your FBA inventory to amazon by November 10th at the latest.”
8. Quick, Where’s the Mistletoe!?
Finally, the eighth and final step to perfecting your festive marketing campaign is to focus on design! If you don’t already have an in-house designer, it might be time to look at outsourcing. So many brands will be focusing on their design work over this period, and you really want to stand out from the crowd. Make a list of colours and feelings that you want your website and social media channels to give out, then get someone to make your vision a reality!
There you have it, the eight steps to a perfect a Christmas marketing campaign, gift wrapped with a bow on top for you to utilise and boost your business’ sales over this festive period. If any of the above left you lost, then our expert team at GLOSS are here to help. Give us a call for a free, no obligation consultation on 0121 794 0070.
