Holiday Marketing Tips

It’s September; what does that mean. It means Holidays are coming, and as a business owner, if you don’t start planning early in advance for your Holiday Promotions and sales, you can miss out, and it can affect your business bottom line.

I typically say you should start planning your promotions in August. If you haven’t begun to think about what you’re going to do for your campaigns, then I have some tips for you.

1. Identify the Holiday Marketing Strategy that will reach your audience: We look at what our competitors are doing, and what ideas we can grab from one another, but it’s about what you’ve done in the past, what you can do in the future, what your goals are and what you can utilize in your marketing. Every business is unique; I have “What makes us unique and different from other agencies?” in my mission and value statement, and I have it written on my walls. Find out who your audience is, and get as specific as possible. You need to know who they are so you can target them. If you want to reach Generation Z or millennials, you will focus more on social commerce effects than direct mail or TV and radio ads. TikTok and videos are a fun and creative way to reach them. If you target an older generation, like the millennials, it’s more about building trust and loyalty, about showing up and having that consistency. If you don’t know your audience or what strategies you want to use, let’s chat, no cost to you.
2. Build customer loyalty with personalized gifts: These can be different things for each client or vendor. I sometimes send wine, chocolate, cupcakes, and sometimes it is more personalized to them. People want to feel appreciated, and if you are a service-based business, B to B or even B to C, you want to show that appreciation. You can send physical items in the mail, and people love that. I send my past clients personalized postcards, and I give a little more special attention to my current clients and send candy or liquor because I want to show my appreciation and not be sales-y. I want them to understand my gratitude. Sometimes I will send promotional items like stickers, micro-cloths to clean your eyeglasses, or little notes pads depending on who the client is. Small acts of personalized kindness towards your customers can make a huge impact, and it can also strengthen the relationship and create brand awareness and loyalty for years to come.
3. Sending out email campaigns weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly: It’s one of the best ways to talk to your audience without having to get on the phone. You can educate and build that value as you are going into the seasons. Remember who your audience is, some people might be Jewish and don’t celebrate Christmas, or some might not celebrate Halloween. I Always educate them. I share my podcast or blog post with them to help them understand what I do and know their problems. For the seasonal email, be clear, creative, fun, and unique to stand out. Your subject line needs to grab their attention quickly and get them to open the email. You want to educate, but you also want to be quick and to the point of the deal without them searching out the details. These emails should be different from your regular emails. You can always Google something for more inspirational Holiday emails. If you need help, hire somebody that can get you the results you want.
4. Get Creative with Video: Video is huge! It’s popular and not slowing down; they need to be everywhere, whether a graphic video or an audiogram-style video, they need to be on your social media, email campaigns, and website. Fun for the holiday videos can get lots of attention, something like an ugly sweater video contest where the CEO picks the winner and the prize is a $100 gift card. Be creative. I did a Holiday campaign years ago for a dentist for Thanksgiving. Each employee had to say what they were thankful for, and we would write a little blurb about them as well, and it went through the roof. People were liking, commenting, and sharing. You can ask each employee to shoot a quick video of what they are thankful for this year, have fun with it.

Planning is vital because you have to know when to post things to build awareness and an audience.