Holiday Marketing Tips From Digital Marketing Pros

How do you plan your digital marketing for the holiday season? How can you make sure you are prepared when it gets busy over Christmas and new year?

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To get you started I asked my marketing friends to share their marketing tips for the holiday season.

From planning to social ads to campaign ideas you’ll find it all here.

Planning

BizPaul – Like Mind Media

Given that 2020 has been somewhat of an exceptional year, taking time to do market research for your target market will put you in a more secure place when it comes to selling what people actually want, not what you think they want, or what they wanted last year.

Researching now gives you time to create products and services that more closely align their needs, which could be very different this year.

Follow Paul online:

'Taking time to do market research for your target market will put you in a more secure place when it comes to selling what people actually want'Click To Tweet

Cathy Wassell – Socially Contented

Get planning now. Brands that do well over Black Friday and the Holiday Season will have the weeks mapped out, be creating great graphics or videos and building their funnels RIGHT NOW. Christmas in July, baby.

Follow Cathy Online:

'Brands that do well over Black Friday and the Holiday Season will have the weeks mapped out, be creating great graphics or videos and building their funnels RIGHT NOW.'Click To Tweet

Bella Vasta

Plan ahead. Know your numbers. Know what you’re aiming for. If you don’t know these things, nothing else matters. Reverse engineer everything.

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'Plan ahead. Know your numbers. Know what you're aiming for.'Click To Tweet

Audience Building

Jennifer Macdonald-Nethercott – Strath Communications

These three areas are key to your marketing day in day out. Making sure that you’re delivering for your customers and solving their problems will keep you in front of the right people.

Communication. keep talking to your audience and ensure that this is two way.

Engage in conversations both on your channels and in online communities.
Keep in touch with your customers, let them know you are there

By always showing up you stay top of mind with your ideal customer and I know that these people will be seeing your content.

Make sure you have a pipeline of contacts that you’re always working on converting. By having a group of warm leads that you’re always working on these customers will be ready to convert during the holiday period.

Look at what industries you’re targeting too, it’s the wrong time to sell to hospitality and tourism however if you’re targeting holidaymakers now is the time to be out there selling. They are relaxed and ready to buy to make their holiday one to remember.

Having a marketing plan in place is the only way to achieve your business goals along with a content plan that you apply and following in your business.

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'Make sure you have a pipeline of contacts that you're always working on converting.' Jennifer Macdonald-NethercottClick To Tweet

Kristina Proffitt

Plant the seed early on. Don’t directly talk about what you’re selling right away, but build to it. Show you’re experienced and you can empathise with your target audience’s situation. Demonstrate your knowledge and expertise.

Once you’ve built up engagement and interest, start to mention your product or service. Don’t try to cover everything it does in one post or email. Go big on each aspect of it and don’t be afraid to post or email about it lots. Most of all, don’t sell the product’s features. Sell the lifestyle it helps your audience to create.

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Get a headstart on Google Analytics 4 & understand the lingo with the GA4 phrase book

'Plant the seed early on. Don't directly talk about what you're selling right away, but build to it.'Click To Tweet

Facebook Ads

Laura Moore & Laura Davis – The Hub.

If you want to get ahead for the holiday season now is the time to invest in Facebook ads. First thing you’ll need to do is get your Facebook pixel in place (you might want to get your web developer to do this for you) and ensure all the event codes are firing correctly.

Next step is to start testing audiences so you’ll know which audiences work for your business and are ready to scale your budget during the peak sales period – you’ll have plenty of traffic to retarget when you start focusing on your holiday sales. Don’t leave the testing until that key sales period when you want to be getting the conversions.

Now is also the time to start testing your creative to see what resonates with your audience, while ensuring you can also use the winning creative in the peak sales period – start building that social proof now so you can re-use your best ads in future campaigns.

Finally now is the time to decide what offers you might be using during the key shopping dates (Black Friday etc) and think about whether those will be run to all your audiences, or just saved for retargeting campaigns. Plan these out now so you aren’t panicking a week before the event!

Follow The Lauras Online

'Start testing audiences so you’ll know which audiences work for your business and are ready to scale your budget during the peak sales period'Click To Tweet

Amanda Robinson, The Digital Gal

Start your Facebook advertising early.

Switching ads on to a cold audience in December is is like trying to scale Mount Everest on the busiest day of the year with no gear. It’s a bitter cold lesson to learn with your ad dollars.

Instead, start your advertising in September/October and slowly & steadily build up a warm audience of people who are more familiar with you. Come holiday sales time, retarget your warm audience with your sales ad.

Follow Amanda Online

'Switching ads on to a cold audience in December is is like trying to scale Mount Everest on the busiest day of the year with no gear.'Click To Tweet

Christine Gritmon

While most of the year I focus on organic content strategy, for the holiday season I strongly urge getting a good handle on Facebook ad targeting. There is so much noise out there that you want to make sure you’re really seen by the customers who most want what you’ve got.

Do pay attention to your organic analytics – what does well organically will also work well as an ad – but this is a time to get laser-focused on your ICAs and create highly targeted ads just for them.

You can get tremendous results for a tiny budget if you truly take care with your targeting.

'You can get tremendous results for a tiny budget if you truly take care with your targeting.'Click To Tweet

Your Website

Esther Ocampo – IPA Group

Sell using your website, Shopify or similar. Make sure all your links are working, update stock quantities especially for popular items to advise of limited stock or waiting times for new stock arriving.

Finally, make the purchasing process simple with very few clicks necessary to buy your products.

Follow Esther Online

'Make the purchasing process simple with very few clicks necessary to buy your products.'Click To Tweet

Email Marketing

Rob and Kennedy

Send an email to segment your email subscribers based on the types of people they want to buy for. The holidays are about selling to buyers, not people buying for themselves.

Are they buying for young children? Segment them so you can send the most relevant toy suggestions. Maybe they’re buying for their parents, maybe don’t suggest sexy lingerie.

It’s so simple to do too: send an email out to everyone with different types of gifts, and segment them based on what they click.

Higher relevance means more people opening your emails, less unsubscribes and more sales. Ho ho hoorah!

Follow Rob & Kennedy Online

'Higher relevance means more people opening your emails, less unsubscribes and more sales. Ho ho hoorah!'Click To Tweet

Campaign Ideas

Sacha Liddiard – Think Outside The Bot

If you have an eCommerce business Create a ‘Gift Idea’ chatbot – Get the bot to suggest the best gift based on half a dozen questions or provide a personalised reply. Then convert it into a Holiday ‘Gift Idea’ chatbot in October

Follow Sacha Online

'If you have an eCommerce business Create a 'Gift Idea' chatbot - Get the bot to suggest the best gift based on half a dozen questions or provide a personalised reply.'Click To Tweet

Amber Leach – Business Coach

I am working on a sales-boosting initiative over the holidays for my wedding & family photography business, we are usually very busy with weddings during the summer holidays but this summer things aren’t so busy due to Covid-19! So we are offering all our previous clients from the past 2 years a special offer on all of our passive income print products including albums, prints and canvases.

We have a 15% off voucher and we use this incentive every holiday including summer, Christmas and Easter time, and always get an increase in sales when we email out each customer individually.

We find that people are at home a lot more taking annual leave, planning, getting the house in order etc. This is a time-limited offer until 31st August.

Follow Amber Online

'We have a 15% off voucher and we use this incentive every holiday including summer, Christmas and Easter time'Click To Tweet

Your Offering

Sarah Clay

During the holiday season, people’s focus shifts towards family and away from business.

The first piece of advice I would offer would be to think to yourself, what would make me buy my service during this time? The answer(s) to your question will vary depending on what you are selling but here are 3 tips to help you sell more during the holiday season:

Offer a deal or reduction in price and make it time-bound. So offer a reduction if you purchase by a certain time. If you’re offering a service, they don’t have to take the service now, that can be deferred, as long as you get payment – even a deposit.

Change your offering. Is there a way you can change your offering to suit someone on holiday?

Solve a different problem for your audience. Think about how your product or service could be used specifically during this season. What problems can your offering solve DURING the holiday season.