12 Marketing Strategies Your Business Needs This Holiday Season
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It’s that time of the year again! The holiday season is just around the corner – and for most businesses, it’s time again to start working on your holiday marketing campaign. A well-thought-out, strong holiday marketing strategy will help your business build relationships with regular customers while attracting new buyers and driving brand awareness, all while increasing revenue.
Here’s an interesting fact – forecasts state that there will be an increase in 2022 holiday spending, with the “potential to shatter previous records,” says the National Retail Federation (NRF). This year, many businesses have noticed an increase in competitors. Therefore, researchers are calling this holiday season a record-breaking season for shopping. That said, building an excellent strategy to help your brand stand out is vital.
At Bold x Collective, we understand how overwhelming the holiday season can get for business owners and marketers. Therefore, our expert digital marketing team has created this detailed guide that includes 12-holiday marketing tactics we recommend for businesses to use for a successful holiday campaign. Let’s use this holiday season to help drive brand awareness, increase revenue, and make happy, loyal customers!
Here are our top 12 holiday marketing strategies you should remember when creating a holiday campaign for your business this season.
Tip #1: Connect with your Target Audience
When creating your holiday marketing campaign, it’s essential always to keep your business’s voice and mission in mind. Your brand and how you present it to the world is how your audience will never forget you while deciding whether they want to come to you to do their holiday shopping or go somewhere else. Therefore, to build a strong holiday campaign for your business, it’s important to think of your target audience and how to build a holiday campaign that fits their needs and wants, all while attracting new buyers.
Furthermore, another way to research how to speak to your target audience is to utilize the social media channels your customers frequently use when seeking information on holiday sales and promotions. For example, you want to research where your customers will find this information, whether it’s a computer, mobile search, social media ads, email marketing or other platforms. Once you can distinguish what your target audience is looking for and where they will look for it, you can work on your holiday campaign to ensure that you have provided your target audience with the products and services you promised to offer.
Tip #2: Audit Your Past Holiday Marketing Campaigns
When creating a holiday campaign, it’s important to analyze how your past holiday campaigns performed by auditing how well they did regarding the number of returning customers, organic traffic, and sales revenue. We recommend clients use what has been working for their past holiday campaign and tweak or improve on them to fit 2022 digital marketing expectations.
In 2022, there are now many ways for businesses to market their product or service during the holidays. A business can connect with its target audience and potential customers across various social channels preferred by its target audience, which helps build engagement, trust, and long-lasting relationships. Some excellent methods include utilizing user-generated content (UGC) on social media channels, using search engine marketing (SEM) such as Google Ads and shopping campaigns, creating promotional holiday e-blasts for your email marketing channel, and so much more.
Tip #3: Establish Brand Goals
As you’re building your campaign, it’s important to set goals for yourself to ensure you will reach your customers effectively while attracting new customers at the same time.
Setting goals is a great way to ensure you've met expectations for your brand. And of course, ensure your goals are SMART – specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and of course timely.
Tip #4: Analyze Your Key Performance Indicators
KPIs are the key performance indicators that allow a business to analyze its performance over time. To build a strong holiday marketing campaign for your business, it’s essential to analyze your progress over time to distinguish what part of your marketing strategy has worked for your business and audience while analyzing what can be improved for this coming holiday season.
This step will help you understand how well your marketing strategy has been reflected in your revenue growth. As business owners, always focus on analyzing results – it’s an essential key growth tactic often missing by brands!
Tip #5: Search Engine Optimization is Key
The holiday season is the perfect time for your business to offer holiday promotions, sales and giveaways that will benefit your customers and business. As part of a holiday marketing campaign, a business needs to focus on improving its search ranking effectively. As mentioned earlier, we now know that many users are using the web, social media channels, and search engines) to shop or find products or services to purchase for the perfect holiday gift. An optimized website can help your target audience locate your business with the holiday promotions you are offering.
Here are some SEO tips and website enhancements you can make to ensure your users have a positive user-experience and can easily locate what they are searching for:
A clear call-to-action that directs the audience and interested buyers to the exact page and product they are searching for.
Add bold and creative site-wide pop-ups and banners to promote your viewers' holiday deals and sales.
Link your social media accounts on your website to promote holiday giveaways and attract more traffic.
The holidays are always the busiest time for many shoppers and businesses; therefore, when shopping online, customers need to trust that they will get efficient customer service online. Therefore, you want to ensure your website is up to speed to keep up with the holiday rush.
Want to learn more about best practices for search engine optimization? Here is a guide by Bold x Collective that can help!
Tip #6: User-Generated Content is a Must!
Also known as UGC, it’s content you have gathered directly from your audience, whether it is a TikTok post, an Instagram Reel, a blog post, and more. It’s an excellent way to build online credibility as a brand, as you showcase that real people trust your brand enough to purchase from you, whether it is a product or service.
As marketers, we highly recommend including this in your holiday marketing strategy, as it is an essential tactic to help promote your holiday products or services. When customers are satisfied and happy with the experience they have received from a business, many like to promote that to their friends and family, through word of mouth, by sharing it on their social channels, or even by writing a blog post about their experience. Therefore, you want to collect all the positive feedback your audience and buyers make for you, like reviews and sharing the product or service they purchased from your business, as content that you want to share on your website and social media platforms.
When you have collected a significant amount of UGC to share with your viewers and potential buyers, many social platforms are available for your business to help promote this content. Some examples of social media channels available for businesses to share UGC are TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, and more; platforms are used depending on your overall social media strategy.
Tip #7: Offer Early Access to VIP customers
Many people are determined to shop for the perfect gift for their loved ones during the holidays, especially before the holiday rush takes over. Therefore, it’s essential that you, as a business, acknowledge these valuable customers and show them how important they are to your business. These specific buyers may seek affordable or early holiday deals; therefore, the best way to show your gratitude is by offering them VIP access to your holiday deals.
Utilizing email marketing is a great way to provide early access to sales. If your users are loyal fans signed up to your email marketing list and have purchased from you before, you can offer them a VIP sale to keep the excitement. Even better, to get that FOMO (fear of missing out) in full effect, offer VIP access for a limited time!
Tip #8: Collab with Influencers for a Marketing Boost
As social media grows, many businesses have collaborated with influencers across social platforms to help effectively market their holiday promotions and sales. As many people have come to rely on and trust many influencers for their reviews and opinions on products and services, working with influencers has become an effective marketing strategy after this tactic has benefited many businesses.
Collaborating with influencers as a holiday marketing strategy gives your business and holiday campaigns more advantages, as influencers are known on social media platforms for providing honest opinions on products and services to viewers worldwide. Therefore, this strategy will help advertise your holiday campaign to a niche audience you may not have reached without their assistance. Furthermore, when influencers promote your products and services on their social media platforms, it helps your business build more organic traffic, revenue, return on investment and much more. All while promoting your brand awareness and what you offer this holiday season.
When picking the right influencers for your campaign, you’ll want to research to ensure you are using those who genuinely resonate with your brand. Using the wrong influencer can negatively impact your brand, so being socially aware is essential. Use this guide by Bold x Collective when searching for the right influencers to represent your brand.
Tip #9: Don’t Forget About Your Late Shoppers
If you are a last-minute shopper, do you ever worry that your gift won’t arrive on time? This is where brands need to consider late shoppers! A great way to build a long-term relationship with returning and potential buyers is simply by extending your holiday marketing campaign for those who can’t shop during the holiday rush. As a business that provides products and services, it’s important to remember to be inclusive to the different audiences that may engage with your business during the holiday season.
One of the ways to do this is by utilizing online channels, such as social media or email marketing, to let your customers know that you are giving them a second chance by extending the holiday campaign. Here’s an example: a candle brand sells luxurious soy candles for their customers; there are still a handful of potential customers that have not purchased gifts for their loved ones but want to. So, the candle brand creates a social media series of posts and stories that provoke comfort and understanding. They understand how difficult it can be to get last-minute gifts and that they don’t want the customer to experience this. They are extending the holiday campaign so customers can get a second chance! Extending the holiday campaign helps build brand loyalty while strengthening relationships with customers; you, as a brand, were there when they needed you, which builds trust and loyalty.
Tip #10: Utilize Email Marketing
Email marketing is an effective tool for businesses to include in their marketing strategy. Email marketing during the holiday season has become a promising strategy for many businesses over the past years to allow them to connect directly with their customers, as it is such an effective way to communicate with users directly.
We always recommend keeping your emails fresh and exciting with limited-time offers to keep that FOMO (fear of missing out) in high gear. Some examples of strategic emails you can send to your customers can include:
Last-minute sales before it’s too late
Getting a gift with your order for a limited time
Free shipping for one day only
A limited-time new release
A generous, limited-time discount
These tactics can help keep your audience excited and, once again, give that FOMO feeling to your users. For more on best email marketing practices, check out this email marketing guide by Bold x Collective.
Tip #11: Run Paid Campaigns
With e-commerce becoming a growing trend in the digital world, it’s critical that your brand has online visibility and stands out amongst your competitors. With that said, paid advertising is a great strategy to increase visibility during the holiday season. Paid advertising can be used on many channels; the most common ones we use for our clients include Google Ads, Facebook Ads, TikTok Ads and Pinterest Ads. The channel you use depends on your specific industry and where your target audience is searching for your products or services.
Let’s start with Google Ads, a platform that you can use to target specific keywords that your customers are looking for. For example, for a makeup brand, you may want to use keywords like holiday makeup gift guide” or “makeup gift ideas.” Only use keywords once you have done the appropriate research.
You can use it to target specific keywords. On the other hand, you may want to run a video ad for Facebook and TikTok ads, which is a trending form of content in 2022. If you are running an ad for a makeup brand, do a tutorial of an influencer doing their makeup and explaining the different types of products used to create this exciting look.
Advertising effectively can be challenging if you are new to it, so if you are inexperienced, we suggest using an agency like Bold x Collective to ensure you get the results you are looking for with methods that work.
Tip #12: Offer Free Gifts
Many of us love freebies, as they are an excellent way to make users feel special. For a limited time, offer a gift with every order, as it’s a great way to cherish the gift of giving during the holiday season. And, of course, your users will appreciate it. Depending on the type of gift, it can be a great incentive to get your customers to want to purchase from you.
Here’s an idea – perhaps you are a sports apparel brand that offers high-quality merchandise. To sweeten the offer, perhaps your business can create a special holiday gift, a limited-time winter toque only available for the holiday season. This can be an exclusive toque only customers will get when purchasing.
Conclusion
Many factors need to be considered for a business to have an effective holiday marketing strategy. However, there are also a few marketing tactics that your business should keep in mind, as not all will benefit your business during the holiday season.
When putting together your holiday marketing strategy, choose the above tactics strategically to ensure they resonate with your overall strategy. Understand what your audience is looking for before implementing any tactics; give your marketing team enough time to avoid last-minute planning, which can bring more negative results than good during the holiday season.
Ready to start your holiday marketing campaign?
The holiday season gives many businesses an advantage to promote their brand to returning customers while attracting new buyers. While focusing on creating the best holiday marketing campaign for your business that will bring you great results, your business needs to make your holiday marketing strategy focused on building long-term relationships with your audience. After reading this detailed guide on what to include in your holiday marketing strategy this year, we hope your business will have the knowledge, confidence, and resources it needs for a successful campaign this holiday season.
If your brand needs that extra support, our expert digital marketing team at Bold x Collective is here to help your brand level up this holiday season. Contact the Collective for a complimentary consultation!