Crank Up Your Marketing for the Holiday Season

Ah, the holidays! It’s a great time of year with lots of color and cheer. It’s also a great time to turn your marketing up to 11. There are plenty of good reasons. The marketing is easier since you already have a theme and even a color scheme to work around. People are in the mood to spend money, and they’re more likely to be out and about now than during the cold winter months after the new year begins. There’s joy in the air, and it’s no time to be Ebenezer Scrooge with your marketing.

Plan first.

Of course, talking about holiday marketing is a far cry from successfully doing it. To get started, you’ll need a plan. You’ll want to set a budget and figure out which media channels give you the most bang for your buck. You’ll want to set specific goals for what you want your marketing campaign to accomplish, whether it be boosting Q4 sales, generating goodwill or boosting the launch of a new product line. Like a Thanksgiving meal, it can be a lot to digest.

To help give you an idea of where to start, here are some things to consider when thinking about a holiday marketing campaign:

• Break out those special promotions. If you don’t have some, create some. Take a look at the products and services you’re offering. Are there any natural tie-ins to a particular holiday? Could you bundle them together to make an attractive offering for potential customers? The earlier you can come up with a promotion, the better chance you have of making it work. You’ll need time to design your promotions, to get your advertising up and running and to get your people trained on how to effectively implement them.
• Ok, so maybe your product or service doesn’t tie in neatly with the holidays. You might make widgets, and while widgets are cool and all, they don’t exactly make great stocking stuffers. That doesn’t mean you can’t make holiday marketing work. Consider partnering with a local business that does do a lot of holiday marketing. You can offer joint promotions or contests. You can co-host events. The possibilities are endless if you’re willing to do some out-of-the box thinking.
• If all else fails, put on some holiday cheer. Dress up your website in fall colors for Thanksgiving, or red and green for Christmas. Consider adding a special graphic or GIF for the holidays, the same way Google uses the ‘Google Doodles’ to commemorate birthdays and anniversaries of famous people or events.
• Use your imagination. Go wild and have a little bit of fun. Just remember to be prepared and come in with a plan and you can make your holiday marketing a thing to remember no matter what your industry.

Happy Holidays and Happy Marketing!