It’s hard to believe that it is that time of the year again, the time to start preparing for the holiday season and making sure that you stay at the front of people’s minds while their minds are filled with so many other things. If you want to stand out while people are trying to decide on the perfect gift to get someone, what size turkey they need, how to entertain their children while they are out of school, and what to pack for their holiday travel, you need to be sure your marketing is right on point. Let’s take a look at some holiday marketing strategies that can help your brand this season.
Holiday Marketing Strategies
Let’s face it, the holidays are both joyous and stressful times for most people. As a business, you want to concentrate on the happy side of things and shouldn’t have to deal with stress during this time of the year. By adopting solid holiday marketing strategies, you can do just that. Below we review a few suggestions to help you keep your holiday season jubilant.
- Keep it Simple: There is so much going on for people during this time of the year and they likely don’t have time, or maybe even the mental capacity, to handle something new or complex from your brand. During the holiday season embrace your reputation and keep things basic. You can experiment with new branding, campaigns, and messaging in the New Year, during the holidays match the customer experience and your marketing with what your audience is familiar with.
- Be Ready for the Unexpected: There is nothing worse than having your website crash during increased traffic or sending incorrect messaging as more and more people are communicating. Be ready for more activity online and be prepared for issues that may arise. Your holiday marketing strategy should embrace real-time marketing, the exception to the business rule: “Be proactive and not reactive”. This form of marketing is about being agile and having the ability to change your marketing strategy to engage your customers in the moment. As things happen over the holidays, you need to be able to change your messaging and handle anything.
- Content is Key: With the growth of online shopping and users over the holiday season, you want to catch as many people’s attention as you can. This is the perfect time of the year to draw in new customers. Adding a content strategy element to your holiday marketing ideas can gain big rewards, especially if you keep search engine optimization (SEO) in mind. This optimized content will help drive organic traffic to your website as customers search for products that you sell and should keep people talking about your brand.
- Less is More: As we mentioned above, you should keep things simple during this time of the year, and that doesn’t just mean in your messaging, it also refers to how often you communicate with people during this time. Your customers have enough going on, and by sending them too many emails or communications, you can turn them off. Be mindful of how much you communicate and how effective each message is. Make each message you send stand out and have a purpose.
- Embrace Out-of-Home Advertising (OOH): Out-of-home advertising allows you to reach people while they travel over the holiday season. During the 2021 holiday season nearly 110 million people traveled, a 33.9% increase from 2020. That is a lot of people that you can reach on the go. Adding some type of OOH advertising to your holiday marketing strategies can help you to connect with people who aren’t just sitting in front of a computer or don’t have time to browse online.
The holiday season brings a sense of busy for everyone, and making sure that you are found by your ideal customers is more important now than ever, so you need to embrace a holiday marketing strategy that will help make sure that happens. Water Bear Marketing is here for you.
At Water Bear Marketing we believe that in today’s world, there is no room for guessing with your advertising dollars, especially during the holidays. The last thing you should have to worry about during this season, is your marketing efforts, so leave that up to us. Contact us today for a free advertising consultation.
