It’s the season where you hear Christmas music blasting everywhere, twinkling lights on every corner, and find yourself inadvertently humming Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” at least 10 times a week. Beyond being a season to have lots of great times with your family and friends, the holiday season can also be great for your business 9so you can spend even more time with your friends and family!). The holiday season is a fantastic time to take advantage of the cheery holiday impulses of your possible client base and connect with your customers in an authentic, powerful way. There are many ways to give your marketing efforts a solid assist during the holiday season, from getting ahead on new ad campaigns to upping your social media game. T’is the season to be jolly- and to show your clients that you care, to start new powerful branding campaigns to entice new business leads, and plenty of opportunities to bring your business to the next level across a variety of mediums in general. Make the most of this holiday season to not only have plenty of jolly times but use this season of high commercial activity to your marketing benefit.
Many of these marketing ideas will involve that all-powerful of mediums- the internet. Internet marketing plays a huge role in today’s consumer outreach, and businesses need to be able to have a certain amount of clout and know the ins and outs of digital marketing in order to stay competitive in today’s highly digitized market. MyCity Social is a top digital marketing and SEO firm in the Tampa area who services businesses nationwide in order to help them grow and expand their consumer base. Read on to learn more marketing campaign ideas you can put into action during the holiday time.
Marketing Ideas For the Holiday Season
There are many reasons why you should take advantage of the holiday season in order to kickstart your marketing campaigns and continue to grow your business. But what are some specific examples that you can put into use and really build up your consumer base? One of the most effective ways to market to consumers in general in this internet era is through Google Ads. During the holiday season, everybody is shopping. Google Ads (formerly called AdWords) is a fantastic place to squeeze in some seasonal marketing, whether you’re in retail, B2B, finance, or insurance industries. It’s fairly simple to target holiday shoppers through the creation of a holiday campaign on Google Ads, and it also has quite a far reach. For example, if your industry is in childcare, then you can put a target on keywords such as “gifts for child” or “children’s holiday sweaters.” Following the creation of such keywords, you’ll be able to create specific ads and landing pages offering incentives to shop with your store during the holiday season. An example of such an incentive would be offering free shipping if they purchase over $75 worth of goods from your website. Or perhaps you gift wrap for free and even throw in a card, as it is more than likely that during the holiday season your average shopping is shopping for someone else. It could be that you offer a certain amount as a discount if the gift is ordered prior to a specific date. These benefits should be accentuated in your Google Ad and your landing pages should be sure to capture the spirit of the holidays. If you’re not in B2C, there are still plenty of ways to get creative during the holiday season with your campaigns on Google Ads. As holiday shopping continues on, everyone is looking for ways trim their holiday shopping budget, so you should simply promote whatever service you provide with some special seasonal discounts utilizing AdWords. You can take advantage of ad extensions to take up more space in the results, highlight the specific things your company is contributing towards the season, and get a higher chance of site visits.
There are simply a couple of holiday tips you should keep in mind when creating content geared towards the holiday season. First of all, you should utilize words and phrases like “holiday” and “tis the season” in order to fully take advantage of seasonal ad copy. Remember- ad extensions are your friends. You will be able to consume much more real estate on the SERP during this highly competitive time. Make sure to highlight special offers and seasonal deals, and also instill a sense of urgency in your copy (think “20% off if you order before December 5”). Conduct some holiday-related keyword research to make sure that you’re still relevant, and then set up ad scheduling so that your company is able to bid on the prime times when your shoppers are searching. After all, everybody is trying their best to find a deal during the holiday season, so creating a sense of urgency within the copy that you advertise can be a great way to winover hectic seasonal shoppers.
Secondly, in this season of busy shoppers, you should create some Google Shopping Campaigns. While you may have held off before due to the investment in creating visuals, they are a fantastic boon to your business during the holiday season, as they are extremely convenient and can lead to purchases that occur almost instantaneously. The major challenge in such an endeavor is to be able to stand out next to your competition in this highly visual medium, which requires enticing images and a campaign that is set up properly. But if you hit this checklist, Google Shopping Campaigns can work wonders on converting shoppers throughout the holiday season.
Ads aren’t just restricted to formal ones such as Google Marketing campaigns and billboards. You can up your holiday game on Instagram or break into this popular platform, as Instagram is a great place to make your holiday game shine! Family selfies and pictures of various holiday presents and decorations are already being posted, which means that it’s the perfect place to do some product placement or informal promotions. It’s worth throwing some money behind your very best holiday pics in order to really stand out, although posting organically to your account is great as well. Think about organic posts for your company account in the vein of your team dressed in ugly sweaters, or your office dog with a Halloween costume on, and you can get creative and cheery with your options to bring in more followers and likes, thus promoting your product and brand indirectly. For example, if you’re a restaurant, you can get seasonal with a new drink recipe or special such as “alcoholic eggnog,” and you can use some seasonal emojis in your ad copy. When it comes to Instagram, there are many ways to make the most out of the holidays to promote your branding. Another great way to utilize the platform is through a social holiday giveaway, which you can run on Instagram. MyCity Social recommends running a social media campaign through all of the major social platforms that your brand has an account on such as Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter, to get more and more eyes on your business. After all, everybody loves free stuff, especially during the holiday season (don’t we all love regifting). From giving away a product or service completely for free, a free add-on with an order, to a major discount, you can get into the Holiday spirit of giving and receive some love back. Great tactics to make the most of this opportunity is to ask followers to comment, share, and like your posts and get more engagement on your giveaway.
Your email campaign is a great place to incorporate some holiday season marketing. For the people in your consumer base, the holidays carry powerful memories and connections. So fun seasonal emails is a great way to entice them towards your services and connect with your consumer base in their inboxes. For example, if you send out a marketing email for Halloween, your consumer base may or may not end up utilizing your services or products for whatever holiday special that you are promoting, but they may end up being reminded that they need your product or service for an upcoming event that they need to go to. Make sure to spend special effort on your email subject lines when marketing for the holidays. Just like ad copy in your seasonal Google Ads campaigns, it’s important to give your customers an incentive to shop with you, which is why instilling urgency is an important tactic for your subject lines.
Remember when you saw a dress or online and were almost swayed, ended up not buying it at that time, but then saw it again and took it as a sign so you went ahead and made the purchase? That wasn’t just fate, but remarketing, with a team of marketers behind it. When you later remind your audience exactly what they’re missing out on through browser cookie tracking. We hope that you’re already engaging in this internet marketing tactic, but if you haven’t been, then this is great chance for you to start! Remarketing allows you to remind potential customers that they have abandoned their shopping cart or landing page- the holiday season is what digital marketers brand as a mandatory remarketing season due to the fact that people are busy and often making spur-of-the-moment decisions to check things off of their list. Therefore, with just a quick little reminder, they may complete the purchase that they were making when they left their cart half full or dropped off your website. This is where remarketing plays a major role. When configuring the remarking lists you have for the holidays, make sure that your membership duration is not as long as it is normally. For instance, if your typical remarking list is 30 days or so, you can reduce this to 15 days. This will increase the chances of potential customers seeing your ads more frequently closer to the holiday. Of course, remarketing also applies to all the channels that you’re advertising on, such as Facebook, Google, Instagram, Bing etc.
Lastly, you should segment users based on what youknow about them. As a digital marketer, there are piles and piles of user data that can be used to your benefit for future campaigns. But are you using this data to your full capacity? The holiday season is a fantastic time to get crafty with your messaging based on segmentation. Through segmented messaging, you are able to personalize your message, which is a proven strategy to be able to connect with consumers on a deeper level. For example, if mothers make up a large segment of your potential consumers and express interest in your products or services, you can create content to illustrate how your business empathizes with the stressfulness of the holidays when you’ve got a house full of children. Ad copy relevant to their interests can be utilized to target a segment of leads with similar hobbies. With all of the data that you’ve collected through platforms such as Facebook, Google Analytics, and Google Ads, you can create and target these segments, while you can also take advantage of lookalike audiences on these platforms in order to go after a new segment of leads that are similar to a high converting audience.
Contact Us Today
There are many holiday marketing campaign ideas you can take advantage of, and we’ve just listed a few. MyCity Social is a top Tampa SEO and digital marketing agency who assists companies all across the nation here to take care of your internet marketing needs. Call us today for a consultation to grow your business!
