Are you loading up on fruit mince pies and thinking more about your Secret Santa than next year’s sales budgets? The silly season is upon us, but before you set up your out-of-office email, you may want to consider your brand marketing strategy for the holiday season.
Even in a year that gave us a pandemic and unprecedented economic restrictions, the leadup to Christmas, Boxing Day and the New Year is a boom time for Australian businesses. The National Retail Association predicts Australians will spend more than $50 billion in the last six weeks of this year, including a record $5 billion online as more stores utilise a combination of in-store and digital channels to maximise revenue. Clearly, now is not the time to ignore your marketing schedule.
Even if you’re in B2B sales, it’s worth considering how you can take advantage of this increased online traffic. Many of your clients may be in planning mode for the new year, and potentially considering new tools and services to make 2021 a smoother year.
The end-of-year rush is the most competitive time for consumer attention, making a ‘set and forget’ approach a significant missed opportunity. Partnering with a specialist marketing brand agency allows you to develop a cohesive holiday narrative that resonates with your audience across every channel. By aligning your seasonal promotions with your long-term brand values, you ensure that the spike in holiday traffic translates into lasting customer loyalty well into the new year.
Below we offer you a Christmas gift—some of the best tips from our marketing agency to your business for achieving small wins (with big gains) over the holiday season.
Plan a Content Calendar
As with any campaign, you need to consider who you are targeting and what you want to achieve. Do you intend to reach a sales target, or are you just happy to stay top of mind by maintaining (or increasing) brand awareness during the season?
Once you have a feasible goal established, think about how you will measure success. Key performance indicators (KPIs) may include targets for social media engagement, email click through rates, or website traffic, for instance.
If your current visual identity feels disconnected from your modern business goals, the holiday season can amplify those inconsistencies. Many growth-focused firms look to a rebranding agency Brisbane wide to execute a pre-season refresh, ensuring their brand looks premium and relevant during peak shopping windows. A revitalised look provides a 15% to 20% boost in perceived value, making your festive offers even more compelling to a discerning audience.
Consider what resources you need to achieve your marketing objectives. Do you and your team have the capacity to create and schedule email campaigns, blog posts, social media posts, videos and/or graphics before the holiday break? If not, you should think about whether you can repurpose any existing content, outsource tasks to a marketing agency, or downsize your campaign.
Craft Your Holiday Content
Remember, the holidays should be fun. Keep your marketing messages light and positive, for example:
- Change up your social media content to include videos, holiday-related graphics and light-hearted content.
- Look at offering competitions or limited-time offers via email, social media, and/or in-store shopping. You should also consider setting up a dedicated campaign landing page to drive conversions and track results.
- Create useful blog posts centred around the holidays, such as gift guides, how-to guides, or end-of-year reports that may generate increased traffic.
- Share user-generated content on social media, such as images or positive reviews, and thank customers for their support.
Schedule and Track Results
You don’t have to work on Christmas Day to get results from your holiday marketing campaign. Social media management tools such as Hootsuite or Sprout Social are ideal for scheduling and centrally managing social media posts, but you also can schedule posts separately through individual platforms such as Twitter, Facebook (and Instagram through Facebook), and LinkedIn.
Likewise, email software such as Mailchimp, Pardot, Campaign Monitor and others have scheduling and tracking tools that enable you to “set and forget” email campaigns, with the ability to review your statistics at a later day.
You can’t manage what you don’t measure, so be sure to capture website traffic, click-through rates, engagement and any other useful metrics. This will help you tweak and improve future holiday marketing campaigns.
Feel Good Over the Holidays
Ok, so we can’t stop you from over-indulging on Aunt Sue’s “special ingredient” trifle—but it is possible to keep the good feels going about your brand throughout the holiday season. With a little planning and marketing know-how, you can increase brand awareness and even drive sales to ensure it really is the most wonderful time of the year for your business.
To achieve a truly effective holiday campaign, your digital ads, social media, and physical collateral must sing from the same songbook. Synchronising your brand and marketing brisbane wide ensures that whether a customer sees your brand on a local billboard or a targeted Instagram ad, the experience is seamless. At Viabrand, we specialise in creating these unified experiences that drive awareness and, most importantly, deliver a positive return on investment during the busiest time of the year.
If you’re not sure where to start with your holiday marketing, we can help. As a full-service marketing agency, Viabrand can help your business make the most of the holidays with content marketing, SEO, design, branding and other marketing services. Contact our friendly team or call us on 1300 876 080 to find out more.