Unwrap the Secrets to Holiday Marketing Success with my 7 Expert Tips
As the "slow" season comes to an end and the busiest time of the year quickly approaches, there is one lingering question all businesses must answer - are you ready for the holiday season? For most, the answer is a resounding "hell no". But fear not, you may be a little late off the mark, but you’re still in the game! Use these seven tips to help you get on top of your holiday marketing plans, whether you’re wanting to do a Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale, or if you’re preparing for a big Christmas/New Year push.
7 Tips to Help You Nail the Holiday Season
#1. Plan, Plan, and Plan Some More:
With Black Friday just around the corner, you’re already starting a little behind the eight ball if you don’t yet have a plan. So do yourself a favour and save even more time by taking some time (yes, ironic I know), to really nail down your holiday season plan. Have a think about the following:
What will your offer, package or sale be? What’s included, are there terms and conditions, are you offering a discount or adding value-adds? Really nut out what you want to promote. Once you have the what, you can look at the how.
Also consider what will your last shipping days be (if you’re ecommerce based)?
Will you be taking any leave that will affect service delivery or product fullfilment?
Will you have your kids at home with your during the school holidays and what will that impact be?
Consider any and all factors that will affect your ability to run your business and deliver what you say you’ll deliver. Because you’ll do more damage than good if you sell heaps of products or gets loads of new customers with your holiday efforts, only to drop the ball on delivery and leave a bad taste in your new customer’s mouth. It’s important to make sure you only take on what you will be able to handle, and deliver to the high standard you’re already delivering at.
Once you have all that information nutted out, you can then move on to the how part of your plan - your marketing strategy. Consider what marketing channels you’re already using (social media, email, video, podcast and so on), and what channels will work for your plan. Consider how much time you have to create content, and reign in your ideas if you need to. Rather pick one channel and do it well, than spread yourself too thin and do them all badly. You can then take it a step further and map out a content calendar so you make sure you don’t miss your key dates and messages.
What key dates do you need to communicate to your audience - last day to book, last shipping day to receive products before Christmas, limited availability and so on.
When do you want to post a new blog post, send an email newsletter, or post to social media?
Jot it all down so you have a step-by-step action plan in front of you to follow when you’re overwhelmed (which, let’s be honest, will happen - it’s the holidays afterall)
#2. Leverage AI:
Now, you may find you have a shit-tonne of content on your plan and no clue how you’re going to deliver it all on top of everything else you have to do. It can be a huge help to have pre-written (and scheduled) your blog posts, email newsletters, and social posts. Then when you get busy with sales and new customers, all of your content is still on auto-pilot, bringing in new sales.
And that’s where the power of AI comes in.
You can use AI-powered tools to help you create all of that content in record time. If you haven’t yet delved into the world of AI for your business, start with ChatGPT. Tell it your plan and ask it to create 10 social media captions for you. You can add information about your tone of voice, ask for hashtags to go with the posts, and even ask it to create graphics for you (FYI - I’ve been playing around with this and so far it’s been hit and miss for me, but give it a try anyway). Your Chatbot will start to build memory around what you want your content to sound like, and the more you use it, the more it will take on your brand’s tone of voice. It’s actually a little mind-blowing.
And, it’s a massive time saver. So, time to put your fear of an AI-powered future aside and rather leverage it to boost your business!
TOP TIP - I use AI heaps in creating my content (I even got it’s help with this blog post). But I still always go over what it’s given me and adapt it to suit my tone of voice and add some of my own insights.
#3. Optimsie for Mobile:
With a majority of shoppers browsing and purchasing on mobile devices, ensure your website and emails are mobile-friendly. Simplify the mobile experience on your website, optimise your site load times so it’s super speedy, and use large, clear calls to action to convert all that new traffic coming to your site.
If your site is on Squarespace, just click on the little phone icon in the top right hand corner and it will show you what your site looks like (roughly) on a mobile device. I say roughly, because there are heaps of different phone screen sizes, so it will differ from device to device, but it gives you a good enough idea of what you need to fix and tweak. You can then also test it on your own phone, and there are nifty tools online [like this one] that can help you see what it might look like on other devices.
#4. Get In the Inbox:
If you have an existing subscriber base, increasing your email frequency in the lead-up to sales can be highly beneficial. Your competitors will be flooding your customers' inboxes, and if you aren't in there too, you're missing out on a valuable opportunity. Make sure to segment your email list properly to ensure relevance and maximise your conversion rates. Just remember - there’s a fine line between “increasing your send frequency” and spamming your audience, so keep an eye on your stats, especially your unsubscribe rate. If that starts to jump, you may need to scale back.
TOP TIP - this is where AI can be especially helpful as it can help you craft an email sequence you can pre-build and schedule.
#5. Advertise Yo’self:
With the majority of shoppers spending their time on social media or googling gift ideas, utilising online ads is an effective strategy to reach your target audience. Even if you don't typically advertise throughout the year, this holiday busy season is a good time of the year to set aside a little extra budget to run either search or social ads. Get your brand infront of your audience in places where they already are! Retargeting campaigns are also especially effective in converting potential customers who have already shown interest in your products.
#6. Customer Experience is Key:
The last thing you want to do is spend all this time and extra money to take advantage of the holiday boom, only to drop the ball when it comes to your customer experience. You want your new customers to come back to you time and time again, leave you good reviews, and refer you to their friends and family. And your customer experience is what will help you achieve this. Think about ways that you can make the shopping experience seamless - maybe it’s free shipping or a gift wrapping service, maybe it’s easy returns or an exhange policy for gifts. Do what you can to a) make your customer’s lives easier during this busy time, and b) add some surprise and delight. It will come back ten-fold in the future.
My last tip isn’t going to be of much help now, but it will help you put yourself ahead for next year’s holiday season.
7. Focus on SEO:
SEO is a long-term strategy, so if you optimise your site for search now, it isn’t going to have much of an impact on your search visibility in the next month or two. It takes time to yield results. So if last-minute planning didn’t work for you this year, get ahead of the game for next year and add search optimisation to your ongoing marketing strategy.
Where do you start?
Keyword research.
Identify the relevant keywords that your customers typically search for during the holiday season and incorporate them strategically into your website content. Think blog posts, updating page titles and meta titles, and maybe even a helpful holidays freebie to pull in that traffic. I have a handy freebie myself that may help you - you can get your hands on it below (just don’t forget to read the blog post that goes with it as this explains how to use the free planner).
The holiday season is a critical time for many businesses - ecommerce and service-based alike. By planning ahead and being smart with your marketing, your messaging, and your resources, you can maximise the opportunity that it presents for your business.
Still need a little help to get holiday ready?
Check out my “Holiday Season Website Readiness Plan”, a nifty little package I put together so that I could help you make sure your website shines for your customers these holidays. While this package is focused on your website and not your marketing, outsourcing one will free up your time to focus on the other.
