So this is Christmas … well, not quite yet, but we all know how fast the holiday season sneaks up. If you’re responsible for Christmas marketing or planning your strategy, now’s the time to get things moving.
To help you out, we’ve come up with various creative and effective strategies you can use to engage customers and drive sales during the Christmas season.
What are the most effective channels for holiday marketing?
In the following, we provide a breakdown of the most effective channels and methods you can use in your holiday marketing:
1. Organic (SEO).
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a cornerstone of any successful Christmas marketing campaign. By optimising your website and content for holiday-specific keywords, you can significantly boost your visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Tips:
- Optimise your product pages with holiday-specific keywords relevant to your industry, product or service
- Ensure your website is mobile-friendly and loads quickly
- Implement local SEO strategies to attract nearby customers who are looking for holiday items.
Statistics:
- 81% of consumers conduct online research before making a purchase
- 76% of people who search for something nearby on their smartphone visit a related business within a day
- Businesses that appear on the first page of Google capture over 90% of traffic.
2. Paid search (PPC).
Paid search or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, is another highly effective form of holiday marketing. PPC allows you to create targeted ads that appear in search engine results, reaching potential customers who are actively searching for Christmas gifts and holiday deals. This method is particularly effective during the festive season when consumers are in a buying mindset.
Tips:
- Create holiday-themed ads utilising seasonal keywords relevant to your industry
- Use urgency-driven messaging such as ‘Limited Time Offer’ or ‘Holiday Sale’
- Implement re-targeting strategies to reach users who have previously visited your site and didn’t convert.
Statistics:
- PPC ads can increase brand awareness by 80%
- The average conversion rate for paid search is around 3.75%, with higher potential during holiday periods
- Paid search ads can result in a 50% higher conversion rate compared to organic visitors.
RELATED: Small business guide to Google Ads on a budget.
3. Social media marketing.
Social media marketing is a powerful tool for engaging with customers during the festive season. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest are ideal for showcasing holiday-themed content, running promotions, and engaging with your audience. Social media allows you to create a sense of community and holiday cheer, which can significantly influence purchasing decisions.
Tips:
- Create engaging social media ads that highlight the festive season
- Use Instagram and Facebook Shops to facilitate easy in-app purchases
- Partner with influencers to increase brand awareness and reach a broader audience.
Statistics:
- 47% of consumers say that social media influences their holiday shopping decisions.
- 54% of social browsers use social media to research products
- Ads on Facebook reach 30% of the global population, making it one of the most effective advertising platforms.
RELATED: Choosing the right social media platform for your business.
4. Email marketing.
Email marketing remains one of the most effective channels for marketing in general, let alone for the holiday season. By sending targeted emails to your subscribers, you can promote your products, offer special discounts and drive sales. Personalised email campaigns can significantly enhance customer engagement and conversion rates during the holiday season.
Tips:
- Segment your email list to send personalised recommendations and exclusive offers to different customer groups
- Include countdowns for holiday shipping deadlines
- Create festive email content that includes gift guides, decorating tips and special promotions.
Statistics:
- 47% of consumers prefer email as their method of communication with retailers during the holiday season.
- Email marketing delivers an average ROI of $42 for every $1 spent, making it one of the most cost-effective marketing channels
- Holiday email campaigns experience higher open rates, with conversion rates increasing by up to 8%.
By leveraging email marketing, you can effectively engage with your customers and boost sales during the festive season.
To maximise sales and conversions during the holiday season, businesses need to utilise a mix of organic SEO, paid search, social media, and email marketing. Incorporating these channels with a data-driven approach will help drive traffic, engage customers, and convert them into buyers during the most lucrative shopping period of the year.
So now that we know which channels and platforms are the most effective for driving sales and increasing visibility during the holiday season, how do we go about creating an effective Christmas marketing campaign?
What makes a good holiday marketing strategy?
An understanding of your target market.
What will your customers be looking for over the holiday period? Think about how you can cater to their specific needs.
Positioning.
What is the perception of your brand in the marketplace? Consider what makes your business different to competitors and how you can showcase your unique offering.
Competitive analysis.
What do your competitors’ typical holiday marketing efforts look like? Aim to improve on their approach, or at least to stand apart from it.
Incentives.
What sort of holiday discounts and deals will your customers be looking for? Think about what you can offer to incentivise sales.
A timeline.
When will you launch and finish your holiday marketing campaign? Develop a clear plan for all your marketing activities.
A budget.
Work out how much you can spend on your holiday marketing campaign, broken down by specific activities.
Goals and metrics.
Define clear objectives for your holiday marketing strategy and how you’ll measure success. For example, you might set a goal to improve sales by X% compared to the same period last year.
How do you plan a Christmas marketing campaign?
Whether you choose to utilise a 12 days of Christmas marketing strategy, or simply go with the tried and tested methods – like offering discounts, package deals, free shipping, or creating a gift guide – there are many strategies to help promote your brand and boost sales over the Christmas period. There are, however, essential steps that must be taken in order to effectively plan any of these marketing campaigns.
Here are 8 essential steps to guide you through the process:
Step one: Review.
Review your previous Christmas marketing efforts and identify key lessons, paying particular attention to your strategies and results last year. For business owners marketing in the current festive season, the previous year will offer the best insights on what works and what doesn’t.
With data from last year and prior years, you can set expectations and goals for this year. Are you looking to achieve more online sales? New customers? More spend on higher value items?
Your goals will help to guide your marketing strategies and plans for Christmas 2024.
Step two: Research.
Research customer behaviour. Again, your focus should be on the past 12 -18 months.
Notably, people are shopping online more than ever in 2024.
In fact in 2024, 17.08 million Australian shoppers used online shopping websites monthly, a 45% increase from 2020 (11.78%). Building out an effective Christmas marketing campaign is therefore essential for your business.
For your marketing plan, this could mean more investment in improving your eCommerce platform, more work on remarketing plans, or more of a push to your email subscribers.
Whatever the case, use customer behaviour to help inform your strategy so that you are meeting their needs and preferences for Christmas shopping in 2024.
Step three: Brainstorm.
Brainstorm campaign ideas with your team. Keep in mind, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel – if something worked well last year, or has been working well for you this year, your focus might be on ways to further boost those gains (rather than come up with completely new ideas).
Your goal during this brainstorming step is to nail down your campaign messaging so you have something to focus on.
RELATED: Christmas keywords: Could these top ones work for your business?
Step four: Plan.
Use your customer research about buying behaviours and your campaign focus to establish a marketing schedule.
Work out budget, resource and asset requirements, and plan out exactly when you will need each part of the campaign completed. You may need to bring in outside help such as an agency or contractor/s, so be sure to reach out as soon as possible to secure their availability.
Step five: Create.
This is one of the most time consuming steps – content creation. It will take time to create all of your assets, from festive season images and graphics to videos and written content.
These will need to go through the editing and review process to ensure they are up to standard and hit the right notes for your campaign. You will also need to make sure they are in line with your company branding.
Step six: Set up.
Now that you have your assets, it’s time to line them up and get them ready to go live. This might be social ads, Google Ads, display ads, email newsletters, content, eCommerce promotions, videos etc.
Check in with each person responsible for these assets to ensure their part is complete and ready to go live.
Step seven: Review.
And before you go live, do one final review. Go over all Christmas marketing material, cross-referencing against your goals, research, and campaign to ensure each piece of content works towards your goals and is in line with your customer research.
Is there anything you can add or improve?
Step eight: Go live.
Monitor performance and adjust your Christmas marketing strategy if need be. If one execution is getting better traction, consider investing more resources.
Also, make yourself notes for next year. It will come around sooner than you can imagine and it will give you a step up on your strategies for Christmas marketing for the following year.
With a little bit of forward planning and creative thinking, your Christmas promotion ideas can become cash cows over the holiday season.
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