With the festive season approaching, marketers all over the world put their efforts to create a festive spirit. What’s the first ad you would remember if I ask you about Christmas or New Year? Chances are 99% that you would name the epic Coca-Cola Christmas ad with holiday signature red caravans. For many years, Coca-Cola Christmas ads set the Gold Standard for festive season marketing campaigns. The magic they have created, goes far beyond the brand video ads; it spreads festive mood, the feeling of magic and wonders; it reminds us that we are still the same children in our hearts, looking forward to the new year celebrations.
Yes, its high bar to match, but if you follow this detailed festive season marketing guide, you will create the successful marketing campaign, that will not only be creative, but also will warm people’s hearts and make your brand memorable.
The key to success is simple: It’s not enough barely advertise your Festive season events or products. You need to tell the story, to create festive mood, highlight the magic, and share it with your audience.
Guide Outline
- Research the market and offers
- Planning the campaign (including all activities, projects, events)
- Execution of Festive Season marketing campaigns:
– Don’t just sell your products, sell your brand
– Creating exclusive offers
– Put emphasis on customer loyalty
– Hosting Special Pre Christmas Events (Social, Charity)
– Add Christmas Flair to your branding
– Organize all your Holiday themed content updates
– Implement Holiday Gift vouchers
– Run Holiday themed contests on your social media.
– Launch Christmas themed E-mail Marketing Campaigns - Don’t forget to Analyze!
- Bonus: What Not to Do in festive Season Marketing campaigns
First and foremost – Start planning for Holiday Marketing Campaigns early.
Do not wait for the end of November, to start panically think, plan and execute at the same time. Festive Season is the summary of your achievement as a brand during a year, it should be remarkable and remembered, so spare good time to planning all the details. As a part of your festive season planning should include: All Festive Season activities, events (social and charity); Social media calendar; Communication Plan.
Research is a part of the planning.
Spend some good time to research the market you are going to serve, existing offers, popular deals, direct competitions offers, etc. Run online surveys and ask people what they want (within your service group). When you know exactly who is your target audience and what they want, only then you can create ideal product and service for them.
Don’t just sell products, sell your brand.
Holiday Season is perfect time to target new audience. It’s the time of the year when people are most likely to spend money, s you can gain new customers with interesting promotions and valuable offers. Engage with your audience, be responsive to their inquiries, know what they are looking for, what are their interests so you can offer them what they want. Advertise not only product, but the brand lifestyle with it: if you sell dinner in five-star restaurant – then promote luxury celebrations, if it’s membership to the Spa then promote fitness lifestyle, a healthy wellbeing from the start of the year.
Offer exclusive deals.
Work on exclusivity of the offers, creating additional value for your customers (attracting new ones and appreciating your returned ones). The offers with limited time creates sense of urgency and therefore would attract additional attention. Feature and highlight exclusive holiday season offers by providing additional value to the customers making purchases (such as special discounts during New Year Eve for accommodation upon purchasing New Year Gala dinner).
Put emphasis on customer loyalty.
Your loyal customers deserve appreciation. It’s always nice to get presents for Christmas and New Year, so be creative and reward your loyal customers with small brand presents. Ideas are limitless, it all depends on your creativity and budget. Small advice: try to stay away from calendars and organizers, you can do better than that!
Organize Pre-Christmas (Festive) Events.
Being socially active is important for every brand. Reach out in your community and organize charity events such as Christmas Fair with selling of hand-made products and donating the money for the charity; hosting lunches for kids from orphanage house and arranging some activities for them. For example, Kempinski Mall of Emirates has tradition of baking long Christmas stollens and selling them in the Mall. All money earned goes to the charity.
Add Christmas flair to your branding
As we decorate our homes and businesses for Christmas and New Year, the same way you should decorate and add your Christmas Flair to all your communication channels. Your social media banners, themes, website home page, e-commerce page, special E-mail newsletter – all should be in accordance with the magic of the festive mood. Important here is to follow the guidelines for your brand and not to overdo it.
Organize Christmas Themed Content (Holiday Themed Updates)
This is every good marketer’s rule: Have your content calendar ready in advance (same goes for social media calendar. You need to have detailed plan on Festive themed contents you are planning to communicate on your social media, plans and drafts of your blog posts, themes for photos and videos. The calendar should include all your communication channels and festive content you are planning to post for each date of the month.
Implement Holiday Gift vouchers
Christmas is the time when people buying presents, so implement holiday gift vouchers, whether it’s Spa treatment at your Spa centre, dinner at the restaurant, membership to the fitness centre, voucher for certain amount for your products purchases, etc.
Run Holiday themed contests on your social media.
Utilize your social media for the festive season even more: run holiday themed contests. The goal of the activity is to gain bigger organic reach, high engagement and re-sharing of your content. Create branded hashtag for the audience, so they take part and share their original content with your hashtag. It’s a great way to attract new audience, and closely engage with your current one, rewarding the most creative and active ones. Starbucks has turned into annual tradition the issue of Holiday themed red cup, and people all over the world are making creative shots and posting it to their social media with the hashtag #starbucksredcup.
Launch Christmas themed E-mail Marketing Campaigns
E-mails are very productive marketing tool, so make sure to use it right for your festive season. Design festive themed e-mail newsletter, featuring your latest offers, create limited offers (for the sense of urgency), and most important don’t forget to personalize your campaign. Target the customers according to their preferences, interests and previous purchases.
Don’t forget to Analyze!
Analyse all your marketing activities within Festive Season marketing campaign. Identify on the planning stage what are your metrics for success-your KPI’s (key performance indexes) and upon completion of the campaign report and analyze the performance of each activity. KPI’s depends on the goal of your campaign: it could be bringing awareness about your brand, engaging with your audience, selling your products and services, etc. The right analysis helps to identify the missing opportunities, performance of each activity and correct your marketing campaign in future.
Bonus: What Not to Do for successful Festive Season Marketing
As we discussed what you should be doing for successful holiday marketing campaigns, we should also specify what you should not be doing.
So here are the main DON’Ts:
- Don’t post long standard boring ad text to Facebook and Instagram advertising your festive offers.
Don’t even think to put it on paid ad. That’s not working. It’s boring, it doesn’t reflect festive season mood. Your social medias are your strong channels of communication and interaction with the audience, so use them wisely. Instead, try to post engaging short post with real photos from the venue, short self-made videos, engaging the audience and building the interest. Later, post photos and videos, talking about the offer (what’s unique and interesting). Remember to engage and intrigue the audience, instead of just creating one long post with the standard photo from the shutter stock.
- Don’t post shutter stock photos for festive season and advertise the post.
Shutter stock photos are very generic and don’t represent your brand. It’s not telling your customers what are you planning to do for the new year. It doesn’t show your beautifully decorated restaurant or your lobby. It’s repeating hundred times, and there are good chances that somebody else has used it as well. Instead, post only self-made photos and short videos. It could be professional photos, or even photos done with your smartphone. Some filters and nice capture – and voila, you have unique content with high conversion.
- Don’t copy and paste your content on Facebook and Instagram.
Remember that these are two separate social media channels, with different mode of communication and audience, so adjust your offers accordingly. Facebook fits for variety of content style, while Instagram main focus should be photos with short captures and hashtags.
- Do not use your social media channels for advertising purposes only.
Social media is to share interesting content with your audience, create brand awareness, customer loyalty. Advertising your festive offers is not your primary goal. It should be done discrete and through engaging content: photos, showing holiday decoration in your hotel or restaurant, videos of decorating your Christmas tree, video of cooking Christmas stollen, etc. You should post 80% non-advertising content and only 20% of advertisement.
Summary
This detailed guide will help you yo plan and design your festive marketing campaigns successfully and will bring you the results. Keep in mind that holiday season is the time of magic and wonders, when we all looking for little miracles, so go out there, create, inspire and deliver the magic of holidays!
Farah Sinjeri 