We do not have to say that the Christmas holidays are much more than December 25. In fact, we have almost two whole months of holidays to celebrate. For marketers, this means planning ahead and preparing to design themed campaigns, especially for the new year.
We have put together 10 tips that will help you focus to implement a successful campaign by the end of the year, from its design to the strategy in which it is framed.
10 tips to make your year-end campaigns a success
1. Set your goals
In order to develop your end-of-year campaign successfully, you must, first of all, determine the general objective of your participation as a company during the days of Christmas and the end of the year.
What is the reason you want to make the most of these dates? Think about whether you want to increase your sales, or position your business and transmit a message aligned with the holidays, or increase the number of interactions with your audience through the different channels you offer so that they get in touch with you in order to build loyalty. You can do a little of everything at the same time if you add creativity to your goal: sell, position, talk and build loyalty!
2. Think about your campaign strategy
A very important part of a campaign strategy is deciding how to promote your brand on such important holidays as Christmas, Hannukkah, and New Years. Also, keep in mind that there are other important days for shopping, such as Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday.
Once you have defined which of these parties is the one that best suits your company, you should create a campaign appropriate to it that may interest your audience to get them involved and capture their attention.
3. Evaluate your resources
Evaluate how far you can go; Or put another way: how much can you invest in your year-end campaign. What marketing strategies could you implement? How many people on your team should dedicate time to execute the campaign?
Remember that these strategies, depending on the objective, tend to be transversal to the company and traditionally demand the participation of the different teams that make them up.
4. Don't just focus on Christmas
A holiday campaign doesn't just mean Christmas, nor does it have to be launched in December. Despite their importance, the rest of the holidays that I have mentioned are sometimes forgotten, so I recommend you take them into account as well.
For example, New Year's Eve is a very popular party in which people pay attention to campaigns, consume, give gifts and meet friends, this makes it a very powerful party that only lasts one night, but requires a lot of preparation. . With all these variables, New Year's campaigns can be created for all companies.
5. Create offers that have the theme of your parties
To promote your campaign, you will have to create offers centered around your specific theme. In some cases it may involve discounts for your customers, or content created for the holidays.
For example, to celebrate the holidays, we at HubSpot have created these 250 royalty-free photos for you to use with your audience and create the best campaign based on their interests and needs.
Once you have created the specific offer, it is time to create the campaign with which you are going to promote your offer. There are a variety of tools to help you, such as calls to action, banners, images on social media, etc. All these tools will help you promote your campaign.
6. Prepare your strategy on social networks
During the holidays you can perceive that the interest of your audience is much lower than the rest of the year. This is because many people are on vacation or thinking and planning the next vacation.
However, and despite this, there are things you can do to get the attention of your audience, so do not despair.
For example, you can make sure that your calendars are planned in advance with all campaigns and initiatives. This will help you write and create content more easily during the holidays. After creating the written content, such as blogs, ebooks, SlideShares, etc., schedule it during the months of November and December. In this way, you will leave everything ready.
You can't stop monitoring your social media accounts through your favorite tool to discover and track keywords for the holidays so you can respond quickly and you'll be at the top of all searches.
7. Optimize your keywords
Using PPC (pay per click) in your campaign during these holidays can be very interesting, since it will help you temporarily stimulate visits to your website.
To optimize your results, keep the following in mind:
Think about what time of the day and week the searches for your brand occur on the internet. If you are a B2B company, you will see that your audience is interested during business hours. On the contrary, if you are a B2C, you will see more traffic at night or on weekends.
Research what your audience thinks and needs as they are searching for information during this time. What keywords do they use? Are you looking for gifts for the family? Friends? Last minute gifts? Create an ad with your audience in mind and create it to get their attention.
8. Consider doing an event
During the holidays is the best time to plan an event. But before you start shopping for lights and decorations, decide on the exact purpose of your event.
What goals are you trying to achieve? How will the event help you reach your audience more effectively? Having an event just for having it will not help you achieve anything, you need clear objectives that can be achieved and that make sense with your strategy.
Creating a face-to-face event to reach a wider audience may be one of your goals. When you do an event, your attendees typically tweet the event's hashtag. With this hashtag you can promote other related campaigns, such as your offers.
People who attend your event and their contacts on social networks are more likely to see the campaign with the hashtag thanks to the event. So using both physical and online presence, it helps you achieve your goals.
To put this into practice we propose an example. At the event you can give a product - as a detail - to the attendees as well as a station to take photos of you, so people will publish them on social networks with your hashtag. This way you will be using both physical and online presence. With this, you help increase the recognition of your brand since people become curious when they see photos of your brand.
However, we know that doing a face-to-face event in these circumstances seems a bit difficult. Very few people at the beginning of this 2020 would have thought that their routine would take such an unexpected turn.
Today, face-to-face events will have to continue waiting a little longer, but companies and brands cannot sit idly by. 7 out of 10 professionals have transferred their face-to-face event to a virtual platform; including us with our INBOUND2020 event.
A very positive aspect of virtual events is that you can extend the number of attendees you expect. After all, the only thing that those interested require is to set aside their morning or afternoon to connect, prepare a snack or drink of their choice, find their favorite place at home or office and voila. There are not so many impediments for them to attend.
Offering an unforgettable digital experience is possible. It's just a matter of changing your goals a bit and promoting it appropriately. You will see that with this first experience you will be able to promote your company and achieve long-term relationships with new audiences.
9. Focus on delighting your customers
During the holidays, most companies have at least one promotional campaign, some have discounts and rebates, others have special occasions just for the holidays.
Whatever your company decides to do, delighting your customers has to be your main objective and the greatest of your efforts.
When you are planning your campaign goals, think about how to delight your customers, and if you can, show them how grateful your company is to them.
10. Analyze the results of your previous campaigns
Last but not least, take this opportunity to review the results of your previous year-end campaigns.
The idea here is to recognize those successes and those errors that marked your campaign to know what you can repeat and what you should improve.
Additionally, it evaluates the competition: what strategies are they developing? What media are they using? For this you can also refer to the campaigns of previous years.
Do you need help with your campaigns and communication? We are here to help you! And since we are in the Christmas spirit, here is our gift (sorry, its only in spanish!) for these Holidays:
Written by: Daniella Terreros
Source: Hubspot.com
