Fa la la la la… as a digital marketer or even as a consumer, the amount of seasonal advertising you see this time of year may well have you wishing someone spiked the egg nog.
But, for a marketer – especially in the B2C space – it’s great to have something as predictable as ye olde holiday shopping rush that stretches roughly from Black Friday in November to the New Year to gear up for. And you know you need to start early and remind customers often to grab a scrap of customer attention from the other retailers. (Emarketer says there was a total of $600 billion spent on ads last year.) Not a problem, because this was already in your yearly marketing plan, right? Even if so, here’s a few ideas you might have missed.
Start with the underpinnings, like making sure everything on your site is mobile-friendly. The National Retail Foundation’s research indicates over half of holiday shopping searches are on a mobile device. Make sure all of your store location pages are optimized and reflect your holiday shopping hours and any current promotions.
Many B2C companies crank up their ad budgets at end of year, but it’s also worth putting thought into those holiday-specific keywords – check out Google Trends and your other favorite keyword research tools to see how many customers are typing variations of “holiday”, “Christmas”, “Black Friday” and “online” terms.
Have fun on social media. Share promotions and special offers regularly if applicable. Have a holiday contest with a branded hashtag and reshare the best customer-created content.
Even in the B2B space, you can have a bit of fun. Play with a temporary change to your logo, like Google does. On social media, reshare clever campaigns your customers are doing for the season. Reply to all those photos they share from their company holiday parties with your well-wishes. Consider a clever animated or live video holiday card, emailed to customers and posted on social media.