Make Sure To Analyze Enough Data
The first step in creating a holiday marketing campaign is ensuring you have all the information and data that you need. For example, if your last holiday campaign was successful, then you already have some useful data to use this time around. This will help you see what worked and what didn’t work so that you can improve on it for this holiday.
The data you should be looking at depends on your goals for the previous holiday and what they are for the current year. If this is the first time that you are running a marketing campaign for a specific holiday, you will want to do a lot of audience & competitor research.
Here are some great data points to know:
- What are your best-selling products (both seasonal & evergreen.)
- What seems to be working for the competition?
- What’s in demand this year?
- What are the current trending keywords in your industry?
- Who’s trending in the influencer realm?
- What were some purchasing behaviors last year for that specific holiday and year-to-date (if available?)
If we look at Halloween, a great example, and perhaps we could even say twist, is when Urban Outfitters released its Influencer Halloween Costume in 2018. Influencers create large communities of fans and many of them would likely do anything for an opportunity to meet, collaborate or even be in the shoes of their favorite influencer.
Urban Outfitters made headlines when they released the influencer costume, not all of it may have been on a positive note, but the brand awareness was priceless, and buyers had fun. This is a great example of data used well beyond marketing, but also in product development. Year-over-year, influencer marketing has been on the rise, and the desire to be an influencer has also increased. In our books, creating this costume was a win!
If you want to leverage influencer marketing this Halloween, here are some ideas you could build on.
- If you sell “healthy” supplements or food, work with mom bloggers or influencers to promote some healthy Halloween treat alternatives.
- If you sell costumes, work with a few influencers to create costume styling tips.
- Leverage Halloween for something beyond that day. You can do this by collaborating with an influencer to create a video showcasing a product that you sell that they carried with them during the day while attending various fun events. Everyday things that we would typically carry with us.
- Work with a home decor influencer to showcase how they used some of your products to decorate this year.
- Promote your food line by collaborating on a recipe tutorial.
If you are working with very little data, you should leverage your current audience and survey them on their upcoming celebration plans.
Get Clear On Your Goals & Processes
Undoubtedly, any holiday brings a lot of work for everyone involved with your business. But if you want to create marketing campaigns that are both effective and memorable, you’re going to have to put in the work and plan ahead.
In order for your campaign to be successful, there needs to be an established process in place before the start, even before we normally would see content about that specific holiday. You need a plan with specific goals, goals that align with your overall business strategy and objectives. Year-over-year, both your goals and processes should be discussed and refined.
Things that can help you get clear:
- Review your campaigns from the previous years and the goals and results they brought your business.
- Review the process you followed last year, and identify if it is still applicable today.
- Identify the most important goal that you have for this year. This will also help your influencer marketing agency ensure that they match you with the best influencer(s) for your goals.
Overall, you’ll want to identify any process that needs to be refined and what your goals are before you get started.
Use A Mix Of Trends & Evergreen Marketing
If you’re looking to make an impact, it’s critical to leverage trending topics and holidays. Take a look at this case study where Microsoft leveraged International Women’s Day on social media to drive awareness and encourage women to pursue careers in STEM. International Women’s Day is widely celebrated on and off social media, and this made for the perfect holiday for establishing this campaign. They featured many relatable stories of women in STEM.
This campaign is a great example of using a current trend or topic to drive awareness when you have an evergreen goal. Celebrating International Women’s Day to promote career development for women would do well on any social media platform, and they hit the mark by leveraging LinkedIn for this campaign.
The ongoing impact will help potential buyers remember Microsoft when making relevant purchasing decisions, and help women learn more about careers in STEM when searching LinkedIn for information.
Leverage Influencer Marketing For Christmas
You want more reach and brand awareness, influencer marketing is one of the most effective ways to do so and Christmas time is not only a good time to make sales but also for audience building. Let’s review a successful Christmas campaign.
Our holidays’ influencer marketing campaign for FOREO
FOREO Partnered Up With The Influencer Marketing Factory to run a Christmas campaign on TikTok, focused on increasing their @FOREO account’s followers. The campaign was a success, driving a 79% increase in account growth, over three hundred thousand views, and one hundred eighty-three thousand likes.
These types of results would continue to serve the brand well after the holidays due to the substantial brand awareness and audience growth created during the campaign.
If you are thinking about leveraging Influencer marketing for Christmas, be realistic about what an influencer can do for you. Even if they have a huge following and are super-engaged with their audience, they aren’t going to magically make people buy things they don’t want just because they say so—and that’s okay!
Influencers are more valuable when they’re able to build relationships with their followers and help them understand why your products or services are worth purchasing. This is why creating this type of campaign where you build hype and anticipation over a period of time is a great idea! You can do this over the course of a few days, weeks, or more.
Find A Way To Take It Offline
In 2022 not having a solid digital footprint can cause brands countless opportunities, but making an impact in person can be just as important. Each community and region has its own demographic, and understanding your market segments and purchasing behaviors are crucial when it comes to having successful campaigns. This year will be the 96th Macy’s Thanksgiving parade.
Each year this event draws thousands who gather for the love of a good Thanksgiving tradition (and for the love of Macy’s, if we’re being candid), and 96 years later, it is still going strong. What starts as an event being advertised online, and promoted by celebrities and influencers, ends up in the heart of a loyal community.
This event is the perfect example of how building a loyal customer base, nurturing your community online, and collaborating with influencers can make a significant impact for a local event.
Success Tips For Black Friday!
There’s a multitude of things to consider in order to have success with your Black Friday sale. You need to do your research, know your goals and plan ahead. You want to warm up your audience in advance so that they get excited about the potential sales you may be offering.
It doesn’t matter what marketing method works best for your Black Friday efforts, planning and building anticipation with your audience is always key. Your buyers know that this event is coming up, and if they don’t see or hear you share any information about it, they could go looking elsewhere. You’ll also want to review last-year’s data and identify products that did well the previous year and use this information in your planning for the current year.
From a technical standpoint, remember to optimize your website. Mobile shopping continues to rise in popularity, and not optimizing your website for mobile use could cost you potential revenue on Black Friday.
You also want to be prepared for technical difficulties by having a backup plan (and don’t forget to test it!). You never know what might happen on Black Friday, especially with the influx of traffic expected on these days.
How To Tie-In Cyber Monday With Black Friday
Black Friday and Cyber Monday tend to go hand-in-hand. With both, you have an opportunity to drive more revenue, but what’s unique about Cyber Monday is that it focuses on online purchases.
Yes, some brands sometimes offer both sales for in-store shopping as well, but others build even further anticipation by selling products that complement their Black Friday sales and offering these online only on Cyber Monday.
If you plan on leveraging these two events together, identify what products complement those you are promoting on Black Friday, and this will give you a unique opportunity to get repeat buyers.
Here are two examples:
- If you are hosting luggage sales on Black Friday, see if you can offer a sale on your Weekender Bags on Cyber Monday. Most consumers who purchase luggage pieces will look for an accompanying bag or carry-on piece.
- If you sell activewear on Black Friday, use Cyber Monday to sell matching jackets or running shoes.
If you really understand the consumer behaviors of your target market, you have an opportunity to plan ahead and strategically keep your buyers engaged for both events.
Start Planning Early!
Planning early is the best way to avoid last-minute stress, mistakes, and wasted money. Additionally, this will help you to maximize opportunities for success. With so much time and money invested in creating your holiday marketing campaign, it’s important that you don’t miss out on any key moments that could make or break its success.
Let’s take a good look at Sephora. If we look at their Black Friday and Cyber Monday content, there are some key takeaways:
- They used short-form video content. We know that this content can be repurposed across various channels to maximize its reach.
- They use user-generated content, which helps their content be more relatable.
- Leading up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, many of their influencer collaborations and regular posts featured some of their best-selling products, which were also included in the sale.
- They create a lot of content for consumers that are already problem-aware, making it easy to relate to and leaving everyone wanting more.
- They constantly get the benefit of more reach by working with influencers in their niche during the year who also have large audiences. This allows them to build an audience that is warm and ready to buy anytime, for any holiday.
All clear indications that a lot of planning went into both campaigns to drive as much traffic and sales as possible.
If you want to sell a product or a service, you have to talk about it, your audience has to learn about it, and we have to meet audience members where they are at in their buyers’ journey. Each platform will require different planning, as each platform typically serves different demographics.
Now that you have an idea of what to expect and everything that is involved, it’s time to get started! Make sure you have a strategy in place that aligns with your goals. Remember, planning ahead will help reduce stress and increase efficiency during these busy seasons.