Last month we hosted our October New Media Breakfast focusing on Christmas marketing, and how to make the most of your presence over this period. Now we’re past Halloween and into November, your marketing activity should already be underway for the holiday season ahead.
However, if you’ve not even thought about sleigh bells and Christmas sales yet, we have a few pointers you can adopt now to get a marketing boost from the festive period:
Remember the content mantra
You may be panicking about how to reach customers and clients at this time, but the key here is not to jump on any old Christmas marketing or social media bandwagon. Whether creating written content, video or email content the main things to consider are: Is it fun? Is it useful?
Christmas is a time where even the most serious of B2B businesses are granted a little room for fun, so you can relax formalities and get into the Christmas spirit. Whether or not you and your staff are inclined to dress as Santa and elves, or simply want to create a quirky Christmas card/e-card, there are simple and easy ways you can create fun content in time for the festive season.
Useful content can come in the form of Christmas opening hours at the most basic, or if you’re feeling particularly festive you can relate your services to aspects of Christmas.
What would Santa do?
If in doubt, ask yourself what Santa would do. If there was a problem with power in his workshop, how would he fix it? How could he ensure the health and wellbeing of his elf employees during the stressful festive period? What would Santa do when faced with a problem your business could help solve?
Make the most of highest online sales days of the year
This seems like a no brainer. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are no doubt top times for B2C businesses to push sales ahead of Christmas, but by far one of the best times for any business to publish is on Christmas day. As one of the highest online sales days of the year, there are plenty of people to reach with your message.
Boxing Day is the highest online traffic day for Facebook – with over 20 million interactions on the day. B2C businesses take note – it’s the time where most male shoppers are online. Generally males aged 18-24 make up 2/3 of online shoppers on 26th December, with a high percentage of these avid mobile viewers, so it’s important to get their attention on this day.
If you’re looking to advertise on Facebook to achieve higher Christmas sales, the advice from the social network themselves is to target mum and dad mid-December. This is the time they are likely to be buying presents and are often looking for inspiration on the go – from emails, mobile adverts and so on, so it’s the perfect time to reach them with your Christmas marketing messages.
Don’t forget about January
Once Christmas Day and the Boxing Day sale have come and gone, you may think it would be time to relax. However, there’s much to be said for getting your ducks in a row for January. Whether B2B or B2C business, it pays to organise your January campaigns in advance too.
At this time of year, people may be thinking about New Year party outfits, new wardrobes, detoxes and diets, credit cards and so on. The target demographic to reach here are females aged 35-54.
Even if you’re not a B2C business, there are plenty of people to reach in January. Businesses will be looking to the year ahead and the ways they can meet their objectives before the end of their financial year. As a B2B supplier, you should be looking to raise awareness of your products and services, as businesses tend to think about switching to save costs and add value at this time of year. Similarly, you should be reminding current clients what you do for them, and what other things you could be doing for them.
For more information on how to make the most of Christmas, or for a Christmas marketing strategy, get in touch or give us a call on 0141 427 0727