Maximise Your Marketing Efforts this Christmas

Whether you love it or hate it, Christmas is almost here. Aside from leaving you out of pocket for the best part of the following quarter, the season is a great time to increase your sales, improve your brand and reconnect with your clients and customers. Unless you have a relevant product or service to sell over the Christmas period, investing time or money into your seasonal marketing campaign may seem pointless, but it’s not. A solid marketing plan over the next few months can be massively beneficial to grow your online presence and strengthen your brand and reputation.

As the holiday season approaches, you are dealing with three different types of people: people who are on holiday, people who are mentally on holiday and people who are cramming in last minute shopping or work to be able to enjoy the holiday. Your marketing tactics must adapt to your client or customer’s behaviour to get noticed. Even if your business has nothing to offer the frenzied shopper on the lead up to Christmas, you can still effectively target and engage your audience to keep your brand fresh in the minds of your customer or client come January.

Here are a few tips and stats to make the most of this season:

Know your audience and their behaviours

A planned and well executed online marketing campaign can be hugely effective over the Christmas period, but can also be wasted without a solid knowledge of your target customer and their behaviours. To get the most out of this year’s campaign, analyse last years data. What products or service were the best sellers? Where did you notice a peak or decline in your sales and where did most of your enquiries come from? Once you understand where your business has its shortfalls and where it excels, you are in a better position to target your marketing efforts for maximum return, and know where your money will just be wasted.

Get your website mobile friendly

In the 2016 Christmas lead up, mobile conversions surpassed desktop globally with 53% of conversions happening through a mobile device. Make sure your website and ads are compatible and look good on both desktop and mobile.
Improve your reviews. The digital revolution brings with it the bittersweet reviewing culture. Around 80% of people do their research online before they purchase a product or service so not only does your site and social platforms have to look visually appealing, your reviews must be well managed. Facebook business pages have the option for consumers or clients to leave public reviews which is a great way to build up your reputation and engage and rectify any problems. 71% of consumers who have had a good social media service experience with a brand are likely to recommend it to others.

Get social

As well as paid ads, Facebook and other social platforms are a great way to engage with your audience to strengthen your company brand. 49% of global surveyed shoppers say that Facebook is influential in their festive shopping season. Time spent on social platforms such as Facebook starts accelerating around October, reaching its peak around New Year’s Eve. Keep your customers and clients updated with your opening hours and any changes to your services over the break. Thank them for their support and wish them well over the holidays.

Don’t forget emails!

In spite of social media’s viral capabilities, email is still the most effective way of reaching your audience. Email campaigns can be run on the lead up and after Christmas to promote any new products or services you are offering, or even your hours over the holiday break. It’s a chance to reach out to the customers/clients who didn’t make the card list to thank them of their support, and keep your brand fresh in their mind. Follow up with a Happy New Year as well for good measure and to remind them of what you can offer them.

Get your timing right

An average of 62% of people do their festive shopping in December. Around the 11th is the best time to create a sense of urgency in your advertising messages. If your business offering closes down over Christmas and offers nothing of value to the season, your marketing efforts will be wasted. Save your allocated budget for highlighting changes to your service or product in the New Year. If you are a bookkeeping service for example, it’s money down the drain promoting your services in December when you need to be creating a sense of urgency in January when people return to work and a big workload.

Get the competitive edge

You won’t be the only business trying to get the attention of your audience. Every business out there will be taking to social media platforms to get their message across so you need to get creative to stay competitive. Keep your ads visual and regularly change up the images and copy so your efforts don’t become repetitive and boring.

Even when you’re working on a shoestring budget, seasonal marketing should not be neglected.