If you visit most retailers you will find that they are already playing Christmas music. This is a good example of how merchants are already gearing up for the holiday season. While I personally prefer to hear and see holiday promotion efforts after November 25th, I do think that most businesses should begin planning their strategy for holiday marketing by November 1st.
Following are some suggestions for getting your business in Holiday Shape!
Themed Graphics
It is important to Tie-in holiday content marketing efforts and drive traffic to your websites offering holiday contests or promotions. Since many businesses run special promotions during the Holiday Season this is a good time to consider the best ways to bring interest to your contests/promotions. First and foremost there should be holiday-themed graphics.
For Facebook I would suggest a new cover image that includes the holiday promotion with appropriate holiday imagery. From a design perspective my suggestion is to maintain a balance … catch one’s eye, entertain, yet don’t overwhelm! If your website and/or blog has a header image then these too should be changed. A good example of this is what was done for our client “Gilchrist Golf Cars” last year. As you can see from the following image all we did here was add a simple holiday “sale” graphic – simple, clean, yet effective. This image, with a link and/or image on the home page will let holiday shoppers know where to go to find out more about the holiday offerings.
In addition to Holiday Header and Cover images, it is a good idea to include holiday graphics on the promotional pages, contest forms, and the promotional coupons. One option I often employ is to create a holiday background image for the form itself. In this regard I will lower the opacity of the image so the holiday graphic is a watermark. An example of what I’ve done for SGMP’s Holiday Luncheon form follows:
Social Engagement
Social Media has one primary purpose – to bring interest to the primary website’s product/services, and to encourage brand loyalty. It can be very effective to use your Blog, Facebook, and Google+ pages to engage your visitors. Asking questions like, “what is your favorite holiday song?”, “what was your favorite gift as a child?”, … or posting images of your company’s christmas tree, holiday decorations in the work place, or company gift exchange can personalize your social media profiles. Remember that most people will respond to your “behind the scenes” images since this creates a sense of connectedness. Additionally, marketing researchers have suggested offering unique discount codes or coupons solely on a company’s Facebook page which can be used for products in the store/business. This is a good way to get trafic to your physical location while also hopefully growing the number of Facebook likes. And as I’ve noted previously it can be very effective to create Facebook “Fan Only” promotions to encourage “likes” and “shares”. See my post “Effective Facebook Contests” for more on this – https://www.ecurtisdesigns.com/2012/10/effective-facebook-contests/
Squeeze and Landing Pages
Squeeze pages are generally single page (or limited scope) websites that specifically promote one campaign or product that are used to tie in a postal or online mail campaign. Such pages are created as sub-domains of the primary site and can be especially effective to promote limited duration holiday campaigns, with the added benefit of helping the primary website with its overall SEO. Singe squeeze pages are sub-domains they are easy to remove once the holiday sale is over. Landing pages are akin to squeeze pages since they too are typically one page or limited in scope, yet in this case they will have their own unique domain. Landing pages sole purpose is to generate interest to the primary website by targeting key products, services, or promotional campaigns. An example of a landing page is the site we created for Synectic Technologies. Their landing page “Killervoip.com” is a responsive design that provides product information targeting mobile users who travel for business.
Content Marketing
Once your holiday marketing efforts have been decided upon, it is important to generate both awareness of them, and interest. As I’ve touched upon the inclusion of holiday graphics in your web pages, blog, Facebook, and Google+ are the necessary first steps. Each of these pages need to link to and promote your promotions on your primary website. It is also important to use your Newsletter for promotional campaigns, as well as Twitter. Any content (web pages, social media, web or print marketing) should include content that incorporate Holiday campaigns, products, or seasonal marketing efforts. Even announcing an upcoming promotion can help add unique content to your pages and social media efforts, which in turn helps with SEO.
Where possible personalize your content with customer’s activities in order to drive engagement and conversation. For example, an electronics supply store’s blog could ask customers if they are building any gifts over the holidays (e.g. a remote control car for a relative) and offer gift cards to the most ambitious or creative product.
No matter how a company is going to tie-in their holiday promotions this year, it’s important to remember to be thoughtful of all holidays during this season, not just Christmas (even though this post only has Christmas images). Promoting more general images of the season (e.g. snow or winter colors) is just one of the examples of how companies are offering seasonal promotions without targeting a specific holiday or religious affiliation.
If you need help with your holiday promotions this seasons be sure to contact us:
https://www.ecurtisdesigns.com
