Overview: Cool holiday marketing ideas to help businesses and marketers increase sales in 2022
Black Friday and Cyber Monday have already passed, but that doesn’t mean you should loosen the grip on your holiday marketing just yet.
Just last year, over 150 million Americans planned to shop the Saturday before Christmas according to CNBC. “And of those people planning to shop on the day known as “Super Saturday” […] are planning to do so online only, avoiding crowded malls and stores.”
What does this mean for you? Well, procrastinators are still a thing, so you can target your digital marketing efforts to attract those last-minute shoppers.
1. CRAFT VIRTUAL E-COMMERCE EXPERIENCES:
This is a good one, especially if your sole focus is e-commerce and you don’t have a retail environment to layer onto the customer experience.
It may seem challenging to come up with ways to engage with customers in a face-to-face manner, but think outside the box and come up with virtual experiences where you can bond with customers.
Caitlin Rethwish, founder of Etcetera Embroidery, has done exactly this. She tells Wiredelta:
“Before COVID, I tried to host a few in-person classes each year to teach beginners how to embroider. Once we went into lockdown, I lost that element, but heard from enough customers about their interest in a virtual class that it seemed like it would be worth the minor hassle of setting up a crafting session without the luxury of showing someone in person how to properly stitch up one of my embroidery patterns.”
Rethwish said she charged a small fee for taking the class, but it’s clear that there’s more value derived from making people feel a bit of normalcy after so much of our routines have been interrupted by lockdowns and social distancing.
And of course, the benefit of spending time chatting with your own customers is that you can learn a whole lot about the pros and cons of your product in a more low-key, authentic environment. Think of it like an organic focus group.
2. PARTNER WITH A CHARITY:
Holidays are a period when people are emotional. They’re often thinking about family, giving, and making human connections, more than ever.
What better way to tap into this perspective than by partnering with a charitable organization?
We did this last year when we teamed up with the Family Service Association (FSA) in October to support low-income and homeless families in the Redlands and Yucaipa communities.
Studies show that purpose-driven companies gain more support, especially during the holidays. Customers will be more inclined to drive social shares and, eventually, sales.
So, let your business embody this holiday spirit of giving and you’re likely to strike an emotional chord with your customer base. However, you want to make sure you’re not just giving for the sake of receiving.
A true purpose-driven company is motivated by love more than anything. Chances are, if you’re playing the part of “good guy” just for accolades or sales, it’ll bite you in the butt over time.
Thanks to Forbes for this awesome marketing idea for the holidays!
3. CREATE A BRANDED HASHTAG CAMPAIGN:
Holidays are a period when people are emotional. They’re often thinking about family, giving, and making human connections, more than ever.
What better way to tap into this perspective than by partnering with a charitable organization?
We did this last year when we teamed up with the Family Service Association (FSA) in October to support low-income and homeless families in the Redlands and Yucaipa communities.
Studies show that purpose-driven companies gain more support, especially during the holidays. Customers will be more inclined to drive social shares and, eventually, sales.
So, let your business embody this holiday spirit of giving and you’re likely to strike an emotional chord with your customer base. However, you want to make sure you’re not just giving for the sake of receiving.
A true purpose-driven company is motivated by love more than anything. Chances are, if you’re playing the part of “good guy” just for accolades or sales, it’ll bite you in the butt over time.
Thanks to Forbes for this awesome marketing idea for the holidays!
Did you know that tweets get around 2 times more engagement if they have a hashtag included?
Creating a unique branded hashtag offers many benefits to businesses, as it’s one of the easiest ways to develop brand recognition and user engagement.
The key to making a hashtag successful:
You have to come up with something that includes the following 3:
your brand/products/services
connects with your customers
is catchy, useful, and unique
So try to avoid generic hashtags like #happyholidays or #blackfriday. Sure, these may trend very well and you might even get a like or two. But your brand will be competing with all the other thousands (literally) of companies that are also using them.
According to The Refinery‘s marketing tips, in order to get your hashtag to start trending, you need to be consistent! Use your hashtag often and try not to drown it in a bunch of other hashtags when you’re posting.
Start using your branded hashtag now to build up brand recognition… trust us, it isn’t too late! Holiday marketing often spills into the new year, so you’ve still got time.
Some ideas to create a hashtag around are something special about your company, a new product, or even a contest, sale, or promo you’re planning to run for the holiday season.
Here’s an example:Barnes & Noble started using the hashtag #BNGiftTip before the holidays in 2014. Customers would include this hashtag in their tweet if they needed advice on a good book to buy as a gift for someone. What a great idea!
This not only created a personal connection with people, but it also didn’t have to rely on a sales pitch.
4. ENGAGE LAST-MINUTE SHOPPERS WITH TEXT MARKETING:
These days, everyone texts. Aunt Sally? Yes. Grandma? Yes. Your dog? At this rate… won’t be surprised. So here are 3 text marketing tips to engage those last-minute shoppers:
Build Your Customer Segments:
Before the holidays begin in earnest, use text marketing to build your customer segments so that you have well-targeted lists. For example, if you sell body products, you could develop lists by sending out a simple text poll to see what people would be most interested in buying this holiday season. You could also target a specific demographic by offering a ‘mom makeover’ to the first hundred people to text back and redeem the offer in the store. Knowing your customers’ demographics and interests beforehand allows you to target holiday texts.
Connect With Mobile:
While not all shoppers use their phones to shop, many of them do, and text marketing combines easily with a mobile campaign. Make sure that your website is mobile-friendly. Make it simple for them not only to look at your products online, but to actually move from text to website search to checking out online.
Move to MMS:
If you want to expand your text marketing campaign, consider adding a photographic element as well. For example, you could take a photo of one of the most popular gift items this season and send it out to your customers, with a note about a limited time discount on this gift item. Since the vast majority of text messages are read within three minutes of receipt, this gives your readers an incentive to look, get hooked, and buy right now.
Check out more text marketing tips here.
5. DIVERSE & INCLUSIVE MARKETING DONE RIGHT:
There’s no denying that campaigns are being driven by changing consumer demands. Brands like Starbucks and Target are putting diversity and inclusion at the center of their efforts, spotlighting purpose during a key marketing season for which togetherness is endemic.
This means marketers must be mindful to make their work truly inclusive across a number of dimensions.
Marketing Dive takes a look at this hot topic of conversation in the marketing industry.
“Diversity and inclusion (D&I) have gained prominence in marketing and are often shorthand for two major types of representation: race or ethnicity and gender or sexuality. But to engage with consumers for whom D&I is a priority, brands must create holiday campaigns that work across a number of relevant dimensions, touching on different identities, including religion, family makeup, age and ability.”
Inclusive campaigns means taking real action to connect with the folks that you’re trying to reach.
“If you’re being honest and true about your intentions and how it’s consistent with the rest of your firm, you’re going to find the consumers that you want to be in longer-term consumer relationships with.”
The DEI space spans many demographics, and what inclusivity looks like to your brand might differ from the next. But it’s not just about showing individuals using your product or representing your brand.