When Should You Start To Market For The Holidays
When should you start to market for the Holiday Season? Well, common sense will tell you, the sooner the better! Especially since for any good marketing campaign requires time for planning and executing. There was a period of 10 days in 2013 where online shopping surpassed $1 billion in sales, and those days were in between Black Friday and December 12. Are you ready to take advantage of those Holiday Shoppers? Some shoppers, will even start to buy earlier, to take advantage of promos and to make sure their gifts arrive with plenty of time for wrapping and Holiday parties.
Here are some guidelines to get your Holiday Season marketing strategy on track:
Establish a relationship with your customers early
When the Holidays hit, everyone is already rushing and overwhelmed with promotions, sales, emails and coupons. Don’t wait until the last minute to try to penetrate your market, you can start reaching out to them as early as August, planning seeds, so they recognize your name or brand when it’s time to shop.
Start to build your followers on social media and engage now, so when it’s time to tell them about your sales and promotions, they are ready and willing to listen.
Write out your marketing Plan
It’s important not only to start connecting and engaging with your clients, but also to have a clear outline of what you want to achieve, including a timeline, specials, coupons, email blasts, contests etc.
For example, if you want to have a Christmas contest, you will want to announce the winner before December 15th, so that means you will have to start your contest November 1 to 15th, which means your will have to define your strategy, social networks, ad spend, graphics no later than October 1st so you can execute your contest and have a success on your hands. If you wait too long, it will more than likely be poorly executed and your results will reflect that.
Partner up with non competing businesses
One great way to make your marketing dollars go further is to partner up with non competing businesses. For example, if you own a Salon, you could partner up with a personal trainer to make stretch your marketing dollar. You can design a promotion where you bundle a gift bundle that both businesses contribute to, and you can ask them to “tweet” or “like the promotion through their social networks so you can expand your reach. Again, planning is the key, you have to start networking in August to find the right businesses to work with so you can launch before the Holiday Season.
Speed Up Your Social Networks
If you wait until November to start gathering fans and followers, you have almost missed the boat! You have to start lining up your social marketing strategy early, so you will have enough fans and followers ready by the time you launch your promotion. Especially when dealing with social media, you can expect the build stage to be on the slower side, unless you are prepared to spend thousands of dollars paying for fans and followers. The earlier, the better!
If you want to get started on your social media holiday marketing campaign now, take a look at some of ourlocal marketing packages or call us for a custom quote and consultation at 888-828-9826
