5 Merry Ways Product Marketers Can Help Drive Sales in The Holiday Season
Whether you’re a big brand or small one, hopefully you set your sights on the holiday season early. While it is the season for merriment and spending time with friends and family, it is also ‘Open Season’ for marketers trying to connect or reconnect with customers.
The game plan is different for bigger brands as they already have massive budgets, a core team, and other resources ready far ahead of the holiday season. Instead, it is small to midsize businesses that have to focus their energy on coming up with out-of-the-box digital marketing strategies to capture the attention of their customers before Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
This post covers some of the ways our digital marketing team at TalenAlexander has been able to make the most of every holiday season.
Create a Holiday Infographic
This time of the year, shoppers are overwhelmed with ads blasted across their social media accounts. Constantly bombarded with marketing pleas of “watch this,” “click this,” “BUY this,” “X things to do this Holiday Season,” and an endless flow of Holiday-themed ads, shoppers need to see something that hasn’t been ‘overshared’ or plastered all over the social media properties. In short, give your audience content that is informative, useful, and most importantly, succinct. One way to go about this is to create a holiday infographic.
Creating an infographic focusing on an aspect of the holiday season will give your shoppers something that they can put to good use. Once you’ve created it, upload it to your website, share it on your social media, or send it in an email blast. Whichever the case, a simple infographic can do the trick for you.
Here are a few great holiday infographic examples:
With tools like Piktochart and Canva, creating an infographic from scratch is a breeze, but you know what’s even better? It hardly costs a penny. Talk about marketing on a budget!
Make an Interactive Holiday Video
What are Holidays without a dash of fun? And if you’re anything like us, we’re sure Gamification is on your mind. Gamification is the ‘in’ tool for customer engagement, and can take your brand new heights during this holiday season.
What the concept boils down to is applying gaming mechanics to your website, mobile app, and/or social media profile. To elaborate, you encourage audience participation a.k.a. engagement, by utilizing the incentive of a reward. This creates a fun and engaging way to develop word-of-mouth social proof about your brand.
Take a cue from brands which have applied the gamification concept and see how it worked for them.
One of the best examples Office Depot’s Elf Yourself campaign. Elfyourself.com visitors upload selfies and are returned a fun video of their faces cropped onto dancing elves. The campaign gives visitors the option to share the video on Facebook, which is how the ad initially grew viral.
So, why not kick-start your digital marketing campaign this year with an interactive holiday video that your audience finds difficult not to share? But don’t forget to add the element of fun, too!
Revamp Your Website
The smallest of stores do it, and so do the biggest brands. What exactly is it? by decking out their store’s decorum to reflect the holiday spirit. And what’s even better is that this is possible in the digital space too – Give your customers the holiday feel on your website’s homepage.
Start simple, like using a color palette associated with the holiday or by creating an updated banner featuring your flagship product/service. A few other promotional ideas are discounts, free-shipping, and/or gift-wrapping. And if you have a mascot, don’t forget to give them a holiday makeover too!
Update your website with a holiday-theme to alert visitors and shoppers alike of your participation. Not only is it festive and warming, but it could pique a shoppers before they visit a retail location. Additionally, don’t sit around and wait for your customers to notice your new look – they’ve already got a million things to do. Jump out in front of them with an email or social media post inviting them to check out your new look.
Freebies and Giveaways
This one’s a no-brainer. Holidays are the best time to exchange gifts and it’s only natural that your customers be inclined to receive freebies. Holiday-themed souvenirs and freebies not only increase your brand’s visibility, but also go a long way in building brand loyalty. The expense of the gift isn’t important, but rather the gratitude and sentiment expressed by by your actions.
Calendars, personalized journals, holiday recipe books, and free (limited) access to content are all safe bets when it comes to gifts.
Go Old-School
Many moons ago, customers were flooded by direct mailers in their mailboxes throughout the holiday season. Although it’s an old-school method, there’s no harm in bringing back a classic strategy to the digital space.
Contrary to popular belief email marketing is not dead, and is a worthwhile holiday marketing strategy. Similarly, in keeping with the basics you can create a special holiday catalog offering long-time, loyal customers discounts. All of this is accomplished through a digital postcard sent directly to their inboxes or social media accounts.
For more inspiration, take a look at these brilliant holiday marketing campaigns.
To conclude
As we enter another holiday season, these tools will help you create a successful seasonal marketing blueprint. Take these tested tips and implement them to drive your brand into the new year. As always, #LoveYourBrand and Happy Holidays!
