For most businesses, the holiday season is the the busiest time of year as companies see a surge in sales. Last year, the period of time from Black Friday to Christmas accounted for 20% of the total annual income for the retail industry. That number is expected to increase significantly this year due to the growth of online sales, with experts predicting that holiday season digital revenue will surpass $200 billion for the first time ever.
This makes it essential that you position your business in a way that will generate buzz, drive traffic, and bring in revenue.
In this blog post, we look at 3 marketing tips to ensure that your brand has a winning strategy for the upcoming holiday season.
Create Holiday Specific Landing Pages
In order to maximize for holiday related search queries, your website needs to have content that targets keywords that holiday shoppers are looking for. Whether it’s Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday, or another holiday, you need to develop content specifically for those special days. This will improve your SEO and increase website traffic.
One strategy that helps in this regard is to create landing pages specifically made for the holiday season. These pages would only be active from Black Friday through Christmas and exclusively feature holiday promotions, discounted products, and special deals. This page could also include holiday themed blog posts, graphics, and videos that you create.
You will need to do some research on which holiday specific keywords work best for your target audience. But in general, phrases such as “Black Friday Discounts”, “Holiday Shopping Deals”, and “Special Promotions” will need to be included alongside your brand related search terms.
Image from DigitalDesignJournal.com
Partner with a Non-Profit
It’s no wonder that this time of year is known as the season of giving. Nearly one-third of annual giving occurs in the month of December. A mix of end of year bonuses and holiday spirit makes people to want to donate and support good causes, which affects their buying behavior.
This makes the holiday season an ideal time to partner with a non-profit that matches your brand’s mission and ideals. This can be as simple as donating a percentage of sales from a certain product to a charitable organization, to more involved tactics, such as hosting an auction event featuring gift baskets full of your brand’s products.
All of this will build a positive brand image, while also leading to an increase in sales as customers will be more inclined to support your brand if they know that their money is also supporting a worthy cause.
Having trouble deciding which non-profit to support? Ask your employees what organizations they currently volunteer at or are involved in. This is a great way to engage with your staff and rally them behind a common goal.
Image from Tempay.com
Utilize Emotional Advertising
It is scientifically proven that advertisements with emotional content perform nearly twice as well as ads with primarily rational content. Ads that can elicit emotions are more likely to be remembered, and a positive emotional experience with a brand greatly increases the chance of a purchase.
There’s a reason so many of our favorite holiday movies are usually heartfelt and optimistic. Simply put, people tend to be more emotional this time of year. The better your brand is at building an emotional connection with your audience, the more engaged and loyal your audience will be.
Below is a good example of emotional advertising by Apple.
Powerful stuff, right? The ad was so effective at building emotional connections that people even made videos of themselves reacting to the ad.
I like this example of emotional advertising because it barely features the product. The main focus is on the storytelling. Emotional advertising is most effective when it tells a compelling story. Using the holiday season as a backdrop for your brand’s storytelling makes emotional ads even more effective because people are more emotional this time of year.
Conclusion
Regardless of what holidays we choose to celebrate this season, as marketers, we can all agree that the holiday season is a great time to drive sales and boost revenue.
Need help with your holiday marketing strategy? It’s not too late.
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