Many businesses slow down or pause marketing during November and December thinking that they’re unlikely to make a sale – However, your target market and audience are AVAILABLE TO MARKET to, as a prime time of increased accessibility. 

Ramp up your marketing during the holidays and who are they going to turn to when they’re ready to make a purchasing decision in Q1?
 

So, you have two options:

Option 1 – Rest on your laurels, do nothing in December and scramble in January to try and pull something together. This option usually means you’re not truly ready to drive leads until February at the earliest, at which point you’ve probably missed the boat. 

Option 2 – Put together a comprehensive marketing strategy in November/early December that will run over the holidays (most of which is automated, don’t worry!). This allows you to hit the ground running in January and come out on top.  

Which will you do? 

The likelihood is that you won’t have time to conduct a full marketing overhaul, however there is time to create a highly targeted, fully custom campaign that can run in the background over the holidays, gently warming up leads for you ready for a strong launch to Q1 and the new year. 

Primary activities we recommend:  

• Creating informative, engaging content and schedule across your social channels 
• Integrate the holidays and other marketing hooks (think national days and events upcoming) to build reach 
• Using automated email workflows (email sequencing) to help drive traffic to this content 
• Creating social ads for cold audience attraction (drip-feeding your proposition)  
• Creating re-marketing ads for those who read your content  
• Optimising the SEO on your website, create new blog content and consider video marketing 

The best part about this marketing strategy? Once the content is produced, you can automate a huge chunk of it, meaning that you can enjoy your sherry and mince pies without needing to worry about managing your marketing campaign!

The result is a list of the most engaged contacts from the period – the people who clicked your links, read your content and engaged with your marketing.  These are the people you want to be contacting as soon as January comes round, as they’ll be ready and raring to go with their New Years’ resolutions, and you’ll be perfectly positioned to assist them.
 

Brighter Directions are a curated team of no-nonsense marketing specialists, we become an extension of your marketing team, delivering tangible results over vanity metrics. No jargon, just results and a great partnership, get in touch today to see how we can assist your festive and Q1 marketing campaigns, click HERE. 

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The festive season can actually inspire your marketing efforts to help you reach your target audience and build your profile. Here are a few simple ways you can use the festive season to inspire your social media strategy.

• Decorate your social media, change your cover or profile pictures to look more festive. Fresh cover photos can help motivate people to check-in on your pages. Even if you don’t sell products or services to a B2C base, it’s still a great idea to post festive pictures, even if they are of a festively decorated workplace.
• If you have more than one social media account use the same or similar festive images on all platforms to show consistency.
• Share in some Christmas fun as we have. Engage people, get them excited about the season and in turn they can get excited about you and your brand. Create posts that are asking what their favourite thing is about Christmas, maybe their favourite food, movie, advert, or song. You could ask what their most memorable Christmas moment is. What do they love or hate about Christmas dinner?
• Finally just because you might have a day of rest on Christmas day doesn’t mean your social media should. Wish everyone a Merry Christmas on the big day. People are going to be online wishing their own friends and family a Happy Christmas. So send out (even if it is scheduled) a Merry Christmas to everyone from your business.

For some festive fun here at Brighter Directions we asked some of our staff members what it was about Christmas they loved:

• Claire likes the Coca-Cola advert and the truck. Let’s face it, when you see Santa on the side of a delivery truck or on a can, you know the holidays are coming!
• Ryan’s favourite Christmas film is The Nightmare before Christmas, making time to watch it at least once each Christmas Eve as part of his holiday traditions.
• Mark is about family at this time of year especially with his little boy and it being his first Christmas. Mark is looking forward to his grandparents visiting and spending Christmas with them all.
• Sharon’s all-time favourite Christmas song is by Greg Lake – I Believe in Father Christmas.
• Amy enjoys watching her little boy opening his presents on Christmas Day.
• Kelly just loves Christmas as a whole, but she especially loves this year’s ‘The Big Night’ advert by Sainsbury’s, you have to love the kid dressed as a plug launching himself into a wall. And she makes a Christmas cake every year.
• Carla finds the smell of cinnamon spices, and watching Home Alone always has her feeling in the festive spirit. The only thing she hates at Christmas is Brussels sprouts
• Danielle has taken inspiration from the classic Mean Girls’ dance, adopting Jingle Bells as her Christmas soundtrack of choice whilst exploring the local markets and indulging in the spread of festive foods.

What gets you into the Christmas spirit? Is it the sound of that familiar Christmas song on the radio? Or is it, like Claire, the sight of that first Coca-Cola holiday advertisement?

The Christmas holidays are very nearly upon us now and for many businesses, this means they will be closing down and going on holidays, but it doesn’t mean you need to wind down your marketing activities for the year.

Keep going, have fun and have an amazing Christmas!

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