The holiday season is here again and a good number of people believe this is the best season for brands. While the jury is still out on that, the holiday season is the perfect time to nurture your established brand relationships with loyal customers and clients and possibly develop some new ones.
Here are 14 ways that you can keep your brand in the public eye, not only in December but throughout the entire year.
1. Show your brand, not your products.
Use holiday marketing as a time to focus internally. Use this season to market the value that exists within the organisation. Take this time to show your brand, not your products. Publicly, acknowledge the value of your team, during this time, and build a brand image that is focused on the people who make it happen all year. Most consumers already know where the deals are, they simply need to find a brand they want to support.
2. Try the “bounce-back method”
The holiday period is typically good for retail and restaurants. There’s not much to do there. However, the bounce-back method works wonders after the holiday month of December. During this month, issue every paying guest an envelope with some sort of reward. The envelope can only be opened on their next visit in January, during their next purchase. Sales will come close to equal December numbers. I can wager you on that.
Read also: Christmas Shopping: Where to get affordable items
3. Nurture and engage with existing followers
During the holidays, every brand is trying to get into your shopping cart, especially during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Businesses can stand out from competitors by nurturing audiences that are most likely to purchase from them. Engaging with your existing social media followers and email subscribers with exclusive offers or valuable messaging, will reinforce familiarity and build loyalty.
4. Meet people where they are
Consider a counter-intuitive approach by focusing on repairing items, purchasing pre-loved goods, or donating to those in need. Take inspiration from Patagonia’s “Don’t Buy This” campaign. High inflation is real and people are hurting. Lead with empathy and meet consumers where they are.
5. Generate themed content
A holiday marketing strategy to keep a business in the public eye is to create themed content. This could be anything from blog posts and social media posts to videos and images. The goal is to create content that is relevant to the holiday and that will appeal to your target audience. By doing this, you can ensure that your business stays top of mind during the holiday season.
6. Share personalised text messages
Cultivate direct communication with your consumer. Opening avenues for conversation with your consumers via channels like SMS is the quickest and most personal way to share information about holiday sales and promotions. In doing so, you can deliver targeted, personalized messaging that cuts through the noise.
7. Send handwritten greeting cards.
The holiday season is the best time to show appreciation to your loyal customers. So consider sending out some handwritten greeting cards. Also, don’t miss out on this opportunity to offer discounts or an exclusive first look at a new product or service. With this strategy, you’ll get your customers’ attention and express your gratitude simultaneously.
8. Give back to community
The holiday season is a great time to focus on giving back to the community and celebrating your hard-working employees. Obviously, you don’t want to do either of these things with the goal of getting media attention, but a natural byproduct of taking care of your employees and those less fortunate in your community is the creation of loyal brand ambassadors.
9. Be funny, creative and connect
Holiday marketing is probably very different in B2C, but in B2B it is a chance to be funny and creative to connect with your customers on a personal level. It’s more about the brand and employees than it is about sales and products, showing that we are all humans and part of a bigger community.
Read also: Celebrating Christmas with loads of anxiety
10. Enhance the appeal of year-round brand shopping
Smart holiday marketing has to be disruptive in order to cut through the noise of the season, but it also connects with the consumer in a way that will resonate beyond the new year. While the messaging should centre around being the best place to go for gifting, that sentiment should also extend into being the best shopping experience year-round.
11. Demonstrate empathy to your audience.
Audience empathy is the cornerstone of any great marketing strategy. For any given holiday, consider how your offering addresses the hopes, fears, frustrations, or dreams of your audience. Then have fun leaning into it.
12. Make a new-to-you holiday
Create a new holiday, one where you aren’t competing with every other business and the time constraints clients already feel at the end of a fiscal year. The new-to-you holiday should resonate with the act of appreciation and connection to the business purpose.
Last Line
Whether your company is targeting B2C or B2B, it’s also a chance to come up with other creative concepts to grab people’s attention, make them smile, and show them that you truly care. If you focus on the humanization of your company, highlighting the effectiveness of your employees, you’ll connect effectively with the community at large.
