How to Plan Your 2023 Christmas and New Year Marketing Campaign

Christmas is approaching fast and your business needs to be prepared for the holiday season. Don’t expect people to buy your product or service because it’s ‘that time of year’ – the business mentality of “t’is the season” isn’t good enough, and it will destroy your business’ potential. You need to be seen, be heard, and give your audience a reason to choose you over your competition.

To help you plan your 2023 Christmas holiday marketing campaign, we’ve created this 7-step guide to holiday season marketing success.

1. Come up with a solid idea or concept.

All great things start with an idea - your holiday marketing campaign included. To get started, visualise your holiday campaign; what’s the idea or concept behind it? How does it look and feel? Now that you know your holiday marketing campaign, think about the products or services you will focus on. Be creative with how you position yourself.

2. Set up your online shopping channels.

Think about how your audience interacts with your brand and the experience consumers will have with your brand on each platform. You need to set up your channels to make the process as effective and seamless as possible. This might be by creating a new landing page, creating a sale category, or setting up Instagram Shopping.

3. Create original and amazing content.

This is a crucial ingredient in your holiday marketing campaign. Creating a healthy mix of promotional product shots and lifestyle imagery across your photo and video content is important. Variety is good as long as it works with your idea or concept.

Your content speaks volumes about your brand and the products or services that you’re promoting. You can create original content or take an existing concept and put your spin on it. You can even use user-generated content (UGC), a great way to build and strengthen your tribe. We recommend creating original content as often as possible to keep things consistent and unique.

Source: Unsplash.

4. Reach out to your influencers and partners.

This is a great way to expand your reach to a new audience and drive sales. Choosing an influencer to represent your brand isn’t as simple as selecting someone because you like them. It’s important to audit their accounts and talk to them to ensure your campaign and brand match.

Things to consider when choosing the perfect influencer for your brand are:

• Engagement metrics: what is their target market? What are their strengths and weaknesses?

• Social listening: is this person the right fit for your brand? Are they relevant to the products or services?

• Technical skills: are they creating high-quality content? How do they handle negative comments or crises?

• Communication: are they easy to reach? Are they transparent and pleasant to work with?

Once you’ve created a shortlist of influencers and are ready to get them on board, you must be clear with dates, expectations, and payment. Communication and transparency are important for you and the influencer in this relationship.

5. Organise and schedule your social media content.

Now that you have all your content and key dates, it’s time to plan your social media content calendar and email marketing. Scheduling your posts will make your life less stressful and give you more time to focus on important tasks like engaging with your community.

Remember to include hashtags and product tags to maximise exposure and showcase your products when scheduling your social media content. Make sure to make time for UGC and reviews; social proof is the most effective form of marketing.

Email marketing is a high-conversion tool you can use to promote new products or deals, reward existing customers, or retarget users. Beyond the online shopping aspect, email marketing is a great way for you to provide more value and content to your audience with exclusive blogs, tips, news, or product pairings.

What we love most about email marketing is user retention. A good email marketing campaign will incorporate strategies to get return customers, referrals, and reviews. It’s a cost and time-effective way to grow your brand and strengthen your brand’s relationship with its audience.

6. Prepare your social media ads.

With a good social media ad strategy, you can build your following, get traffic to your website and convert leads and sales. You can repurpose content and use ads to retarget users who didn’t convert to your website earlier.

7. Measure and monitor your results.

You need to know if your social media marketing campaign is actually working (getting results). Using analytics and tracking tools to define actions and events will allow you to measure what matters to you. If you’re a product-based brand, you might focus more on newsletter subscriptions and online sales, whereas a service-based brand might focus more on leads, engagement, and form submissions.

We recommend using marketing and analytic tools like Google Analytics, Later.com, Mailchimp and Semrush to measure and monitor your results, and make informed decisions for future marketing efforts.

Conclusion

There you have it, seven steps to help you plan your 2023 Christmas and New Year marketing campaigns. For more information about marketing plans, seasonal campaigns, and optimising your content, reach out to the team at Southdown Creative.