December has already arrived! Starbucks has started serving its Holiday Cups and we started decorating our Christmas tree and stuffing our bellies with raisin pudding, fruitcakes, apple pie, Christmas cake, etc., and wait for the New Year to start, this year more eagerly ;D. Today’s Christmas Creep starts with the start of Halloween, but actual Christmas starts on Christmas-Eve itself. The day of Christmas marks the official start of Christmas and also of the 12 days of Christmas, the Christian tradition that shares its name with a Christmas carol that relentlessly sticks-in-your-head
While Christmas holidays bring fun, food, and family, it can also be the nightmare before Christmas for business owners and marketers, as they feel pressed for time and resources. But,
with the correct marketing strategies and promotions, you can make your Christmas marketing a breeze and spend more time relaxing and enjoying the festival season.
So, we at Martech Cube are here with 12 days of Christmas marketing ideas that will help you in decorating your business Christmas Trees in a more beautiful manner.
1. Begin with Limited Christmas Offers
Whenever you are planning a holiday marketing strategy, one thing that is mandatory and almost all businesses do is launching a limited period festive offer. No matter which industry you belong to, this is a tried and tested strategy that is effective from the era before digitalization. Because of these evergreen seasonal offers, customers expect promotions and discounts, so don’t lose out on potential custom by not providing some sort of offer.
Make sure to incentivize the shopping experience of your customers. Consumer surveys showcased that 74% of customers prefer discounts on the price and only 29% of customers prefer cashback. You can also Combine your incentives with a sense of urgency for an added boost like limited period offers on particular products or product types or first-come-first-served.
2. Become Santa with Free Shipping
It’s Christmas, a season full of gifts and fun, and the least people expect in this season from businesses is Free shipping. You might be thinking, is free shipping such a big deal? Yes, it is a big deal for customers. A LOCALiQ consumer survey noted that only 20% of individuals will pay for shipping. If you have a business that sends products to customers like e-commerce, consider free shipping on all purchases during these 12 days of Christmas, it will help you in boosting your sales during the Christmas holidays.
3. Take your Chariot through Multiple Channels
Prepare a multichannel marketing plan to maximize your reach and boost your sales. The most important thing in multichannel marketing is timing, make sure you do it right. Multichannel marketing not only enhances your reach to the target audience with a constant brand message, but it also organizes a plethora of customer choices, making it easier for the customers to purchase how, when, and where they wish.
4. Use SEO to Reach Places
Things might be looking a little different on the high street this year because of the COVID-19 crises. With so much uncertainty and low consumer confidence in visiting brick and mortar stores, it’s more important than ever to make sure that you offer the best possible online customer experience. Making sure your site is in good health, which is the key to success.
Put out content that will rank high enough to garner organic traffic in time for Christmas, also ensure that your current ranking pages are up to scratch.
Some quick SEO checks that you can do before leaving for the Christmas holidays are, check the metadata of your pages, is it enticing enough to get users to click through? Is your site mobile-first optimized? What are the page load-speeds looking like? These are things that are capable enough to make or break those crucial Christmas sales.
5. Apply PPC to be Quick
Most probably you will be using some sort of paid marketing, whether through social media, display, or search. Paid marketing is often competitive, but becomes even more competitive during the Christmas holiday period, potentially driving up your average CPC. This is the reason why it’s crucial to make sure you’re getting the best possible ROI.
Once your ads are live, take a look at the competitor’s ads, are your ads cutting through the noise? Analyze performance regularly, adjust bids and negative keywords in case of a search campaign and implement A/B testing so that you can tweak your messaging on the basis of what works, you’ll surely find a winning combination that converts and increases your sale.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is a great way to reach your potential customers within your target audience who aren’t already customers or aware of your brand, a whopping 79% of shoppers say they are willing to buy from a new retailer over the holidays, so getting it right is very significant.
6. Creative Content for Engagement
Christmas at the home or in business can’t be without creativity, so it’s important to be creative with content this Christmas 2020. Creative content increases customer engagement and also offers an opportunity to weave in subtle hints to drive people to particular product pages or locations on your site.
Penning down blog posts on related topics to your products or services also provides you with valuable content to distribute through social media and emails. However, creative content doesn’t just surround your blog, you might want to write a detailed white paper, checklist, guide, or even design an infographic or video content.
Take your creativity to the next level and boost customer engagement even more with interactive content such as quizzes, games, etc.
7. Open Your Santa’s Sack
What do you think this point might have, what do you understand from the title, any guesses? Yes, absolutely, this point is about gifts and giveaways. Christmas gifts have a different place in the heart of each individual, and you can’t miss the opportunity to get yourself placed in the good books of your customers.
During Christmas 2020, turn your business into a Santa and give gifts to the customers during their shopping. You can also arrange some giveaway feedback quiz which will help you in understanding the shopping experience of the customers and also attract more customers.
8. Email Marketing for Gift Notes
Email marketing is an evergreen marketing tool since it was introduced. You can begin Christmas marketing by running a well-timed email marketing campaign to engage your audience with daily special offers provided specifically through this channel of marketing. You could also highlight on your website that you’re giving subscriber-exclusive offers to encourage people to sign up for your mailing list.
You can also add an element of gamification through a hidden voucher code or instant prize somewhere on your website or within your emails, keeping your audience’s eyes peeled, re-engaging with your emails, and searching your site, to find the prize.
Don’t forget to make your emails mobile-friendly as a recent survey found that smartphone users made up 49% of festive revenue generated by email.
9. Celebrate with Games
Games have become a powerful medium of customer engagement on various channels of marketing. People love to compete and they love more to win, so you can use this trick to win more customers. Popular gamification tactics include loyalty cards and points systems, but you can level-up your gamification by rolling out your own branded Christmas special games.
Presently, social media is one of the most active channels and people engage there in an easy manner, you can leverage this platform to engage with more and more audiences through online short games. Offer gift vouchers or shopping cards or discount coupons to the winners. You can also give some of your products as gifts so that they use it and promote it through positive word of mouth.
9. Social Media is Important
As per research, the three top uses of social media for Christmas shopping are reading product reviews (60% of shoppers), browsing product listings (53%), and to look for promotions (52%). This makes social media the ideal place for marketers to showcase their products and services alongside reviews. You can even work with micro-influencers to post reviews of your products if the budget permits.
You can also utilize social media to promote last-minute gifts and highlight things like your cut-off date for guaranteed delivery or the last day on a particular set of products. If you’re rolling out a game, social media is also a perfect place to run a simultaneous Christmas countdown to refer traffic to your game.
Again, it’s highly important to ensure that your site is mobile-friendly if you’re planning on leveraging social media.
11. Plan for Last-Minute Shoppers
Last-minute shoppers make up nearly 30% of online holiday sales, so you must plan something to attract last-minute shoppers to buy from your brand. Leverage holiday marketing tactics such as remarketing to the target audience who have already visited your site or send last-minute offers to your audience through email or social media platforms.
12. Decorate your website
Your website is your identity, your home, your office, your everything online, and people visit them more during festivals as guests visit your home or office, so you need to decorate your website as you decorate your office during Christmas.
Decorating your website showcases that it is an active site so will have active offers too, so the users stay on the site for a longer time. A Christmas themed website also looks amazing and grabs the attention of the visitors.
Murmur Merry Christmas Carol & Relax
12 days of Christmas are as important for businesses as they are important for Christmas as per our traditions. Christmas 2020 is crucial for businesses and marketers but with some creative and effective strategies and tactics, you can maximize the exposure of your business, connect with your customers, and set your business up to reach new heights in the New Year.
Merry Christmas!!! From Martech Cube
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chandrima Samanta
Content-Editor at MartechCube
Chandrima is a Content management executive with a flair for creating high quality content irrespective of genre. She believes in crafting stories irrespective of genre and bringing them to a creative form. Prior to working for MartechCube she was a Business Analyst with Capgemini.