If you’re a retailer, you have probably started to capitalise on the festive season. However, if you provide services, you probably haven’t. Don’t worry though, as it is never too late to give your marketing campaign a sprinkle of Christmas magic!
There is a wide array of promotional techniques that you can use to make the most of the seasonal period and maximise brand awareness.
Here are our top 5 promotional techniques for the festive period:
Updating your website
By updating your homepage to something a little bit more festive, you can grab your customers’ attention as soon as they visit your site. Do this by styling products with a Christmas twist or by adding some appropriate, eye-pleasing graphics.
It’s also important to update your opening hours on your website, Google and social media pages as soon as possible to make your business as accessible as possible for your customers.
If you want to encourage customers to have a good browse through your site, having a holiday-themed page is the perfect trick! It is welcoming, fun and gets customers talking.
Take a look at the CocaCola website for an example:
Christmas promotions on social media
From giveaways to a limited-time discount, the social media opportunities are endless!
Consider doing a social media take-over for the holidays by redesigning your cover photo, profile picture and social media posts with some Christmas cheer. Festive promotions encourage customers to get involved and share your material.
Another way to promote the holidays on social media can be achieved by creating a social advent calendar. Countdown the days till Christmas with a new offer each day! This will help you engage with your customers and build a loyal online following for all-year round.
Email marketing
Say thank you to all your loyal customers at once with email marketing!
Email marketing is a cost-effective and thoughtful way to show your customers how much they mean to you. A simple “thank you for being our customer” can make all the difference to your customer loyalty.
A second way to utilise email marketing this Christmas can be to share Christmas themed promotions with all of your customers, allowing them to take advatage.
Take a look at this email from Bobbi Brwon for example:
Christmas adverts
Christmas-focused adverts are extremely popular, with brands everywhere competing to make theirs stand out from the crowd.
Although the competition is high, it is the perfect excuse to get your brand out there and attract new customers over the festive season. Whether you choose to promote your brand online, on the radio or television, Christmas adverts are highly effective in raising brand awareness.
Take a look at this year’s John Lewis’ Christmas ad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNbSgMEZ_Tw
User-generated content (UGC)
Getting your customers involved in your Christmas campaign is a must, as happy customers are the best advocates for your brand.
User-generated content entails finding and sharing the best quality and most applicable content, produced by your customers, for your brand. User-generated content gives your business an outside perspective on marketing, which means that you can share posts that your marketing team wouldn’t normally create. It also helps you to establish online credibility, boost your social media activity and support lead generation, all whilst regularly engaging with your customers!
One way to action this could be by asking your customers to share images of your products or before and afters of your services on their social media, for a small percentage off their next transaction. Don’t forget to add a branded hashtag to the mix, so you can easily track down UGC and share it on all your pages. For example, check out John Lewis’ Christmas hashtag #eltonjohnlewis on Twitter!
According to Kissmetrics, “25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content”. This shows how just how influential it can be!
If you love these ideas but don’t have the time to implement them yourselves, Brace is here to help. Our marketing experts are ready and waiting to implement your campaign, to get started, call us on 01452 729 953 today.
