Cutting through Christmas noise with your marketing can be really difficult.
While The Creative Collective team loves the Christmas period, we also know that this is the busiest time of year for many of our clients who have a service or product that people purchase for Christmas or want provided before Christmas. Many businesses are not only juggling their daily business operations but also trying to figure out ways to stand out from the crowd and maximise their sales at this time.
By the time you reach the end of this blog post, thousands of dollars will have been spent by consumers on Christmas gifts with an estimated 1.8 billion people worldwide purchasing their goods online. To ensure that this money is spent on your products or services, check out our list of handy tips for cutting through Christmas noise below:
Plan Ahead
This might sound really obvious but it is potentially one of the most important things that you can do to make sure you are cutting through Christmas noise!
Plan your content calendar from now to Christmas, identify your allocated ad spend, blogs and any website content required well before Christmas comes knocking, potentially on an annual or quarterly basis. And before you stress out, it’s not too late! Planning even a few weeks ahead and getting things into place, is better than no planning at all!
Give Back
Around this time of year, there are ample opportunities to give back to the community. Use this time to share your appreciation for others, rather than highlight your own products or services.
Give Back To Community
We suggest inviting employees and customers to participate in a charitable campaign that supports a relevant cause for your organisation. Customers will appreciate your values during the season of giving, improving organisational reputation and public relations output as a result.
For example, a coffee shop might produce a campaign to give back to underprivileged communities in places like Brazil or Vietnam where the majority of coffee beans are grown and picked.
Perhaps your CEO or another team member has a personal connection to a charity due to having experienced hardship or an illness themselves or via their family. Identify what causes are close to your heart and support them!
Or get behind one of many annual charity events and fundraising drives organised by others. For instance every year Kmart has the Kmart Wishing Tree Appeal – Australia’s largest and longest running Christmas gift appeal. Run in partnership with the Salvation Army, you can make a cash contribution in store, or online, or buy a gift in store and leave it under their tree. How nice is that?
Give Back To Customers
Christmas is also a great time to give back to valued customers. This can be done in a number of ways depending on your goals and available resources. If you have the ability to send all customers on your database a free token of appreciation, you will be rewarded. It could be as simple as a card or small gift. Otherwise, we suggest rewarding loyal customers with the chance to win a Christmas giveaway competition on social media or providing a discount code to newsletter subscribers.
Watch Consumer Trends…
Around this time of year, it is really important to keep your finger on the pulse of current… consumer trends. If you can figure out what is ‘hot’ this holiday season, you can also work out… the best way to meet consumer demand.
A great way to show potential customers that you have trending products or services is to produce a Gift Guide. This can help consumers make gift-giving decisions by presenting and explaining your best products and services.
Email Communications
Email marketing is an extremely lucrative tool but even more so at Christmas time. You may have noticed your email inbox already filling up with a million Black Friday sale emails toward the end of November. Very soon, brands will step up the frequency even further for special Christmas discounts, giveaways and last minute delivery details.
The best way to strategically cut through the mountains of Christmas emails is to seamlessly produce email marketing content that puts people in the gift-giving mood. The more warm and fuzzy your message appears to be, the more likely your audiences will want to jump on the sentimental bandwagon. This also means putting in a targeted effort to reduce consumer stress, and provide both ease and joy for Christmas shoppers.
NOTE: Remember that most of your customers will be searching on their mobile phones. Therefore, mobile capability is vital for audience conversion.
Include Call To Actions
Give your target audience a reason to pursue your Christmas offer by creating special promotions, discounts or any other incentives. In a particularly expensive time of year, consumers are particularly budget-conscious and will often choose the option with the best potential for savings. Make sure you are that best option!
Provide Up to Date Information
This is a really easy one to get right! Make sure that all information on your website and social media profiles is as up to date as possible. This may include your Christmas opening hours, final order dates and delivery details. Customers will want this information to be front and centre and if they are unsure of details, they are likely to go elsewhere to ensure they get the service they need.
Retain Customers
At such a hectic time of year, it can be easy to get caught up on winning new customers. However, it is really important to tend to the customers you already have. The Pareto Principle clarifies that 20% of your customers will often create 80% of your profit. For this reason, it is really important to make that 20% count!
It is vital to realise that your efforts to retain customers will cost much less than converting brand new ones. Christmas is not the time to be focusing on the top end of your marketing funnel. You only have a limited opportunity to make sales. Your efforts should instead focus on bottom funnel activities.
The best way to do this is through remarketing. This involves targeting people who already know about your brand with unique messaging that is tailored to them. You can use Facebook Pixels to target existing customers in almost limitless ways. You can also use remarketing in Facebook Ads or Google AdWords to target existing website visitors and convert them into long time customers.
Utilise Video…
At Christmas time, you should be aiming to create content that is helpful but also painless for people to experience. People are not in the mood to engage so you need to be short and succinct when conveying your messages. Short, shareable videos that sympathise with the main concerns of your audience and then put them at ease, helps to illuminate your worth to potential consumers.
You can also post short videos of your team. This could include asking each team member what they are grateful for during the Christmas season. Other examples include asking what’s on their Christmas wish list, what their favourite Christmas tradition is or even their New Year goals and resolutions. These videos help to create an emotional attachment to your brand and improve your reputation as a community centred organisation.
Use Appropriate Social Media Functions
This holiday season, more than 70% of consumers plan to do more than half of their holiday shopping digitally. By focusing on consistent branding and share-worthy content across your social media feeds, you can ensure that your brand is noticed by this valuable audience.
Due to the in-app shop functions now available across most platforms like Facebook and Instagram, it is now more important than ever to utilise social media to sell your brand.
If you are feeling stuck on Facebook and Instagram, why not incorporate Pinterest into your marketing strategy? Learn what people are pinning and then create boards with gift ideas. Try promoting buyable pins during the holiday season.
So, What Now?
While it can be difficult to stand out from the crowd, your brand can cut through the Christmas noise with careful planning and creative thinking.
As a highly recommended, full service creative agency, we can help you to do just this. Whether you need a more enticing website, exciting social media content, an informative email marketing campaign or quality photography or videography, we are the agency for you.
If you have any questions, talk to us! We offer a 15 minute no obligation complimentary chat. From there can schedule 1-2 hour consults, right through to half day and full day strategy sessions with key personnel.
The Creative Collective team wishes you a very Merry Christmas and a safe and relaxing New Year!
