Tips for Planning Holiday Marketing Strategy

It’s September and if you’re a small biz like us, that means it’s time to plan your Holiday marketing. The season officially kicks off with Black Friday which means consumers start thinking about shopping early November. So let us officially welcome you to the planning phase.

We’re sharing our tried & true corporate-life learned, Mercedes-Benz tested & approved tips for your holiday marketing.

No 01: Review & Goal Setting

We always want to learn from the past. So as you look to inform this year’s strategy, first look back at last year’s success & failures. In addition to reviewing your campaign performance, you should also look at your customer base – has it changed? Have your service offerings changed? These are things we want to take into consideration as well. Now, set your goals for this year. Looking at last quarter and your YOY performance, what can you expect to do this year?

No 02: Identify your key products

Now that you know what’s worked best in the past, it’s time to identify your key products for November 1st-end of year. Get specific down to planning your hero product by week. We always suggest keeping the messaging simple by promoting no more than 1 product per week. Depending on your category and price point, you may want to extend the cadence. Identify these products now and ramp up your inventory accordingly.

No 03: Identify your channels

With your key products planned, now we want to plan your communication channels. How and where will you promote these products (I use the term product but this applies to services too)? We recommend content syndication here (& always). Create the content for your email list (they should find out about everything first, they’re your VIPs), then adapt it for social media. This concept applies across all channels including podcast, radio, tv and print advertising.

No 4: Plot your content

Ok, channels planned. Doesn’t this feel good!? Now plot the content against the channels. We want to be very specific across each step, we’re creating the infrastructure for your Holiday marketing and we want to be proactive, successful & make this easy. So dig in, look back at that product plan you made and against the selected channels plan exactly what you’re going to send/launch & when. When are you sending that email about the Holiday Charcuterie board? When are you posting on social? You should already know what social platform you’re showing up on so let’s get more specific, are you showing up in feed or in stories? With a reel, video post or static? Get into every detail.

No 05: Create your content

Now that you know all the answers to your strategy, it’s time to execute. With a strategy built, we recommend creating your content now. This will allow time for you to identify holes you may have in your content, maybe you’re missing imagery & need to plan a quick mini shoot (psst: we can help with that). If you start now, you’ll still have time to shoot what you need before you need it.

To the best Holiday season yet, cool girl.

Need help with the above? We offer strategy development and photoshoot planning and are ready to help you build your best sales year yet. Email us a quick note and we’ll figure out how we can help you, fast. Let’s do this, go-getter.