When it comes to festive campaigns and seasonal marketing, your brand and business need to be in top form and keep content creative, fun and unique. Your audience will be bombarded with festive newsletters, limited offers and events, meaning standing out from the crowd will become a whole lot harder, especially when it comes to your competitors. Here’s how your business can plan, create and deliver a successful Christmas campaign.
Why your business needs a Christmas campaign
A solid Christmas campaign can not only increase sales but is also the ideal way to boost brand awareness, increase your online following and get on top of competitors. Every year, we see retailers and corporations battling it out for the most emotional TV ad or innovative content. For example, the John Lewis Christmas advert is something viewers wait for every Christmas with customers taking to social media and connecting to the videos on a more emotive level. John Lewis is, of course, a tremendous business and has built a huge reputation when it comes to its festive campaign. Although there might be a lot of competition out there, it’s still super important for small to medium businesses to invest time and money into these campaigns to connect with customers on a more personal level.
Here are just a few benefits of creating a Christmas campaign…
- Increased brand awareness
- Increased demand
- Launching new products and promotions
- Offers a more creative route
- Business growth
- Builds closer customer relationships
- Opportunity for business collaborations
How to create a good Christmas campaign
Nailing your festive content can come with many challenges. You might think you’re not being creative enough or perhaps Christmas just isn’t your thing. The good news is, there are hundreds of ideas out there and you don’t have to go all out for them to be successful. So what makes a good Christmas campaign?
Create a campaign strategy
Like most content, this campaign requires a lot of planning and thought. Start by planning your content and ideas as early as possible in order to maximise the potential of reaching customers. These campaigns shouldn’t be live the week before Christmas when everyone is spending time with family and switching off. Instead, most businesses create and deliver their campaigns weeks in advance to get ultimate exposure.
Your campaign strategy should include anything from the platforms you want to use, the effect you want to have on the audience to what exactly your campaign will be. The campaign type might include video marketing, Christmas magazine, newsletters, online competitions or giveaways, charity work or general Christmas-themed blogs and posts.
Utilise social media
Each year, customers take to Twitter to share their thoughts on famous TV ads, using hashtags to both spread the content and discuss with fellow viewers. There’s no denying how powerful social media is for business and this is the ideal place to get your campaign seen. Using sites such as Instagram, Linkedin, Tiktok and Facebook will not only spread the content globally but also gives your customers the chance to engage, connect and have a more personal experience. For example, if you’re hosting a Christmas competition, you might consider posting these details on social media to attract participants and get them involved through comments/shares/likes.
Think outside the box
One of the hardest parts of a Christmas campaign is creating something unique whilst still sticking to your business strategies and brand identity. Depending on the type of business that you run, there are various ideas out there that your Christmas campaign could benefit from. Whether you’re just looking to do something small or want to go all out this year, here are just a few ideas for you to consider.
- Host a competition
- Launch a seasonal product or collection
- Discounts and offers
- Charity collections
- Office events e.g. Christmas jumper day
- Christmas-themed packaging
- Christmas gift guide
- Run a social media Christmas countdown
Christmas is the time to get customers on your side, boost engagement and ultimately create sales. Make sure to think about your strategy and think of something which sits well into your company values and future plans.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday
Carrying on your campaigns into Black Friday or Cyber Monday is the perfect way to be seen on a wider scale. During this festive period, it’s been found that 85% of consumers backed out of purchasing an item as it wasn’t on sale. With all your competitors doing this, introducing discounts and offers is crucial. As this is when customers are spending the most money, combining a festive campaign with discounted events will attract more customers and boost sales.
Interactive marketing
Interactive marketing is going to be a huge trend in 2023. With customers now looking for more personal, interesting content, placing interactive marketing into your festive campaign will give you that unique touch whilst also boosting audience engagement. Marketers are now moving away from static content in order to create more enjoyable materials which the audience will remember and connect to. Festive campaigns are the ideal place to do this. Here are just a few ideas for interaction Christmas marketing.
- Online surveys e.g. boxing day or Christmas eve?
- Infographics
- Quizzes
- Christmas games/puzzles
Make memorable content
Some of the most successful festive campaigns are ones which affect customers’ and viewers’ emotions and emotional content leads to memorable content. Whether they make you laugh or cry, festive campaigns are a good opportunity to form connections, tell stories and touch on subjects that your business might feel passionate about. Making memorable content is all about connecting with your audience and creating text, video or imagery which triggers some sort of emotion and effect. This could include language use, music choice, video effects or the general theme.