Creating a Connection to the Holidays – how to use the holidays for your business’s marketing strategy.
Holidays throughout the year are times when people are willing to spend money, and your business could be capitalising on these key times of year! Building a connection to the holidays could have significant advantages for your brand and help you to reach customers, old and new.
Christmas time is an excellent example of how businesses are able to use the holidays to best effect. Think of the iconic Christmas moments in recent years, many of them are commercial. The John Lewis adverts, which routinely make headlines. The Coca-Cola truck, which makes its way around the country drawing in massive crowds where ever it stops. Even newbie Kevin the Carrot is an example of a Christmas marketing campaign which has permeated into living room conversations across the country. Developing a marketing strategy for your business may not involve creating the next Kevin the carrot or Alexander Orlov, but you can certainly use events to your advantage to help promote your business!
Where’s the humanity?
Getting involved with festive occasions, Christmas and beyond, can help your company seem a bit more human. The corporate face of a company can be intimidating for a consumer or client to engage with. By showing the human side of your business, it can help people relate to you on a more personal level and promote engagement. Social media is fantastic for this type of content. Showing quick snaps of Christmas bakes – successful or otherwise- or the fancy dress worn on Halloween can be a valuable method of promotion, and a way to demonstrate that your brand is accessible and approachable!
Using the events throughout the year can also be a way to do good, and to be seen doing good! Donating to charity at a particular time such as Christmas can be a great way to help a valuable cause, create some good content, and show that you care as a business!
Wind in your Sales!
Connections to the holidays can be created through competitions, product releases, discounts etc. Combining your sales and discounts with holidays can create the feeling of exclusivity and also time sensitivity; I.e. this event is only available Christmas, I’d better get it now before it’s gone! Consumers, to an extent, have become accustomed to seeing offers around certain times of year, particularly Black Friday and Christmas, and may delay their buying opportunity until these dates, making it a great time to capitalise!
The must have festive look!
Creating a unified strategy across all your channels – social media, website, print etc- is the best way to make everyone aware that you’re offering something for a particular holiday. For example, at Christmas, using a slightly adapted version of your logo to feature some snow or other festive theme, shows that your brand is connecting to the holiday. Adapting your company’s channels of communication, social media, website etc., to reflect the time of year can help to soften the hard-corporate image that some businesses can project.
Quirky, but still usable!
Did you know that the 9thof January is Apricot day, a day on which the humble yellow fruit is honoured? And who could forget the glorious “Hug a Drummer day” on the 10thof October? National and international holidays range from the serious and thought provoking, to the weird and silly. With such a broad selection available, there are times when you can create content around these events, taking into account their relative seriousness. Why not create a fun social media post for Pizza day? (9thof February if you were curious), or a serious message of solidarity on World Aids day, 1stof December?
The trick here is not to overdo it; every day of the year has at least one international or national holiday on it. Be selective, think of the content you can create and how it can work within your marketing plan, what your overall message will be and what you hope to achieve from the content. Think about specific dates and days that relate to your industry and the perception you are trying to create for your brand.
You can find a comprehensive list of national and international days here: https://www.daysoftheyear.com
From softening your corporate image to driving an increase in sales, the holidays across the year should be in your marketing strategy so you can capitalise on them. Be it Halloween, Christmas or Black Friday, looking at the type of content you’re creating and the way you present your business can be hugely beneficial. Remember to keep it unified, share what you’re doing for the holidays, and don’t necessarily shy away from some of the quirkier events throughout the year, and you should be on the right path to making the holidays work for your business!
