Steps to a festive holiday content marketing plan
Holiday marketing starts earlier and earlier every year, leading consumers into the buying season well before it is time to shop. For B2B businesses that have no connection to the holidays, you may assume that it’s fine to ship the season. However, the holiday season is the perfect time for any company to take advantage of the online increase in search traffic and buying.
While your product or service might not easily relate to typical holiday shopping trends, you can still harness the heightened activity surrounding festive dates.
At Blue Whale Media, our marketing team know how a well-structured content marketing plan can help you stay front-of-mind for your audience during the holiday season.
Step 1 – Develop your Strategy
Planning is the most important step of any marketing campaign, no matter what time of year. When you are developing your own holiday content strategy, we would advise following these tips:
- What is your business goal? Do you want to drive sales, increase website traffic, or build brand awareness during the holiday season? This will help you to guide and understand your strategy further.
- Decide what is feasible for your team and resources. So, can you create five blog posts to publish in six weeks leading up to the daily Christmas posts? Look back at your past content marketing efforts and don’t try to do too much.
- Set a schedule. Create a timeline for all holiday-related content and integrate that into your existing content marketing plan. You may want to look at what specific festive dates are important and what will work with your services or products.
Step 2 – Create and Design Helpful Holiday Content
Creating content is the next step of the process, this is because it is time-consuming. As you plan your content, you should remember that consumers are looking for value-driven advice, help and information throughout the festive season. Your content, including social posts, can provide exactly that and help you increase website traffic and increase your brand awareness. Also, the main thing you need to remember is to ensure your visual designs stay cohesive and on-brand; this will help you to stay current and increase your brand awareness.
Step 3 – Execute your Plan
With your strategy in place, blogs are scheduled, ready to publish, your website and social profiles ready, now it is time to schedule your posts and monitor the progress. Keep in mind what your KPI’s are, especially as your campaign goes out and ensure you check weekly on your metrics. This is so you can change or adapt your campaign as it goes out, should there be any issues or a necessity to move the schedule.
Remember that the average consumer is inundated with seasonal marketing during this time of year. We would recommend staying true to your brand by providing value-driven and engaging seasonal content for a holiday campaign that stands out. Holiday marketing campaigns don’t have to be complicated to deliver outstanding results for your brand or business. If you haven’t already, it’s time to start planning your campaign; for more information on festive themes or holiday content, why not get in touch with Blue Whale Media.