The Christmas, New Year and other holiday periods can be a challenge for small business owners. With limited resources at the best of times, it’s easy to see why marketing often falls by the wayside during the holidays.
Fortunately, you don’t have to give up your well-earned holiday break to stay on top of your marketing over Christmas and New Year. These days, you can schedule a lot of your marketing in advance and let the power of technology put in the hard yards for you. Try the ‘set it and forget it’ seasonal marketing tips below to get started.
Schedule your Facebook and Instagram marketing.
Regardless of whether you use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any other social media platform, it’s a good idea to have your social media posts planned out ahead of time so you can keep up your social media activity and encourage engagement over the holidays.
The good news is that most social media platforms allow you to create and schedule posts to be automatically published on a date and time of your choosing. So, with some planning, you can have all your holiday social media activity taken care of in advance.
If you have a presence on multiple social media platforms and want to go a step further, tools like Thryv allow you to manage and schedule all your activity from a single dashboard. This is especially useful if you’re running a holiday marketing campaign across all your social channels and want to minimise the work it takes to get it up and running.
Plan a holiday blog or two for SEO content.
A couple of well thought-out, keyword-rich holiday blogs can go a long way to boosting your SEO content marketing efforts over the holidays – but you don’t have to spend hours researching and crafting a masterpiece.
The key is to talk about subjects that you’re already knowledgeable about – which is what your audience will be looking for anyway – and keep it relatively short and easy to digest. Around 500 words is a good starting point for most blogs.
Here are some examples of holiday blog ideas for different types of businesses:
- Florist: A guide to types of festive flowers and arrangements.
- Hairdresser: A tutorial on summer hair care or hairstyles.
- Doctor/fitness centre: Tips for staying healthy during the silly season.
- Plumber/electrician/locksmith: How to find an emergency tradie on public holidays.
- Mechanic: What to check on your car before going on a road trip.
- Accountant: How to create (and stick to) a gift budget.
You can see that each idea ties back to the holiday and to the business (which is great for you, as you know plenty about the subject matter), and offers valuable information that your audience is likely to want to read.
RELATED: Content ideas for every industry.
Take advantage of marketing automation.
Technology offers us many wonders, but few are as wonderful for a busy marketer as an automated marketing software. This is the ultimate set-and-forget tool, as you can use software to send emails, promotions, calls to action and much more, all while you’re off enjoying your third serving of Christmas ham.
With automation software such as Thryv, you can set up campaigns for new customers, customers who haven’t made a purchase in a while, customers who have birthdays coming up, and much more. You can create specific messages for each group, then the software automatically gets in touch with them when the time is right.
For example, if a logged-in customer visits your website and adds an item to their cart but doesn’t buy it, you can trigger an email to be sent 24 hours later (or any other time) to remind them about their pending purchase.
But don’t worry – you don’t have to make things that complex if you don’t want to. The idea is to use your email marketing platform to make your life as easy as possible over the holidays – whether that’s a simple ‘out of office’ response or a full email marketing campaign.
To save even more time, you can choose from a full library of pre-written messages and templates. Either keep it as is or make a few adjustments and you’re ready to go.
RELATED: What is marketing automation and how can it help you?
Jazz up your branding.
Your imagery should represent your brand’s personality and values and adding a touch of festive goodness will show that you’re approachable and in the spirit of the season. Add a bit of fun to your brand for the holidays with a Santa hat, bauble or Christmas lights on your logo, and don’t forget to update your profile photos on social media with your new festive imagery.
The best part about this holiday online marketing tactic? Once it’s done, you won’t have to touch it again until the holiday season is over (then you can use it again next year).
Use time-boxing to protect your holiday.
We know marketing, and we know marketers. And we know that marketers often can’t help but log in and check how campaigns are running, make a few calls and send a few emails even while they’re off on holiday.
If that’s you, and if you know you’re going to want to stay on top of things even during the break, use time-boxing to protect your holiday. This is where you set a time each day – say, 10am – 11am, where you can work. This will give you enough time to check in, do a few vital tasks and catch up on emails, all before shutting that laptop down again at the end of the hour.
This will help you to protect your holiday and keep your work time to a minimum.
Bonus: 4 end-of-year marketing tips to save time and reduce stress.
1. Start with a look back at your digital marketing efforts.
The best way to get started with your seasonal marketing is to spend some time looking back over the past year. If you have a formal marketing strategy or calendar, pull it out and gather your team around to discuss all of the activities that have been happening over the year.
During this meeting, focus on four things:
- What was successful and what wasn’t successful.
- Are there any small or minor tasks that still need to be wrapped up?
- Is there anything you can tweak and reuse to save time now or in future?
- Do you need to bring in a digital or SEO agency to help you get through the work?
The responses you come up with will set the framework for your strategy for the new year while ensuring you know what’s left to be done, and who will be doing the work. If you need to bring in outside help such as an agency, this can lighten your load and ensure the work gets done to standard.
This will give you a clear roadmap for your online marketing efforts, saving you the time and stress of creating new plans from scratch.
RELATED: Examples of successful holiday marketing campaigns.
2. Make a list for your website and ad campaigns, and check it twice.
Now that you’ve got a list of marketing tasks that may still need to be taken care of, double check that there is a clear plan in place for how to get it all done in time.
A few things to look over include:
- Are all of your ad campaigns set to run for the right length/spend?
- Do you have a clear list of who is responsible for each task?
- Do you have social media posts set up for the Christmas marketing period?
- Do any social media posts or other content items need to be edited/updated if your products/services/deals have changed?
- Are all of your blog posts ready to roll out as scheduled?
- Are all of your website plugins updated and backed up?
- Do any of your web pages mention the current year and therefore need to be updated?
Checking through all of these little tasks now will mean you can rest and relax (or party to your heart’s content) over the holiday break.
RELATED: Get set up for the holidays with our guide to marketing automation.
3. Push forward on your upcoming online marketing strategies.
It’s common for businesses to wait until the new year before they start revamping their marketing strategy. However, it usually takes weeks, if not longer, to fully plan online marketing strategies, which means you could miss out on the crucial early days of the year if you wait too long.
Now’s the time to start thinking about how you will tackle your marketing goals for the coming year. You can start by:
- Determining what budget you will be working with (at least an approximation)
- Identifying your goals (Pro tip: Use the list you made in step 1)
- Modifying goals up or down in response to evolving situations
- Considering any long-term campaigns you’ll need to focus on
- Deciding on themes and focal points for the first quarter of the new year
- Determining if you need help such as a new team member, a freelancer, or a digital agency.
4. Build a cushion for the New Year.
Even if you feel confident that you have a good strategy ready for next year, it’s still a good idea to take some action now so you’ll have some time to get the ball rolling in January. For example, you may want to write a few blogs or posts now (or contract them out!) so that you can schedule them to go live during the first few weeks of the new year.
Similarly, you can schedule ad campaigns or social media posts in advance using tools like Hootsuite or Buffer, so you won’t have to worry about accidentally going radio silent right when your customers are back and ready to engage.
Taking advantage of slower summer days means you can ease into your new year’s marketing without a big rush once things start to ramp up. And, putting in a bit of extra work now, means you’ll be thanking yourself in the new year!
Is marketing automation right for you?
Marketing automation can work for businesses of all sizes, from small businesses just getting started and needing a hand to stay on top of the basics, to major multinationals who couldn’t get by without it.
And there are plenty of marketing automation platforms out there. A good one to get started with is Thryv, a clever piece of software that covers several automation bases – including CRM, email, social media and analytical automation – as well as a number of other useful business tools, such as booking, invoicing and quotes automation.
Start a free trial of Thryv to try it out, or get in touch to find out more about how Thryv and marketing automation software can grow your business.
