‘Tis the season for sales, promotions, and huge marketing initiatives! In fact, holiday sales represent 30% of the average retailer’s annual sales. It is a critical time for all marketing initiatives, especially holiday content marketing ones.
Strategizing, planning, and creating effective holiday content marketing content is all about tailoring it around specific messaging relevant to your brand and audience.
During the holiday season, everyone is talking about their sales, holiday promotions, and more. It is critical that your message and push is consistent, thoughtful, and reflective of the season to stand out.
While this may sound like you need to overhaul your whole marketing and content strategy for the end of November through the beginning of January, that’s not the case! With a few key tips, you can create a winning holiday content marketing strategy that can have a lasting impact on your clients and customers.
Here are just a few ways you can adjust your content marketing strategy in preparation for the holidays:
Talk to Your Audience
This is one of the simplest ways to know what type of content your customers and clients want – just ask them! It’s as easy as sending out a survey to your email list or keeping watch on the comments you receive on your content. The holiday season is also a great time to send out some appreciation to your clients and customers. They’ve stayed loyal through the year and they deserve a thank you. Another thought to keep in mind is to get the attention of decision-makers. They will be the ones who are reviewing the year-end budget and deciding how to budget for the next year. So, while making sure you’re marketing well outside your organization, you also want to continue to provide valuable content to existing customers.
Get Creative With Your Content Planning
While it may be obvious, it’s important to keep in mind that you should continue to target your content around the anticipated trends and upcoming holidays. Once you know which trends you are anticipating and the schedule for upcoming holidays, you can align your topics and goals with those key points. Now is also the time to take advantage of the opportunity to create some themed content that people might be searching for. To save on some work, you can audit your existing content. This will tell you what topics you’ve already covered, which pieces of content you could repurpose, and where there are gaps in your content that need to be filled.
Be Timely and Prioritize
With so many upcoming holidays, it’s important to keep track of your content and make sure it’s timely. You can try using seasonal photos to add a holiday theme to an article that would otherwise be evergreen. Another aspect of timeliness is keeping in mind when end-of-year budgets are reviewed. While it isn’t a national holiday, it’s an important time for many businesses and you should keep that in the back of your mind.
Analyze and Apply
Finally, you have your content strategy all planned out and you have an idea which topics you would like to cover. As you start rolling out that content, it’s crucial to keep an eye on the analytics. With each piece of content, you can get a picture of how well your content strategy is working. The number of viewers and the amount of engagement can tell you a great deal about how well your content is being received and capturing the attention of your customers and clients. Once you know the analytics, you need to be willing to adjust your approach by applying the lessons you learn from those numbers. Leave some flexibility in your holiday content strategy so you can make the necessary changes once you know how your content is being viewed.
With a little forethought and some planning, you can have a holiday content strategy that is effective and accomplishes the goals you have for your business!
Need help with your holiday content marketing strategy? We’d love to chat with you. Schedule a free consultation!
