Don’t let the holiday season sneak up on you! Christmas is less than 80 days away! The time to start sharing about and preparing for the holidays with your people is NOW. 

 

3 reasons you want to start your holiday campaign now:

1. You’ll catch all the early birds! Yes, people are shopping now.
2. Even if people aren’t doing their holiday shopping just yet, they’re in planning mode and they’re researching online to make their list.
   
3. There’s a lot of competition around the holidays. It’s important to communicate frequently with your audience. A few posts about the holidays is not going to cut it. Often people need to see things 6 or 7 times for it to really stick and take action.

 

Understanding how consumers are behaving is critical to developing effective marketing strategies for the holiday season. Let’s go over some of the different types of holiday personas you can expect to see:

Convenience Carrie

As you might gather from her name, Carrie shops mostly based on convenience. She is most likely to resort to doing her online shopping online, so you want to make sure she is able to buy from you online. Consider setting up a Shopify site or use your POS system for people to place orders online. If you already have the option to buy online from your business, make sure you have Facebook and Instagram shops set up. Gift cards are also always a great option!

Bargain Hunter Betty

Betty loves a good bargain, and has likely been researching deals for quite some time. She’s not looking just for cheap things, but she feels satisfaction from saving and feeling like she got a bargain. Reach consumers like Betty by offering special deals on notorious shopping days like Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday. Make sure to share about these well in advance to build up some hype!

Local Lucy

Possibly the most old-fashioned of the bunch, Lucy loves to shop in-person. She is more likely to shop in-person and at small businesses, where she can find unique and special gifts. Shopping is an experience for her, and she takes the time to find the perfect gift for everyone on her list. But despite her “old-fashioned” tendencies, Lucy still does research to choose the perfect places to shop, so it’s still critical that you share about what you have (via social media or your website) to get her excited to come shop with you!

All Out Ali

Ali lives for the holiday season, and is probably the one hosting the huge holiday party that everyone is invited to. She’s not just shopping for gifts, she’s looking for the best decorations and hosting holiday dinners she may need catered. Don’t forget about Ali!

 

Here’s what all of this means as you create a marketing plan for the holidays:

1. Communicate, communicate, communicate…. often and early! Start talking about your products and promotions well in advance of the holiday season. By the time the Monday before Black Friday rolls around, your audience should know all the details about what promotions you’re running.
2. Optimize your presence online to make sure you are showing up when people are doing their holiday research. This includes your SEO, social media, and Google MyBusiness profiles. Make sure your profiles are fully filled out, your hours updated, and that you are posting consistently. Use your location in content, use location-related hashtags, and include popular search phrases in your descriptions. 
3. Get personal! Not all of your ads have to be marketed toward your entire audience. You can tailor different ads to target specific portions of your audience to make sure they are getting content that is curated with them in mind. Same goes for emails, make the reader feel like you are talking directly to them, and consider sending different emails to different segments of your audience, depending on their interests. I recommend Constant Contact that allows you to segment your audience based on what they’ve clicked on in previous emails.

 

The holiday season can be a stressful time, so I hope you’ll implement some of these tips to make it a little bit easier! Until next time, Marathoners, keep running your race.

 

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