The malls are adorned with holly, your inbox is overflowing with holiday-themed deals, and you’ve decided to start listening to your favourite holiday playlist on Spotify… or maybe that’s just me. (marketing campaign)
In any case, the holiday season is upon us, and marketers are gearing up to close out the year on a high note. However, just like shopping for gifts, you don’t want to put off preparing your holiday campaign till the last minute.
There will be a lot of money spent in the next month or two, which is why it’s critical to have a strategy in place for reaching out to your consumers and prospects before your competition.
Have you begun to organise your campaign yet? Don’t be concerned.
We’ve put together a step-by-step guide with everything you’ll need to start a Christmas marketing campaign this year. We’ve filled this step-by-step guide with resources geared to get your campaign up and running right away, from offer templates to free holiday-themed stock photographs.
1. Pick a topic for your campaign.(marketing campaign)
While most inbound marketers’ daily lives have been interwoven with content creation, launching a campaign is a little different. Campaigns, unlike tweets or infographics, require you to organise all of your marketing platforms around a single aim or message.
Holiday promotions, like other campaigns, usually last for a short period of time. They can begin as early as October and often extend into January, depending on your sector.
Let’s not spend any more time now that you know what you’re in for. We’ll start by establishing your campaign and offer, which we’ll walk you through below.
2. Determine the objectives of your campaign.(marketing campaign)
Before you start crafting an offer, you need to figure out what you want to accomplish. What would you like to see happen as a result of this campaign?
After you’ve defined your focus, you can start setting goals that will be used to evaluate the success of your campaign after it’s finished. Your objectives should be explicit, quantifiable, realistic, timely, and relevant (SMART goals, for short). Here’s an example of how to write a goal like this:
By [date], generate [number] leads centred on [topic/product].
Your objectives may look like this, depending on what you want to achieve with your campaign:
By December 5, 2021, generate 1,000 leads interested in our annual holiday sale.
By November 30, 2021, we need to get 5,000 people to sign up for our holiday shopping app.
By December 20, 2021, collect $50,000 in donations for charity XYZ.
Check out this free goal-setting tool to help you better match your marketing efforts with SMART goals. This template can be used to define your objectives, determine your most pressing marketing needs, and set deadlines.
3. Determine who you want to reach.(marketing campaign)
After you’ve established your objectives, the next stage is to determine who your target audience is. The more data you have on the people you’re attempting to target, the better. On social media, where do they hang out? Do they prefer to read material on their computer or on their phone? When it comes to creating content and planning promotions, this will assist you make better marketing decisions.
You should start by narrowing your emphasis if you already have a few buyer personas in place for your marketing efforts. Is your campaign relevant to all sectors of your target market? If not, you’ll need to pick out the people you don’t want to invite right away.
We recommend using our free buyer persona templates if you don’t already have them or if you want to construct campaign-specific personas. These templates will make creating and organising your persona data a breeze.
4. Make a proposal.
The offer you develop will be the focal point for all of your promotional activities. Ebooks, whitepapers, templates, online courses, videos, tools, and other types of offers are common. You might also get a digital e-gift card from a site like Rybbon. While there are numerous approaches to select from, we recommend that you go with the one that makes the most sense for your target audience.
Consider this: Instead of a lengthy ebook, you could want to produce a set of easy-to-use templates if you know the folks you’re trying to reach are usually short on time, especially during the holidays.
If you decide to go with an ebook, we can assist you by providing free, customizable ebook templates. We’ve taken care of the design, so all you have to do now is concentrate on the content. Download our 250 free holiday stock pictures here if you’re looking for some eye-catching visuals to utilise across your offer.
5. Make a landing page for your campaign.
After you’ve produced your offer, you’ll need to give it a home. The landing page comes into play here.
Because your landing page will be the page to which you will direct traffic, it must be convincing. Here’s a summary of some of the most important elements to include:
The headline is intriguing. This is how you will pique the interest of potential visitors. This course will teach you how to write the perfect headline.
Visuals are intriguing. It’s not enough to have a hodgepodge of text on your landing page. Consider how you may provide your offer a visual context.
The advantages of your offer This is usually expressed as a bulleted list. The purpose is to emphasise what the visitor can expect from this offer and why it is important.
A type of document. This is how you’ll get the information you need to make the offer. It’s important to remember that there is no magic number for form fields. In truth, the amount of data you need to collect on a form will differ from one company to the next. However, if you don’t require a specific piece of information, don’t request it.
Check out this overview of 19 fantastic landing page designs for more inspiration on what makes a great landing page.
6. Create a promotion strategy.
No marketer has ever declared, “If you build it, they will come.” Now that you’ve generated your content, it’s time to think about how you’ll spread the word. Here are some promotion strategies you should use for each channel:
Marketing via email
It’s fantastic if you already have a list of people you know will be interested in your offer. You should take care of segmentation first if you want to slice and dice your database to target a more precise group. Customers of HubSpot may easily separate their databases by using a smart list in the Lists App. (Here’s a link to a resource to get you started.)
We’d argue that segmenting your list is more critical than ever during the Christmas season. Because of the growing number of incoming promos and the limited amount of time available to busy shoppers, well-targeted emails will frequently take precedence over mass messages.
You can start the real email creation process using tools like Sendoso once you’ve figured out your recipients. Here are a few things to keep in mind as you’re writing your email:
The heading of the email. Concentrate on the problem that the offer solves. Check out this article for some pointers on how to improve your subject lines.
Copy for the body. The content of your email, like the copy on your landing page, should be brief and to-the-point. This is also an excellent opportunity to use personalization tokens to add personalisation. Here are some amazing customisation examples to get you thinking about the possibilities.
Options for sharing. Remember to include buttons in your emails that allow recipients to immediately share your offer with their contacts.
To locate an email template that meets your needs, go to HubSpot’s Template Marketplace.
