Ho Ho Ho! The holiday season is upon us and it’s time for brands to wipe the dust off the box, get in it and think outside of that box to bring in some quality holiday traffic. Holiday marketing could be very different from marketing throughout the year. Brands need to get all in with their tricks and tactics to pull off a successful and profitable holiday season.
And this season, we come bearing holiday marketing ideas.
Why should brands focus on their Holiday Marketing this season?
- This year, the global e-commerce holiday sales is set to hit 1.2 trillion dollars. (Salesforce)
- The holiday season is one of the most profitable seasons for any business. This year, the global retail spending will rise by 4.5% during the holiday season. (Deloitte)
- An average consumer is set to hit $1,430 on an average during the holidays. (Salesforce)
If consumers are ready to open their wallets and splurge admist inflation, e-commerce brands should use this opportunity to make the most of it.
Holiday Marketing Ideas brands should focus on
1. Spreading the spirit of Hope - Sephora
Sephora, the universal beauty brand, decided to spread ambition and joy in its holiday marketing campaign. This ad ‘Believe in your wish’ features people who are courageous enough to wish and say it out loud. It encourages people to be bold and positive. Brands that use the power of emotion in their ads seem to establish a unique connection with their audience.
2. Giving back to the Community - M&S
M&S launched the campaign “Gift of Giving” for the holiday season. M&S partnered with a giving back platform called Neighborly, which supports local community groups. As you can see in the video below, the ad features different ethnicities and races, and the importance of giving back during the holiday season. M&S, partnered with Neighborly, donated one million pounds to 1,000 local community groups during the holiday season. They announced that a chunk of the profits from the holiday sale would contribute to the one million that is being donated to the local community groups.
People often want to give back during these festive seasons, and M&S understood the assignment.
Anna Braithwaite, M&S Clothing & Home Marketing Director, said: “Through our campaign and product ranges we want to help make that possible; providing much needed funds to the incredible groups that light up our local communities and by doubling down to deliver the exceptional trusted value our customers want – as they seek out more considered, stylish and thoughtful gifts. There’a really is no better feeling than giving – and we hope this feel-good campaign puts a smile on our customers’ faces this festive season.” (Industry fashion)
3. Gamify the Shopping Experience - Target
Gamification is a strategy through which a brand can increase customer engagement and loyalty. The concept of gamification is to influence human behavior through games. Target leveraged this particular strategy in their holiday marketing, to drive traffic to their website. The strategy targeted millennial moms who are digitally connected and kids.
Target used Augmented Reality to further influence children to get involved in this game. When a kid adds a product to the wish list, the wish list is virtually sucked into a tube which is portrayed to be sent to Santa’s headquarters. This was a huge hit. The brand saw 75,000 installations of the app and 100,000 wish lists being created. The wish list was directly connected to the moms and they can be collaborated with the relatives. This particular campaign led to the creation of 9,200 new Target.com accounts. The average wish list consisted of 30 items worth $1,500. (adforce)
4. Hyper-personalise your products - Oreo
Oreo decided to bring in personalization by customizing their package. This allows users to go online and choose various colors that they want to be included in the package. Based on the colors they’ve selected, Oreo comes up with a suggestion of designs inspired by the graphic artists, Jeremyville and Timothy Goodman. Or the customers have the liberty to pick up the brush and design their own package.
Oreo also allowed customers to mix in the seasonal elements, such as a waving snowman, singing patridges, hugging penguins, and mustache presents donning bowler hats. This colorful experience could be ordered online. Oreo has a very large fan base and this particular campaign was a huge success among their audience. This was available only for a limited period of time during the holiday season. This created a sense of FOMO among the customers.
Customers also had the option to personalize heartfelt notes along with the packages. Some cliche Christmas phrases such as “joy” and “ho-ho” were also included in the elemental designs.This campaign was a huge hit.
5. Bringing in Excitement through Staged Techniques - Costco
Brands always face heavy competition during the holiday season. Bizarre techniques would be adopted by brands to gather the attention of the audience and convert. One such hilarious strategy used in holiday marketing by Costco was the “staged email leak”. Yes, that’s right. You heard it right. Costco actually staged an email leak where they sent Black Friday deals one month before Black Friday to their customer list through email. It was made obvious that it was staged and not an actual email. This still instilled a lot of curiosity and excitement among the customers.
Additional Holiday Marketing Ideas
- Dress up your Homepage.
- Offer Holiday special bundles and product variants.
- Improve site search optimisation and product recommendations for the holidays.
- Curate a personalized gift guide for your customers
- Bring up products on sale front and up in the site search bar.
- Gamify the experience with spin-the-wheel, floaters.
- Retargeting with social media and email with special personalised coupon codes.
- Provide personalisation on gift wrap options.
- Display shipping countdown for the last date to be shipped.
- Hyper-personalisation is the norm.
- Show that you care about your customers and your community.
- Provide shipping optionality.
- Try to offer free shipping.
- Cross-sell and Upsell through a branded tracking page.
- Make returns policy easy and clear.
Wrapping Up
There’s no one strategy that fits everyone when it comes to holiday marketing. As a brand, you have to stand out of the crowd and know what works for you. Try analyzing data from the past. Try collecting data from five years back and create a sheet of what’s working for you and what isn’t working for you.
Consumer trends keep changing and it is important that brands adapt to those changes in order to survive in this heavily competitive space. There are so many new things that brands can do which include hyper-personalization, optimizing the post-purchase customer journey, providing an excellent customer support interface and so on. Identify the gaps in the customer journey that your brand needs to concentrate on and provide a full-on experience for the customers. Set the stage for retention by providing a seamless customer journey.
The holiday season is one of the seasons through which you can experience a lot of new traffic. Don’t go cold on your customers. Loop them in via loyalty programs or retention programs and turn them into lifetime customers.
