The Most Effective Method to Create a Marketing Plan for the Holiday

The holiday season is close, so close!

November is here already and it’s unbelievable (to me at least).

Shortly, we’ll start preparing for the holidays, and do away with the black cats, pumpkins and the broomsticks. Do you have any expectations?

Decorating the hall with branches of holly is one thing; setting up your website and promotion plans for the holiday season is another. Today, we’ll look at why you should be a part of the holiday cheer, how you can prepare for holiday sales, and methods of engaging customers and visitors to your website.

Build a holiday marketing plan for your site 

Deloitte’s yearly forecast for holiday retail showed that sales during the holiday can surpass $1.1 trillion between November and January. E-commerce is expected to rake in $144-149 billion out of the $1.1 trillion holiday sales.  A report from the Pew Research Centre revealed that 79% of Americans buy their goods online. So, if you’ve been reluctant to create an e-commerce website or you’ve not thought of enhancing your site look for the festive period, now is the time to do it.

It’s November and the festive period draws nearer, lots of people are on the lookout for great deals and gifts to complement their vacation. Let’s talk about recognising your goals to help you conclude plans for your holiday marketing and win more online buyers.

Holiday objectives for your site 

Do not be in a hurry. Think deeply about your goals before you effect any changes on your website. What is the basis of the changes you want to make and what results are you expecting from your holiday adverts.

Do you want to: 

• Showcase a new business?
• Increase existing business sales?
• Concentrate on a particular product sale?
• Boost traffic to your site?
• Or other objectives?

You do realise you can have as many goals as you want since they’re not mutually exclusive, right? After identifying your most important goals, you can develop your marketing plans to include adverts that support your goals. Do you have a website yet, or are you looking to get another website? Hosting – are you okay with your current provider or looking to change shops, or start afresh altogether, you might want to give Openhost NZ Website Hosting a go. I’ve found them to be competent and reliable.

Develop your marketing plan for the holiday

Your marketing plan is the guide that will move potential customers through your marketing funnel to convert them to full customers. A marketing funnel refers to the necessary actions potential customers take on their way to becoming full customers. Funnels are divided into various parts. People begin at the peak of the funnel, and are drawn in through your marketing materials like blog and social media posts, they then continue to the end of the funnel which is the conversion.  Conversion takes place when potential customers do what you intend them to do on your website like signing up for your email list or ordering your products, thus becoming your client or subscriber.

Don’t forget that it’s not everyone who’ll go through the entire funnel. There are however, some people or potential customers who’ll go deep through your funnel. That’s why you should prepare your marketing plan perfectly. You are trying to encourage more people to go through your marketing funnel.

Know the right holidays to plan for

You can’t prepare your holiday marketing plans effectively if you don’t know the important dates of the season. Some holidays you may consider planning for: 

• Black Friday 
• Thanksgiving
• Cyber Monday 
• Small Business Saturday
• Christmas
• Hanukkah
• Kwanzaa
• New Year Eve
• New Year Day

Drafting Your Marketing Plan for the Holiday

Do you still think about your objectives? This is very important

Do you know the dates to plan for? This is equally compulsory

Let’s go through a marketing plan together so you’ll have an understanding on how to build your own

What’s your first goal? To illustrate this, our goal is to increase our revenue by $10, 000 this December. After that, the next step in building our marketing plan is to decide the strategy to use to achieve our goal. This strategy can comprise various techniques that’ll contribute to the achievement of the goal. 

If we are looking towards increasing our revenue by $10,000, we must take some actions.  We need to: 

• Concentrate on the products that will bring in more revenue
• Increase traffic to our site with the hope of winning them over as customers.

Marketing strategy that should be part of your plan

Once you can figure out the action to drive (for us, we have to increase our revenue and decide the product to concentrate on to bring in more revenue), you can think about the tactics to achieve it. 

You may consider these: 

• Blog posts
• Email marketing
• Social media posts
• Contests and giveaways
• Coupons and discounts

However, the main thing here is; listing your tactics is not enough.  As you thoroughly consider your strategies, try to set smaller goals for them, like the example below.

Rather than saying, “I’ll run a social media campaign that offers 20% discount on my top-selling products to new clients” it is better you set a more definite goal that may sound like this: “I will use a coupon code for my top-selling products to attract 200 new clients by a certain date.”

Setting such goals is know as S.M.A.R.T. 

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Timely 

Plan S.M.A.R.T goals for each of the strategies you’ll use in your vacation marketing plan. 

Building Your Offer 

Once you’ve set your main goal and the S.M.A.R.T. goals for your advertising strategies, you can now start building your offer(s).

You must have a deep understanding of who your ideal client is and the target audience you want to attract. You may run a contest where the winner is given a free weekend getaway to the Poconos. However, if you’re into financial planning services, there’s no need for that. You may have people from various areas participating in the contest, and there is no assurance that the person who’ll win eventually would be your ideal client and build a business relationship with you after winning the contest.

What you offer must be of relevance to your audience.  For instance, if you are into financial planning, you should consider a contest where the winner will have a free planning session that will help control their finances in the coming year. This is of more relevance to people in your target audience.

Let Your Offers Look Great 

As an expert, we’re convinced you want people to take you seriously. This is why the “how” of your offer presentation matters. Instead of writing an ordinary Facebook post to state your offer, consider making materials exclusively for your offers. There are lots of free tools you can use, like Canva. You can use Canva’s drag and drop feature, and professional layout for your graphic design.” 

Don’t use outdated graphics that could make you lose new clients. Make use of Canva’s free options to make your offers and business look professional. 

Measure Your Advertising Success 

You’ll need to devise a means of measuring your marketing achievements to know how successful your marketing campaign is. 

Google Analytics is an incredible method to measure your site performance, ascertain the campaigns that are working and what should be done to achieve better results.

Are You Prepared for the Holidays?

We are confident you are.

We wish you good luck in making your holiday advertising plan and running your promotional campaigns.