Once you have completed stage one and two of your marketing campaign, with your campaign researched, content planned and scheduled, it’s time to take it live! We recommend taking your campaign live as soon as possible after Halloween but as a soft launch before going Christmas crazy in about the second or third week of November.
Monitor
Now that your campaign is live, one of the most important aspects in this stage is to monitor your content as it goes live. Keep an eye on any social media posts for interactions, paid ads for views and clicks, and responses to email and blog marketing. Monitoring audience reactions (especially to advertisements you have invested in) will help you tweak your campaign for full optimisation as your campaign is launched. If you have one ad that is not performing at all and another that is doing rather well, divert resources to that ad that is being received more positively by your target audience. Keep an eye out for any emails or feedback regarding errors that may have appeared on your site to ensure you can troubleshoot the error quickly making sure that not too many leads are lost.
Trends
While most of your content should be pre-planned, each year new trends always emerge within social media so you should leave yourself a little time to jump on any incoming trends. Think of the Mr Snow Miser song that went viral last year on TikTok leading to a flurry of inspired content. Keep an eye on any emerging trends especially on social media platforms such as TikTok and implement those trends or trending audios into your social media posts as something extra here and there. Going viral on platforms such as TikTok can cause a large boost in sales however don’t get too disheartened if this does not happen though as viral videos are mostly luck.
Interaction
With your content scheduled, this leaves you more time to interact with your customers. Keep an eye out for comments and responses for all your content, and interact with your customers by asking questions and getting them to engage by asking for photos of their purchases etc. You can keep your interactions extra festive by using Christmas themes, emojis, greetings and signoffs. You could also wish you customers ‘Happy Holidays’ through your customer service emails and messages.
Christmas Delivery
One aspect that may be forgotten about but must be included in your Christmas campaigning, is letting your customers know when their last purchasable date is to be guaranteed delivery in time for Christmas. To stop your customers from being disappointed, make the information on postage dates readily available and easy to find. This does not mean that you need to stop selling products after the guaranteed delivery purchase date, you can promote gift cards, vouchers and even offer to send your customers an email to forward to their ‘intended’, letting them know they have a special gift on the way that will arrive after the big day.
Winding Down
After the big Christmas day itself, don’t completely stop your Christmas campaigning but wind it down over the cause of Boxing Day, New Years and January. Use Boxing Day to launch a new sale, New Years to thank your customers and January to finally complete the festive campaigning. It can be quite jarring to completely stop the campaign so by winding down, you are still engaging with your customers and generating leads while transitioning from the Christmas period into the New Year leading up t the beginning of your Valentine's Day campaigning.
Reflection
Once your Christmas campaigning is complete, look at all your metrics, sales, and interactions. Identify your successes and failures, see what worked especially well and not so well, all this information is incredibly valuable and will help you improve your next upcoming marketing campaign. While the Christmas campaign may be a little overwhelming, use it as an opportunity to reflect and learn, with each marketing campaign you create, you will improve your business for the better.
With the end of the third stage of Christmas Marketing, you have now completed your campaign. We understand that the Christmas period can be daunting, but we are here to help you along the way from stage one to stage three. We have a multitude of resources within our blog and podcast to help with every aspect of a marketing campaign and if you want a campaign strategy created specifically for you and business, book a consultation with us where we can build you a winning campaign from the ground up!
Check out our consultation service where we will tailor a marketing strategy just for you and your business, helping you make this year your most successful yet!
About the Author
Carris is our Operations Supervisor and Digital MArketing Assistant at CMM. Carris (alongside her best friend Abbie) is one of the founders of Inky Apparel Creations.