How to Create a Christmas Marketing Strategy: Stage Two – Planning

Stage two of any successful marketing strategy is arguably the most important and time-consuming stage of the creation of a marketing campaign. This stage is where you will be at your most creative, deciding on themes, goals, and content. We’ve put together all the aspects you need to think about when planning a winning marketing strategy for this Christmas.

Goals

Before creating any content, it’s good business practice to set yourself some goals for your campaign. Think about what you wish to achieve this Christmas, whether it be a certain number of sales, an amount of customer interaction, or leads generated. A simple goal outline is SMART goals:

· S – Specific

· M – Measurable

· A – Achievable

· R – Relevant

· T – Time Bound

By creating SMART goals, you can clearly see what you wish to achieve this Christmas and monitor your strategy according to your objectives and change direction when neccessary based on thedata during the monitoring stage.

Theme

Before creating any content for your marketing strategy, choose which themes you will use throughout the festive period. From looking at your current and target audience (look at our blog post on the research stage), you should have an idea about what themes and motifs your audience will appreciate most. Whether it’s a very classic Christmas look, something more modern, or a humorous take, it’s important to stick to your theme once you have chosen it to ensure complete brand identity. Think of brands like Coca Cola and Costa who have clear and concise themes throughout their Christmas campaigning.

Offers

With important dates such as Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday, which are renowned for amazing offers around the world, decide early what offers you want to implement and link these to your current theme. If you have a classic festive theme throughout, you could focus on the message of giving and goodwill as points for your offers.

Scheduling

One you have an idea of the content you wish to send out into the world through your social media platforms this festive period, take some time to schedule said posts. There are multiple platforms that allow for omnichannel scheduling such as Buffer which allows you to schedule content across a range of platforms. For a free version, you could use Meta Business Suite, which allows you to schedule content across Facebook and Instagram. By scheduling as much content as you can for November and December in the first two weeks of November, you will feel less stressed throughout the marketing campaign, and it will give you extra time to focus on other strategies such as active engagement and customer service.

Email Marketing

Update your email marketing to match your chosen Christmas theme and make it more personal this Christmas. Decide early, what content you wish to push through your email marketing and make sure you do not overwhelm your customers with choices. Decide which products or services you think will do best within email lead generation and make the email extra festive with motifs, colours and offerings. You could even choose to give your email marketing recipients an extra offer, making them more likely to shop with you over someone else. This festive subject headings, greetings and signatures for an extra festive flare. Check out our podcast and blog on email marketing for an indepth look at successful email marketing.

Blog Posts

Blog posts are another great way to gain leads to your online content. Plan out some possible blog content to match your chosen theme and showcase your best content. Some ideas for blog content could include gift guides, showcasing new Christmas themed content, and showing off your current offers. You can also create blog content to communicate to your customers valuable information such as last shipping dates for promised Christmas delivery. All these blog posts will help in generating leads to your web pages and creating a clearer relationship with your customers.

Paid ads

With the budget portion of the research stage, you should have identified what finances you have to play with when it comes to paid advertisements. Paid advertisements are a great way to lead customers to your site and help them choose your business over someone else’s. If there is a perfect time to invest in paid ads, the Christmas period is one of them. For business cohesion, make sure that your adverts are following the themes you have settled on for your Christmas campaign. Again use your research on your target audience to judge which platforms will give you the greatest gain, whether that’s Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram.

Now that you have all your content decided on and planned, it’s time to move on to the final stage of the marketing strategy…implementation. The final stage is all about going live, monitoring, and transitioning from the Christmas period into the new year.

We understand that creating a marketing strategy is a lot of time and effort and we are here to help you with anything you may need. Book our consultation service where we can tailor a marketing strategy solely for you and your business, making your Christmas stress free this year.

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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!

Book Now

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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.

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