Partner Article

How to Take Your Brand into the Festive Period

It’s a well-known fact that once the retail feature ads are being aired – we have officially entered the Christmas period. The world is saturated with brands all vying for attention, and the competition ramps up during the festive season, but how can SME’s compete with the established corporate businesses with ever growing budgets during this time?

Promotional festive campaigns can be a critical opportunity for a brand to gain awareness and leverage the high-level spending that takes place at this time of year. There are a number of different strategies and promotional elements that you can implement during the festive season to make it work for your business, rather than fall prey to the ‘wind down’ state of mind. There are still 5 weeks until Christmas; more than enough time to add some sparkle and cheer to your current campaigns and embrace the opportunities that the season of goodwill holds.

Last Year’s Data

Look back to last Christmas; the office decorations probably went up a little earlier than the previous year, Kenny Rogers made a comeback with a Christmas album and there were numerous ‘Christmas Specials’ aired on TV (Doctor Who, we are looking at you). And of course, there were plenty of reports detailing changes in customer behaviour – including digital and mobile behaviours.

Many of the reports centre on retail sales, but they also offer valuable insights into the ways that modern technology influence customer behaviour. For instance, smaller businesses that have previously experienced geographical limitations which have made it harder to grow and compete with the larger brands, could embrace the data about festive email campaigns, mobile apps and e-commerce opportunities. If you have previously dismissed these avenues, as you couldn’t see how they would work for your brand, it’s time to indulge in some Christmas creativity by looking at the ways other brands have used them effectively.

Launch a Christmas Email Campaign

The festive period is a great time to boost your email marketing; using a focused campaign to highlight your services, products or offers and to share important information that is relevant to the season; such as extended hours, shut down periods and any ‘on-call’ services.

For instance, the ‘12 days of Christmas’ lends itself to most offerings, especially those that are available for a limited time - It might seem cliché but it creates a sense of urgency. Another angle you could use is an advent calendar; this season lends itself to fun more than any other time of the year, so it makes sense to inject this into your campaigns, appealing to people’s playful sides.

If you are a smaller business with a niche offering, you should be showcasing this. Alternate the approach between highlighting products and offering discounts or incentives – just ensure you have enough stock to fulfil orders. If you have a well maintained email list, you could switch up your offering each day with a ‘24 Deals of Christmas’ campaign – this type of campaign also converts well into e-catalogues and social media campaigns.

Don’t forget to get festive with your subject lines to pique interest!

Pure 360 offer some great tips for festive email campaigns on their blog; “It’s worth business owners considering whether or not a festive email campaign is right for their audience. Some people are adamant that romance is dead, but still, few will want to fill the stocking of their betrothed with pest control systems or engine oil. Of course, marketers should be imaginative – as noted in point five – but also know when to write off a specific time of year as being less than ideal. If an industry falls into this category, jumping on the Christmas bandwagon may not quite yield the hoped-for results.”

Add Festive Cheer to Your Branding

Who does this best? Starbucks of course! When we see those red cups in use, it’s another milestone in the countdown to Christmas.

Why not take this idea and apply it to your business, the consumer uptake may not happen for some time but it could be a long term strategy. Adapting your logo and social media pictures and headers so that they include festive elements is an easy task to undertake; if you decide to use images that need to be paid for – keep in mind that they can be used for several years.

You can carry this theme through to all aspects of your marketing and PR; use the same angle on your website, online ads and remarketing, printed content, online stores and mobile applications.

“First impressions are everything and ultimately if something isn’t presented well it’s unlikely we will pursue it further. Keeping your business on brand is essential and it needs to extend to all areas of your business – it’s the same with seasonal branding. The same elements should be applied to every area of the business to create and reinforce a strong message, in this case a festive one!” muses Richard LeCount from USBMakers.

Create Christmas Content

Any business can do this!

From Christmas spending habits for a retail business, the impact of extra internet traffic for those in telecoms, holiday themed recipes or ‘clean eats’….the list is infinite. Infographics are always well received, as long as the data it communicates is relevant and is interesting. When it comes to content, the usual rule of thumb is 70-80% should directly impart value to the reader.

Christmas the perfect time to take this data and make it fun! We all love a fact, and a Christmas fact is even more likely to be well received by your audience and leave a lasting impression. This type of content is also far easier to outreach and makes your content marketing in the festive period far more efficient.

If you aren’t experienced in putting graphics together, it’s worth paying an expert. Experienced graphic designers can knock these things up pretty quickly when given a detailed brief; take a look at People Per hour to find one that comes highly commended and get to work gathering your data using Google Surveys or reports and statistics.

Before you dismiss this as too time consuming and not relevant to your business, read the facts. Our brains can process images 60,000 faster than text and gives you the potential to showcase a brands personality. Images are favoured by Facebook and Twitter and image led Instagram has over 100 million users…..Image led content is high on the agenda, Christmas you the perfect reason to embrace this.

Send Personal Holiday Cards

The internet and social media in particular has taken away many of the personal touches throughout this season.

Why not make the gesture more personalised this year by having a team photo taken in their most festive jumpers in some fake snow or enjoying an early Christmas dinner. Whatever your idea, make sure it conveys your teams personality; just because these cards are sent traditionally, doesn’t mean that they won’t reach the digital realms too. Appreciative customers are likely to take to social media to say thanks or share an image of the card.

Think of the card as another PR exercise. Unless you are sending out hundreds of cards, set some time aside to write a personal message. This list is of course, not exhaustive. From location based targeting, rewarding mobile app users and social media followers, adding a Christmas countdown in your Google AdWords campaign – there are many ways that you can utilise the season of goodwill to your advantage.

Tom Lloyd, Creative Director at Bluegg explains about the company’s Christmas video tradition, “We’ve always tried to do something different with our Christmas cards. We probably made our first Christmas video in 2005. Since then we’ve built up a small following of friends and clients who look forward to what we have planned every year. We generally start getting asked a couple of months before Christmas what we have planned. As the years have gone on we’ve always aimed to outdo ourselves so the expectation gets a bit higher. We’ve done a couple now based on performing songs and last years was the biggest effort - writing a whole rap, recording the ‘vocal’, editing the song and then shooting a video. It probably took 3.4 entire days! But we do get a great response from twitter and our email list. Our clients love it and it’s a great way to communicate our internal culture. I’m not sure if we’ve generated any work as a direct result, but it’s undoubtedly one of the reasons clients feel like they can approach us.”

By spending some time drafting up creative Christmas themed campaigns, you can entertain, educate and add some festive cheer to your audience, communicating your offerings and leaving a lasting impression. A word of advice, as always, ensure that there is a consistent theme that ties all of the campaigns together, a scattergun approach will come across as confusing to a new audience. If you aren’t able to put together effective campaigns for Christmas 2016, make it your New Year’s Resolution, and make Christmas 2017 your most profitable one yet.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Rebecca Moore .