The holiday season is rapidly approaching, and regardless of your industry, you are pressed against the Q4 marketing targets. Today’s consumer is continuously disrupting the traditional purchasing patterns. How can you stay on track of all planned holiday marketing initiatives and ensure smooth execution of your marketing plan?
Five Points to Consider
When You Are Mapping Out Your Holiday Marketing Plan:
1. First and foremost, list all holidays and celebrations that are taking place in the next couple of months.
Aside from the traditional widely celebrated holidays such as Thanksgiving Day and Christmas, there are other celebrations worth paying attention to: the National Ice Cream Day ( 13 December), the National Boyfriend’s Day ( 3 October), Octoberfest (8 October), the Lung Health Day ( 25 October), the Book Lovers Day (4 November), or the National Expresso Day (23 November.)
Depending on your industry, some of these holidays could be relevant and suitable. Don’t dismiss these opportunities to reach different audiences with your very targeted and personalized messages.
2. Think about the marketing channels and marketing vehicles
In 2017 consumers are researchers. No longer do they wait for your ad to start showing up in their Facebook newsfeed. They explore, investigate and analyze. They check your history (what types of discounts have you provided in the past?) They evaluate competitive offers.
That’s why marketers need to roll out seasonal promotions ahead of time and become top-of-mind.
It’s especially important for such industries as e-commerce, retail, and CPG. Something that no marketing professional of the aforementioned industries should forget about leading into Black Friday & Cyber Monday: consumers who are waiting to click that Buy button once the clock turns 12 AM, or those who camp outside a brick-and-mortar store to be the first one to get in, are not loyal customers; they are the “price buyers.” It’s important to identify the different clusters and their shopping behavior, and that should define the marketing channels and vehicles you are going to use in your holiday marketing campaigns.
3. How and why measure the effectiveness of your marketing initiatives?
The Why: It is crucially important to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns so you can justify the costs and plan the budget for the next fiscal period.
The How: In order to measure marketing effectiveness, marketers need to establish individual goals and KPIs. Depending on a role within the marketing team, the KPIs can vary from website metrics that speak to the content marketing efforts, to the metrics that help evaluate business and its operations as a whole. Making sense of marketing metrics and identifying the ones that serve your purpose is an important step in building a successful holiday marketing plan.Customer experience: What lies beyond the transaction?
4. Customer experience: What lies beyond the transaction?
Do you know what your customer is up to after the conversion? Do you have a long-term plan or your business approach is strictly transactional? If it’s the latter, you should consider asking yourself this: how do You go about purchasing different products or services? Do you trust advertising or you would rather buy a product suggested by a friend or someone you can rely on? In today’s overly-saturated market, it is necessary to build relationships with consumers and leverage those bonds not just to get a sale but to create loyalty and repeat business.
5. “What is the best marketing management tool to help maintain my marketing plan?”
If you are a small business chasing initial growth, then Excel spreadsheets may be enough for you to create and manage your marketing plan. However, if you are a mature company with multiple departments and teams involved, various geographic locations and product lines, then you should consider a proper tool that can help your company scale its operations and maximize its productivity.
