With Christmas fast approaching (less than 90 days, friends!) businesses are presented with plenty of low-cost, easy and fun marketing opportunities. So will you take advantage of them this year?
Here is our Christmas Marketing 'Must Do' list . Print it off, send it to your marketing team and ensure that you stay on top of it for a successful Christmas campaign this year.
Decide your Christmas Theme
This is the image, the sentiment, the greeting that you want to use consistently across all marketing. Are you using a Santa Hat and Merry Christmas? Are you using a branded present icon and Happy Holidays? Do you want to make your message tone playful and cheerful? Do you want it to read sincere and professional? This is the first step, because once you’ve decided this, the rest is easy!
Confirm Your Business Opening and Closing Times
Decide this nice and early so when people start asking about it, you can give them a reliable answer. This also helps you to determine your Christmas marketing time frame so everything becomes easy and runs smoothly. Ensure that you also decide contact/communication contingency plans in case of emergencies like an after-hours number or an urgent email address that can at least be checked once a day.
Custom Christmas Cards
If you don’t have a big Christmas Card list, buying a few stylish ones from a local supplier or general department or stationery store is perfect. If you do this, look for cards that either match your brand or align with your Christmas theme. If it’s any more than 50, custom Christmas Cards are the way to go. These will need to be ordered by the end of October because printers are busy and they still need to be written and addressed! So, start planning the design and getting quotes in October. I recommend sending Christmas Cards to all clients, referrers, business supporters, local businesses around yours and anyone else you feel is of significance.
Christmas Client Gifts
Clients gifts are typically a tricky area. How much do you spend per client? A marketing rule of thumb is 5% of the total that every client has spent. It is best to organise your clients gifts at the beginning of November (or at least plan them!) so they can be delivered with a Christmas card in the second week of December while people are still at the office and can enjoy them before they go on leave.
Christmas Event
Christmas events like a VIP shopping night, a meet and greet, Christmas drinks or a family day are great ways to bring in last minute sales or engage with your clients. Plan any transaction based events for late November so potential shoppers can get in early and if you’re planning on a casual event, early December is fine. Just be wary of school holidays and end of year school and community events. make sure you plan at the end of October and get invitations out more than three weeks in advance - you want to get in early as there’s lots on in the Christmas lead up.
Christmas Footer
Set up your Christmas email footer for all staff emails. This should be easy as you’ve already decided on the theme! A jpg works well and can easily be copied and pasted into emails. It’s appropriate to put it up any time after 1 December. Make sure you include your office closing hours somewhere, too and any alternative contact methods during the business close down period.
Christmas Emailer
It is important to your entire network by email and gives you a chance to wish them well, celebrate and advertise the successes throughout the year, remind them of any office opening and closing dates and reestablish connection - which is highly valuable if you haven’t in some time. Send it two days before your office closes down for the year so any replies can be responded to.
Christmas Social Media Content
Christmas gives us a chance to be creative, fun and festive with our social media content. Take your Christmas theme, design a template in Canva to reflect it, then fill it with fun content. Some great ideas are to run a 12 Days of Chrismas promotion that could give people a discount or special offer for purchases on that day, celebrate a client each day or share valuable Christmas ‘to-dos’. Don’t forget to schedule a Merry Christmas message nice and early on Christmas Day.
If you need any assistance in putting together your Christmas marketing materials or would like some outsourced assistance in getting things done this Christmas lead up, give us a call – our marketing department is happy to help.