Marketing Ideas For The Holidays

With Christmas around the corner, most people count the hours before they can finally leave for the holidays. Many companies give their employees a day off so they can do some Christmas shopping. The Christmas holidays are coming fast and the general holiday mood does  hold on for the rest of the year. Now it is time to increase your business sales! Here are the most popular Holiday marketing ideas , which have been successfully applied  from various companies during the holidays in 2011 (but modified throughout the year):

1. Photo Contest

Everyone loves contests. For example, you can run a photo contest on Twitter or Facebook, where everyone can participate in a photo that has something to do with your product. The winner will get a prize. A retailer launched a contest on Pinterest and promoted this in emails before. The audience growth shot up by 200% during this campaign.

There are so many ways to start a contest, for example, who brings the most customer recommendations, who writes the best blog comment or whoever brings the most e-mail applications.

2. Have people done market for you

If you’re different than the average, people will talk about you. Of course, positive is always better than negative, but even with an ugly picture, you can attract attention and be on everyone’s lips.

3. Gifts

What has also been very successful during the Christmas season; when customers buy something or  place an order, as a thank you they receive a gift from your company. This may be a small thing, e.g. a  gift card, gift tags or something similar. The customers are thrilled and will definitely buy something of your products again or they will tell friends about your company. If the gift is really nice, then there is a good possibility those friends want to have one?

4. Give a gift to your subscribers 

It doesn’t need to be a great gift, just a little attention for example an e-book, a audio book (podcasts) or a gift voucher …. Everything  what you can share or send (of course digital) without getting into trouble. Therefore customer believes that they owe you something  for the gift and in return they can maybe something purchase from your shop.

5. Help with holiday problems

Offer tips for a successful Christmas party, tips for delicious Christmas dinner or quick dessert or offer tips for a diet (especially  after Christmas). There are million ways to give advice, but you should connect them to your own business.

6. Provide sales, discounts and coupons

Nowadays, customers are on the hunt for the best deals. You can for example create a daily Christmas offer. With great offers from local shops, people go to the stores and queue up in long lines .  Make sure you are on the radar during holiday days and let people know that you offer bargains and even better, Deals’ than local shops. If an order is placed online with your company, they can avoid ‘standing in a queue’ during the holiday season.

7. Buy one get one

Buy one product and get a second free is a very good measure in order to maintain existing customers and attract new customers. Your existing customers will recommend to friends and work colleagues and thus carry on the promotion. If you don’t have a unique product which sells by itself, then this is a great way to give your customers added value – the customer gets something for free and thereby has a reason to buy from you.

8. Hold an event

Organizing a party and invite your customers. Tell them that they should come with friends, relatives and family. The potential customers learn about your business and  you have a very good chance and opportunity to present your products and your services. Such a party also works online – for example in a chat room.

9. Create a game

This is a great way to attract people’s interest to your business, because games pull people to your website and keep them busy. The game must have nothing to do with your product. But you can either figure out what motivates your customers and afterwards you can work with this information. You do not have to create a game, you also can expose a variety of tasks in the application and each time a task is completed, there is a reward. This would be a great idea for emails in your auto responder series (emails that are sent at specific time intervals after application), but it works just as well during the Christmas season, if the tasks are not too complex.  In fact, so you can bring interaction on your website or in your forum and increased your popularity.

10. Facebook

The first 1000 fans get a special discount on your products or services. This requires that you start with a friendless  Facebook page (new page). Offer all subscriber exclusive content, such as a coupon. Your Company is visible to everyone, and different age groups can be addressed without major effort.

11. Marketing tradition

Create a motive for your marketing campaign this year and lead your own marketing tradition every year at the same time. This can be an image, a video or logo. Show it on your website, Facebook, Twitter, everywhere to your customers, for example, they have to guess which name hides behind. In this measure, you will reap the rewards in the long run.

12. Help your customer to make a purchase decision

Help your customers to make a decision to buy your product easily. For Example offer them a buy ‘one click’ order (not via address entry or the like) or sells during the holiday get  ‘free shipping ‘. The simpler and shorter your checkout process is, the less customers will cancel their order.

13. Greetings 

Send hope to all existing customers with a greeting card or thank you card and wish them well. You call yourself back to your customers memory who have not bought anything for a long time and regular customers enjoy the simple little attention. You can send to your customers a Merry Christmas picture with “Have a nice first Advent”.

14. Xmas Carol Torture

Who listens the longest to ‘ Jingle bells’’? Or who spent the longest time active in your forums? The winner gets a coveted prize. Also a proven marketing tactic is you could hide an image or code on your web page and customers have to find the code or the image to get a discount. In this action, the people will definitely spend a lot of time on your web site.

15. Get what you really want

This is a great idea especially for “after” Christmas. Ask your customers to redeem their gift certificates to buy what they want or to pamper theme self because they  have not got from Santa what they wanted. Inform your customers early before Christmas by mail or email.

But everybody should remember, that the most important thing during the holiday season is giving and spending time with family. Make sure that the true meaning of Christmas is not destroyed or abused. In other words, do not send every hour or every day your newsletter with your special offers to your customers. As long as you pay attention to some rules, you and your customers will have very much fun during Christmas holidays.

Merry Christmas!

Filed in: Blog • Internet Marketing