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Keep your marketing campaigns on track during the holiday season with our top tips for marketing success.

1. Plan Ahead 

Looking for a breather after your last-minute Halloween campaign? I mean, Thanksgiving isn’t for another… wait, it’s less than 3 weeks away!

If you haven’t already, the first step is to pick the holidays that you’re going to focus on. Some upcoming holidays include:

• Thanksgiving – 24^th November 2017
• Hanukkah – 13^th – 20^th December 2017
• Christmas – 24^th – 26^th December 2017

Once you’ve decided on the holidays you want to dedicate marketing resource to, it’s time to start planning. Think about what you’re going to do, you could promote a particular product, or offer a discount to your customers.

Then you need to think about where you’re going to run your campaign. Some areas to think about include:

• Social media – pick the most effective social channels for your business & think about the message you want to send. It’s worth thinking about whether it will change depending what social channel you use.
• Adverts – are you going to post organically or use paid advertising?
• Email platform – are you going to send a marketing email, and if so, who will it go to?
• Budget – how much are you going to spend on the campaign?
• Timeframe – how long will the campaign run for?

There are loads of things to think about, and one of the best ways to get your ideas into a clear format is to create a campaign planner for the holiday period. For tips on creating a simple, easy-to-use planner take a look at our blog ‘How to create a social media plan’.

2. Make the most of automation tools

If you or your team will be taking some time off during the holidays, this doesn’t mean your campaign outreach has to stop. There are some great tools around that let you schedule up your social posts, emails and adverts, so you can reach your customers at the prime time.

One study from 2006 showed that sales from 21^st – 24^th December account for 13.6% of holiday sales.  On ‘’ – the last Saturday before Christmas – many brands expect double or even triple the number of customers than any other day of the holiday season!

Tools like  are great for planning your Tweets, whilst  is a good tool for a more wide-ranging social media schedule.

So, while you’re sitting back and tucking into your pumpkin pie, your campaign will still be working hard.

3. Get into the spirit of giving

Tis the season of good will, after-all. It’s the perfect time to give back to your customers and offer them a little something to encourage them to buy. You could set up promotional codes for the holiday period, offer free shipping when they spend ‘x’ amount, or even drive customers to your store on a particular day with exclusive ‘1 day only’ offers.

Whatever you choose, the holidays are a prime time for consumer spending, and making your customers feel valued is an ideal way to stand out from the competition.

4. Get your audience engaged with your imagery

Step away from the generic images of pumpkin pies or Santa Claus and his reindeer, and splash some festive creativity in your marketing campaigns.

Lifestyle imagery is really popular right now and there’s also a massive push at this time of year for emotion-led campaigns.

So think how you can use this to your advantage – natural family shots, a busy table at Thanksgiving dinner, or children unwrapping presents in the living room. The holidays are all about spending time with family and friends and it’s a great way of upping the engagement for your campaigns.

5. Synchronise your marketing channels

Multi-channel advertising is hugely popular right now, and it’s important to make sure you’re giving a consistent message across all your marketing channels. Of course, you can mix up the wording on different channels, for example making the most of trending hashtags on Twitter. But a really effective way of getting people to notice and ultimately engage with your campaign is to target people across different platforms.

 showed that by running a Facebook advert alongside an email campaign, the reach extended by 77%. Not only that, but people who saw both the ad and email were “8% more likely to click and 22% more likely to purchase”.

Top tip: Using similar images across your campaign will help your audience recognise it if they see it on different channels.

Get inspired with our hand-picked selection of festive imagery.