The holiday season is a special time of year. Many of us spend time with friends and family, give thanks for the things we have, and share gifts with our loved ones. But when you run a business, the holiday season is likely the busiest time of the year for you. Planning in advance and creating a holiday content marketing strategy can help take some of the stress out of the holiday season for your business.
Quality holiday content marketing can help you connect with your audience, appeal to new customers, and increase your brand awareness.
If you are unsure where to begin with your holiday content, this guide can help you get started.
What Are the Benefits of Having a Holiday Content Marketing Strategy?
If you’ve never put together a holiday content strategy or tracked the analytics of your holiday content, you might not realize that there are a number of benefits for your business. Here are a few:
1. Increases Demand for Your Products and Services
Consumers spend more during the holiday season than any other time of year. This naturally leads to an increased demand for products and services. With consumers in an active buying stage, this is an ideal time to roll out time-sensitive offers. These deals also work well with Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions and give customers an increased sense of urgency or a fear of missing out (FOMO).
With the right holiday content marketing strategy, you can showcase high-value products and cater to customers who are ready to buy or could be ready more quickly.
2. Improves Brand Awareness
With clever, memorable content during the holidays, you can give your brand awareness a boost. By creating customer-focused, engaging content for each holiday between Halloween and New Year’s Day, you can find a new target audience and build your loyal following.
3. Unleashes Your Creativity
Customers respond best to creative, relatable content. The holiday season is the perfect time of year to show off the more personable side of your business. This type of content presents the chance to add some fun to your brand image.
While you might not use this relaxed type of content any other time of year, the holidays give you more freedom to try new strategies and new content types. The addition of personality may earn you new customers and brand fans. So, don’t be afraid to take some risks. With so much holiday content out there, you don’t want to get lost in uninspired content.
4. Grows Your Business
With a creative holiday content marketing strategy, you can potentially attract and retain new customers. This makes the holiday season the ideal time for business growth. In addition, keep an eye on the performance of your content during the holiday season and then implement some of the strategies that perform well in other parts of the year. This will be especially important if you discover a new strategy for your content.
5. Offers Opportunities for New Product Launches
The holiday season gives many businesses the unique opportunity to release new products and services. That’s why you’ll often see big tech innovations come out near the holidays. Plus, many consumers enjoy holiday-themed products. If this is something your business can offer, consider releasing some limited-time products. Promote these new products on social media and through your other holiday content.
Customers who are drawn in by your fresh products might be enticed to stay and buy other non-holiday products. You’ll find this is true if the new product performs well for them.
12 Content Marketing Strategies to Try During the Holiday Season
Since most folks celebrate something during the winter holiday season, not having a content strategy for the holidays really isn’t an option. Take advantage of the buzz and popularity with a few different strategies. Here are 12 specific actions you can take to improve your holiday-themed content.
1. Start Early
You might still feel the lingering heat of the summer, even if the leaves have already started changing color. No matter what season it is, you can never start planning too early for your holiday content.
Do some market research to see what people are interested in this year, check out your competition’s content, you can even start planting hints of your upcoming content months in advance. It’s important to carve out plenty of time to craft creative, engaging content that will help you stand out from your competition, especially if your sales pick up in Q4.
2. Capitalize on Black Friday and Cyber Monday
Consumers and businesses have long been conditioned to expect great deals and compelling offers during the holiday season. If it’s difficult for you to give customers a significant discount, think of a way to add value to your products or services. For example, if you are a B2B business, you could offer a free consultation with the purchase of a corresponding service.
Use the first tip and start teasing your Black Friday/Cyber Monday offers in advance through email marketing. This will build anticipation. Then make your deal even more enticing by offering it for a limited time. It’s a great idea to include a countdown timer on the offer page to increase the FOMO.
You could even take the opposite route like outdoor brand REI did with its #OptOutside campaign. It closed all its stores on Black Friday and encouraged people to head outside. Even though it was a controversial choice, it got people talking about the brand and made them a little more human.
3. Be Inclusive
While the holiday season is packed full of traditions, you should consider moving beyond the norm to be more inclusive with your content. Many customers will quickly turn away from a brand if they feel its messaging excludes certain groups.
Target did a great job of creating inclusive content with its 2021 holiday ad.
To be more inclusive with your holiday content, consider:
- Staying neutral: Instead of focusing on and naming specific holidays, focus your content on themes of spending time with loved ones, the change of seasons, and the upcoming new year.
- Highlighting diversity: With the incredible diversity in the United States, your brand has a great opportunity to include those who usually feel left out. Instead of marketing gifts “for him” and “for her,” find a more neutral way to categorize your products. You can also highlight lesser-known world holidays that many people celebrate in the United States.
- Relieving stress: While some people are filled with “comfort and joy” during the holidays, others find it to be the most stressful time of the year. Whether it’s family issues or just the stress of planning, many folks find the holidays challenging. Your brand can offer holiday content that recognizes these difficult feelings while offering a bit of a break. Use humor, showcase your charitable giving, and show appreciation to your customers to help brighten their mood during the holidays.
4. Continue Offering Value
While some of your holiday content marketing might focus on your limited-time deals and promotions, you should continue offering the same level of valuable content you usually do. If you all share for weeks on end how to get the latest deals from your brand, you’ll find customers might start ignoring your content.
You can still produce value-rich content that deepens your relationship with your current customers and draws in new ones. Find a balance between value-driven and promotional content to maintain and build on the trust you worked hard to establish.
5. Get Personal
You spend most of the year maintaining the professional image of your brand. The holiday season gives you an opportunity to get more personal and show your customers who you really are. This is a great time of year to showcase your employees or show off the fun you have at your holiday office parties.
Consider creative content ideas like:
- Having employees write letters to Santa
- Sharing pictures of your holiday decorating content
- Your CEO recording a personal message for your customers
- Creating an online cookbook of holiday recipes
6. Share Some Humor
Many people don’t feel the holiday cheer because of family difficulties, seasonal depression, and the overall stress of the season. To brighten their spirits, consider sharing some holiday humor. Google did this exceptionally well in 2018 when it invited Macaulay Culkin to give a glimpse into adult Kevin McCallister’s life with the hilarious “Home Alone Again” campaign.
In the video, there are numerous updated shots of adult Kevin reenacting classic Home Alone scenes, but this time, with the help of modern Google aids.
While your brand might not have the same resources as Google, you can still create funny holiday content. Consider:
- Awkward family photos in Christmas sweaters
- Song parodies
- A letter from your new CEO, Santa, and the changes he is making
- A holiday content for your customers
7. Give Back to Your Community
While many of us share gifts with our loved ones during the holidays, there are people who do not have the money or resources to do so. Focus on the season of giving and share how your business is giving back.
There are countless opportunities for businesses to give back to their communities. If you don’t have one already, consider starting a charitable giving campaign or promoting regular volunteer hours with your employees. You can also partner with local nonprofit organizations to find specific ways you can help. Try to find a group that aligns with your values. Perhaps there is a local homeless shelter in need of blankets or a food bank struggling to meet the needs of the community.
Share your charitable efforts in your content and invite your customers and readers to participate in their own way. Be sure your charitable activities and the message you share are authentic.
8. Look Back at Your Year
Whether you love or hate the “year in review,” it is a great way to connect with your audience and show how your brand has grown. To make your year-in-review message resonate, consider these tips:
- Use visuals: Reading thousands of words of straight text can be tiresome. Break up your content with pictures, infographics, or even videos.
- Focus on your customers: While the review is about your business, it is really about your customers. How did your customers affect your brand this year? Do they influence product changes? Find ways to make them feel recognized and appreciated.
- Tell a story: While you are focusing on highlights from the past year, make sure you are telling a cohesive story. Lead your readers through an exciting year and invite them to continue their journey with you next year.
Spotify has become a master of this strategy with its “wrapped” concept. It showcases the best and most popular audio content from the past year.
9. Have an Omnichannel Content Strategy
You don’t have to start from scratch with your holiday content marketing strategy. There may be topics you can repurpose either from previous years or from one platform to another. For example, let’s say you had a popular blog post. You can take that blog and break it into multiple Instagram posts or even a marketing email. You could even expand on a popular topic and produce an e-book.
A diverse, omnichannel content strategy will organically lead customers from one platform to the next while telling a complete story. This is a valuable strategy to use all year, not just during the holidays.
10. Start a Tradition
Do you have a product or service that could be slightly modified to fit the season? If so, this is a good time to start a holiday tradition that your customers look forward to every year. For example, every year Starbucks releases red cups for the holidays. These cups signal the return of some of their seasonal drinks and for some people, it can be a hotly debated topic, especially when they changed to a two-tone design.
11. Start a “12 Days” or “24 Days” Campaign
Many businesses capitalize on feelings of anticipation and play on the classic “12 Days of Christmas” song with a “12 Days” campaign. What you do or offer during those 12 days will depend on your business. Perhaps you release a new limited-time deal each day or host a customer giveaway. You could even put a charitable spin on it and make a new charitable donation each day.
One way to up the ante is by tying your donation to the amount of audience feedback you get. These types of promotions can be very compelling. One study from Deloitte showed that 81% of consumers expect to be influenced by holiday promotions.
Another option is to use the theme of a 24-day advent calendar. Did you know the first chocolate-filled advent calendar was invented by Cadbury in 1958 (thank you, Cadbury!). Since then, many people love the anticipation of opening a new door each day and getting a treat. Offer your customers a daily surprise for 24 days, and you will likely get a positive response.
12. Create a Holiday Content Calendar
Once you have your list of holiday content marketing strategies, you should organize it into a calendar. With a content calendar, you space out certain types of content and schedule when you will publish each piece.
You also need to consider the time it takes to write, produce, and edit each piece of content. Include these dates in your calendar, too.
Get Quality Holiday Content Crafted by Experts
You might be good at running your business, but not so good at writing killer content. That’s okay. You need a professional content writing agency that knows how to create high-ranking content without sacrificing quality. When you choose Express Writers, that is exactly what you’ll get. We’re ready to help you implement your holiday content marketing strategy.
Our team of writers is the best in the industry. We offer a wide variety of package options, whether you want a one-time blog or a full suite of custom content.
Are you ready to get started with your holiday content? Contact Express Writers today.
