The economy is growing and the holidays are approaching. That means a very happy holiday season is on the horizon for entrepreneurs and small businesses! In fact, Deloitte is forecasting a 4.5% increase in retail sales this season, and up to an 18% increase in e-commerce sales!
To make the most of this strong market, marketers will need to work hard to stand out. Your regular content marketing strategies will need a few tweaks if you’re going to compete. So here are 5 methods that you can use to end the decade on a high note.
1. Have clear KPIs
You won’t know if holiday season goals have been met if you don’t know what the goals are. So before you start your content plan, make sure to decide on your KPIs and share them with your whole team.
Are you focused on building revenue? Increasing email subscribers? Improving your search ranking? Increasing site traffic? Define your goals in advance for the holiday season so you can build a strategy to match.
2. Reach out to influencers
If you haven’t been doing any influencer marketing, now may be a good time to start. “Influencers” aren’t limited to food and travel. Any consumer product (and many B2B products and services) could work for an influencer campaign. And during the wildly competitive holiday season, using their platform could be a good way to expand your company’s reach.
Before you reach out to an influencer, check for a healthy follower count and a healthy engagement rate. 100,000 followers don’t do much good if half of them are bots.
3. Provide value
A blog post wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving isn’t particularly valuable. But a blog post with 8 tips for avoiding conversation landmines with relatives or 10 ways to de-stress this holiday season could be interesting and useful.
Gift guides, dinner menus, travel tips, conversation starters, health tips, and more can all help customers to better handle the stressors and irritations of the holiday season. For B2B companies, you could do a year-end roundup of industry trends, make predictions for the coming year, or provide tips for how other businesses can make the most out of the holidays. Just make sure it’s relevant to your business.
4. Get nostalgic
No season tugs on the heartstrings like the holiday season. People love to go down memory lane with their favorite holiday movies, music, and treats. How exactly you take advantage of this will depend on your target demographic.
Millennials grew up in the late 80s and early-to-mid 90s, so think Home Alone, The Muppet Christmas Carol, and Mariah Carey.
For the boomer crowd, holiday nostalgia is more serious and less silly. It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, and Bing Crosby bring back the holidays of their childhood.
Now, you probably don’t have the budget to recreate key scenes from Home Alone with a grown-up Macaulay Culkin, like Google Assistant did last year. But you can still use imagery, quotes, and music to make your content appeal to the right audience.
Maybe a look back at the most popular holiday gifts of the past 50 years? Or a description of holiday traditions from around the world, if you have an international audience? Again, it has to be relevant to your business!
5. Gather your holiday content together
If people read your “gift ideas for dads” blog post, it stands to reason that they may also want to read your “gift ideas for the in-laws” blog post. During the holidays, create a section of your blog or website dedicated to the holidays. Make it a one-stop-shop where they can find all of your holiday content. This may keep them on your site longer.
Take the same approach for Pinterest. Create a holiday Pinterest board with links to products and content. And on Instagram, create Story Highlights where you can save your holiday-themed stories throughout the season.
6. Be Yourself!
The most important thing to remember when creating your holiday content is to be yourself. If blogging about holiday parties and gift ideas is completely off-brand, don’t do it. You’ll have to come up with an organic method of creating holiday-specific content.
And don’t forget, your content goes beyond the written word. Festive pictures and graphics can also go a long way to getting your website or social media feed holiday-ready.
