Happy St. Patrick’s Day from Arc intermedia: 7 Ways Marketers can capitalize on Holidays
Top o’ the Morning to you! With today being St. Patrick’s Day, we thought it would be a great opportunity to discuss how digital marketers can use holidays and seasonal events to their advantage. St. Patrick’s Day and other holidays present an amazing chance for marketers and businesses to capture additional web traffic, and earn more customers. Here’s 5 ways your marketing can capitalize on holidays and seasonal events:
1. Timing is Everything
Depending on your business, you’ll want to make sure that your campaign is given an adequate amount of time to succeed. For instance, if you’re a retailer, you’ll most likely see a huge amount of growth in gift-related search queries starting in late October-Early November. Make sure you have a campaign ready to go (including tested ad copy, landing pages, etc.) a few weeks early so your business will be well prepared to capture as many sales as possible during the holiday season.
2. Go for the “Low-Hanging Fruit”
Certain seasonal keywords can provide a cheaper way to get more clicks. For instance, if you’re currently using the keyword “digital camera,” try targeting “digital camera for graduate” in Spring. While this type of long tail keyword isn’t necessarily going to generate a ton of traffic, using several of them in a well-timed paid search or SEO campaign can generate more targeted traffic that can yield some very positive results.
3. Focus on Your Audience
Knowing your audience means understanding what events and holidays are meaningful to them. For instance, depending on your product or service, creating a promotion or sharing content related to an off-beat, niche holiday (Like March 14, which was National Pi Day) could really resonate with your audience.
4. Create a Calendar and Plan Ahead
Holiday-themed promotions take time, and you’ll want to make sure you’ve got all your ducks in a row before you start planning out your campaign. Basically, if you start thinking of doing a St. Patrick’s Day promotion on March 16, you’re doing it wrong. Set some time aside to create an editorial calendar, and take a look at what types of holidays and life events would be occurring throughout the year. Put down the big holidays like Christmas and July 4th, but dig deep into what else would be relevant, and toss around a few ideas for how you could construct a campaign around these holidays.
5. Give Something Away
Seriously, who doesn’t like free stuff? A freebie can be anything – from a branded promotional item, to an eBook, to a discount code for your online store. The idea is to create something that not only offers value, but will get people talking. Think about what type of giveaways are popular, and how you can encourage people to spread the word about them (remember to use social media to your advantage).
6. Crowdsource your Content
User-generated content can be a great way to capitalize on millennials. If you have an audience that tends to skew younger, try asking for holiday messages from your social fans and site visitors (for instance, a New Year’s message contest), and award a prize to the winning entry. User-generated content is particularly valuable because the users will naturally do the sharing for you, helping spread the word about your contest, and your brand.
7. Create Holiday Content for Your Blog
This may seem obvious, but the real trick is creating blog content that is both relevant to your business and interesting to your audience. For instance, an infographic with fun facts about Thanksgiving might be interesting, but how does that relate to your brand? When planning your editorial calendar, consider the type of content that you could share, and how you can tie it to your product or service.
