It won’t have escaped your attention that we are racing really rather quickly to the 25th December – here at Cosmic HQ the offices have been decorated, we’ve been allocated our Secret Santas and Buble is appearing through the speakers rather more than I would like.
Whereas a lot of you will have been focused on the Christmas build up for quite a few months now with regards to your online strategy, for those of you who haven’t been so organised it’s not too late to get involved! A report from Visualistan noted that 35% of Christmas shoppers waited until the last week to make their purchases. I know from experience that husbands can indeed wait until 3pm on Christmas eve to go out to buy their loved one's gifts… So it’s never too late!
With all of your digital marketing, planning is key, but we know how all of a sudden the beginning of December is upon us and we haven’t started our social media campaign let along our e-marketing. So how can you optimise the last few weeks before the big day? Here are our top tips for a last minute Christmas campaign…
Christmas Visuals
Use this opportunity to add a seasonal touch to your online images - whether it be your profile and header images on social media or in your website banners, try to reflect the season within all your visuals. Using Canva or Picmonkey is an easy and free way to add holiday cheer. They even have their own visuals you can add easily to your current pictures, so it takes no time at all to create a festive profile.
Ask Questions
Get people talking about Christmas and engaging in your posts by asking questions. What is your favourite Christmas song? Who’s left their Christmas shopping until the last minute? What do you like to eat on Chrismtas day? People love to chatter and get excited about it all, and engaging with your audience allows you to discover more about them and their lifestyles to use in future marketing campaigns.
Sharing Images
Extending on this – why not ask them to share their images on your social media, maybe with a hashtag included? You could create a competition with a great prize to encourage involvement. Topics such as ‘Best Decorated Tree’ or ‘Most festive Christmas Jumper’ or ‘Funniest Snowman’ would generate lots of input! You can even create an open board in Pinterest and ask them to upload them there. You can include your own images in this too – your office decorated, your staff wearing their jumpers, or your tree dressed up to the nines.
Advent Offers
You can create an advent calendar type countdown throughout your social networks, or over emails. Different offers or promotions on each day would generate call to action, or even just sharing funny Christmas facts or jokes helps build engagement.
Top Tips & How To's
Give your customers useful information that will help them through their Christmas busy times – last dates for postage, to-do lists to make their planning easier. Top tips for prepping, planning or wrapping will all be great content to share to your followers, but also for them to share to others. I overheard a tip recently to use an ironing board to do all your wrapping on – you can adjust the height to suit whether you are stood up or sat down, and you can keep all of your scissors, sellotape and ribbon handy too - genius! I will certainly be trying that out this year.
Competitions
Why not run a Christmas competition through your website? Find the robin, or penguin, or stocking etc hidden within the pages of your site. You could have an number of them hidden and the first to find them wins a prize – whether it be a discount off your service or a voucher of a product. This will not only encourage engagement but also allow your customers to hunt through your website finding out about all the things you do that they may not have known about.
Saying Thank You
Take this opportunity to thank your customers for all their support over the year.
However you decide to optimise this season for your campaign – be creative! And remember that everything you do online can be measured so in the new year work out which campaigns worked and which ones didn’t so you can be ready next year!
We’d love to hear if you have any thoughts and ideas on Christmas campaigns, so please do get in touch.