Proactive Marketing Tips for Effective Holiday Promotions

According to a recent eMarketer forecast total US retail sales this holiday season is expected to climb 3.8% to $1.008 trillion, making 2019 the first-ever trillion-dollar holiday season. Try these four proactive marketing tips to help get a jump on your planning and to ensure that your business has a happy holiday season!

1. Pay Attention to Consumer Trends

Now's the time to start digging into data. What types of products are your target consumers buying right now? What do they want more than anything? How are they spending their money?

When you know what products your customers want, you know which ones to push during your holiday promotions. You can push those items through your text marketing, email marketing, and social media campaigns to entice potential buyers and boost sales exponentially.

2. Develop Fresh Content

From text marketing to social media to blog posts, start planning your content now. You should fill out your editorial calendar for the weeks and months leading up to the holidays, so you know exactly what you'll post and when.

Before you start writing and preparing that content, though, take a look in the rearview mirror. What worked best for you during the last holiday season? What worked for your competitors? You can even research non-competing brands to "steal", or better yet, "borrow" promotional strategies that led to increased engagement and conversions.

3. Double Your Ad Spend

You have to spend money to make money, right? This is especially true during the holiday season. Entrepreneur guest writer Eric Samson recommends doubling your ad spend when you figure out which creatives drive the most conversions.

You've already prepared your editorial calendar, so you know what you'll post. Run tests on every ad, text marketing strategy, and email you send to figure out what graphics, images, and copy work best. Using that data, ramp up your ad spend to reflect the results so you can drive more sales.

4. Create Your Own Hashtag

A holiday hashtag can make your holiday promotions more festive and less sales-oriented. For instance, one year, ASOS used the hashtag #instaadvent, which resulted in more than 2,000 photos from followers and fans. Those photos exposed ASOS to new audiences and drove sales.

Create your own holiday hashtag, but don't limit its use to social media. You can add it to your text marketing messages, your emails, and your blog. Create a community around that hashtag and make sure your audience knows what it means.

In other words, create a purpose behind the hashtag to which your specific audience can relate. For instance, if you sell pet products, you could use a hashtag like #christmaspups (and throw your brand name in there) to celebrate dog lovers.

The holidays will get here faster than you think. It's time to prepare now with a solid strategy.

If you're not using text marketing yet, you're falling behind the curve. Get ahead of the holidays and sign up for free now.