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4 Tips for Successful Holiday Marketing Strategies

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It’s that time of year again! The end of summer is on the horizon; meaning it’s time to start planning your holiday marketing strategies.

Since it’s still summer, it’s easy to be complacent. The reality is that approximately 40% of consumers start holiday shopping before Halloween. So the earlier you start planning, the higher the likelihood of a successful campaign.

Here are four marketing tips you can follow to get a headstart on your holiday marketing strategies:

1. Create a Plan of Action

When preparing for any project, it’s important to start with a plan. The benefit to starting this early is that if you run into any problems or flaws, you will have enough time to solve them and avoid more in the future. It's important to dedicate time upfront to gather inspiration and ideas on the latest holiday marketing trends so you can build a plan that can anticipate roadblocks or delays.

The most common problems that put the most risk on a project are time slippage, scope creep, quality issues, and people problems. You can avoid all these by getting a head start and using the lead time to develop innovative holiday marketing strategies.

2. Make Tweaks to Your Go-to-Market Strategy

There are many different types of strategies to use when it comes to introducing your offering and getting shoppers interested. A go-to-market strategy is extremely helpful when it comes to delivering the right product to the right audience. The GTM strategy is a plan that focuses on how to reach the right customers and gain an advantage in the market.

By creating holiday marketing strategies early on, you will be able to avoid the stress of the holiday frenzy and not worry about getting overwhelmed.

3. Identify What Resources You’ll Need Early

Starting your holiday digital marketing campaign plans late could result in a limit of available resources—reducing your access to the resources or support that you’ll need. This is easily avoided by being prepared with a list. Starting early will give you enough time to make the right phone calls or shop around for your best options, without having to worry about rushing in order to make it before the upcoming deadline.

Maricel Rivera, from Comindware, recommends you,“Book or acquire the resources you will need before diving headfirst into the project… Booking resources ahead of time can also help you more easily manage your project’s budget.”

4. Create Holiday-Specific Ads, Emails, and Promotions

Create content early - this is one of the biggest time-saving holiday marketing tips that can also help to drive customer excitement. Getting a jump start on content enables you to run through any internal approval processes before the holiday rush and focus your attention on executing a successful campaign.

Ryan Pinkham, from Constant Contact, advises, “Telling your readers and fans about upcoming holiday promotions or giving them a sneak peek at new seasonal products is the best way to build holiday excitement and give them the exclusive content they want.” Sending emails to customers about new upcoming products for the holidays is a good way to get them to look forward to the holidays with you. By embracing innovate holiday marketing strategies, like building enthusiasm through sneak-peak emails, you can encourage your customers to start planning their shopping list, starting with your products at the very top!

Putting out emails early—that give insight into future holiday deals and sales—could excite customers and prepare them for shopping for the holidays. Also, tailoring campaigns to specific types of customers, not only gives you more variety of ads to create, but also requires more time to make. Planning your campaign early gives you enough time to do this.

Hopefully, these tips and tricks will help optimize your holiday marketing strategies and get your holiday campaigns up and running. Good luck!

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