#holiday hacking

CAUTION: Whatever strategy you choose to adopt to engage with your clients and to win new ones, you have to be genuine. More than any other time of the year, the festive season is a time when people crowd together – so, one unhappy client will get the word out to 100+, not the usual 16 more.  

Holiday marketing can be a bit worry-some given the stiff completion your agency needs to keep up with especially when you’re selling services. We understand that you are always busy and for that reason, we have done the homework and prepared for you the top strategies, tricks and holiday marketing tips your agency should start implementing now. 

Partner with your favorite charity/altruistic marketing

Holidays are normally a great time to launch your charitable activities. Take photos and upload them to your agency’s Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook albums. Ideas? Take photos of your workers participating in charitable events, and utilize your website and social media pages to share them. Your employees will appreciate the opportunity to engage in those activities, and your clients will appreciate your contribution. In addition to showcasing your agency as being social responsible and attracting clients, engaging in charitable activities can help you attract top notch talents. Plus it doesn’t hurt to build an even stronger community on your social channels. It shows you are altruistic.

Do not forget your loyal clients- make them repurchase or upsell support.

Note that loyal clients cost you less on each purchase than newly won clients. Yes we’re talking cost per acquisition both on and offline. Repurchases and upselling support plans are impressively higher. In fact LOTS of businesses also want to take advantage of the holiday season and might want microsites developed of mobile discounts developed in the OS… this is your calling.

Award your loyal clients with branded marketing items, but don’t be too selly. Alternatively, create a group lobby and take some candid shots of people behind your brand and share these with your clients – may be in a CEO note or Christmas newsletter. Share it to your email generated network. You can also include photos of your client’s appreciation event if you hold any, or any other photos you may have taken during a visit to a client's business.

Invest more in social interaction

A report by Facebook tells that social media interaction increase by 47% during the festive season. Here is how you should go about it

Deck the pages: Change your profile picture and cover image to reflect the season. It’s a great way to personalize your brand and to get your visitors thinking about the holiday and your brand. Also is a chance to offer a promo code but this really depends on how selly you want to appear to your clients and hot leads. Halloween is coming up first, so start preparing for a cover or sharable image with a special hashtag. #HalloweenFun

Do you have an internal in-house made app? Most agencies do. Create a contest for it. A sweepstake contest is easy to enter, and is mostly the best for digital agencies that are also selling apps. Users are more likely to share sweepstakes particularly during holidays. Ideally, use an app with an impressive refer-a-friend-feature and ensure your followers get a free entry every time they share. People are less likely to share if they think doing so dilutes their chances of winning. So, make it a win-win situation and your campaign will soon be echoing from the mountains.

Tailor ad/online campaigns: Tailor your campaigns to the coming festive season other than just doing a blanket holiday message. People are ready to spend, but there is also a lot of competition for the dollars. It’s time to stand out. It ALSO helps your holiday search and SEM i.e “Holiday discounts” or “development discounts.” If you don’t have the time to launch a festive season-specific campaign, why not offer a business consultation to anyone who likes your page anytime during this festive season?

Sell Mobile Marketing campaigns to clients during the festive Season.

About 30% of the traffic to a website now comes via mobile devices. And during this festive season, you can reasonably expect this traffic to go up. Your clients want to take advantage of this number, and so do you. Leverage these tips into your holiday marketing campaigns (especially if you build for mobile at your agency.)

Has your business optimized for mobile commerce this season, and is you site load speed good?

Need a microsite or creative gaming app to help sell your product in time for the holiday season?

Have you optimized for local searches? Get Holiday SEM for your business and work with the content in your site.

What operating systems is your business presence on? Research tells that iOS users have more incomes compared to their android counterparts. Come to us for your iOS app.

(For online ad agencies) DayParting: Research tells that during the festive season, tablet and smartphone searches are normally high at nights and weekends. As such, run campaigns at those times.

Forge strategic combinations with others in your industry

It’s possible that most of the agencies in your industry also rely on getting a good chunk of their profit during the holiday season. For instance, forge an agreement with a web agency that offers complementary services and promote each other with an abundance of developers and designers to get the difficult job done faster. For instance, clients are likely to buy an antivirus if it's recommended by apple for their devices than when the same antivirus is marketed by its developer. Similarly, an apple device marketed by Avast as the most secure is likely to see more sale than when the same device is marketed by Apple only.

Email

Research tells that 49% of emails are opened and read on mobile gadgets during the festive season, but only 33% of web agencies send email with links back to their business to mobile landing pages. I hope you can see the opportunity in this technique. Further, 71% of online shoppers tell that emails influence their purchase decisions, and 55% of online marketers agree to using emails as their first holiday marketing tip. Yes these stats are more accurate to ecommerce sites and stores with tangible products than agencies themselves, but if you are looking for a starting point, this is it. Imagine the possibilities.

What strategies have you been utilizing in your holiday marketing campaigns? We’d love to hear from you.  Tweet at us or shoot me an email at [email protected]!

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