‘Tis the season for festive playlists and twinkly, warm-hearted marketing campaigns. Yes, it’s Christmas, and it’s time to push for your end of year sales targets. Jolly! If the idea of creating a Christmas campaign fills you with dread, don’t worry. I have some ideas for festive content that goes beyond announcing special offers.
Tell a Story
People love feeling warm and fuzzy at this time of year. Give your customers and clients an insight into your business that gets into the festive spirit!
Whether you tell the story of how your business’ started in the form of the 12 days of Christmas, or you share some stories about the good work you do within your community, the idea here is to keep things merry and bright.
Help Your Customers Find the Right Gifts
Christmas can be a stressful time as well as a happy one, so offering some help or guidance is one of the most useful things you can do. Creating emails or blog posts with thoughtful gift guides are always popular at this time of year, especially if you write them as listicles, or even create a video to sit alongside it.
Share Other Companies’ Great Content
It might sound counter-productive, but trust me. Christmastime is awash every year with amazing festive content, and even if you do your best to ignore it from a commercial point of view, your customers will be seeing it anyway. So why not get involved?
Make a list of your favourite Christmas adverts (I plan to next month!), or write a take-down of the worst or most tone-deaf of the year. Create a definitive guide of the best Christmas deals and sales of the season. Point your customers towards this years’ top toys, most popular gifts or must-have fashions.
But while you’re doing all this, remember to share your own great Christmas offers, deals and content!
Brace Yourself for Christmas Complaints
It happens. Christmas is the busiest time of year for retail businesses, but it’s also busy further down the supply chain too. Whether you’re a toy shop or a print business, it’s a time of pressure and deadlines that just get shorter and shorter.
So, be aware that while you’re under strain, so is everyone else. No matter how amazing your customer service is, you are going to get a couple of complaints through the net. Head off the festive grumbling with content that makes lodging a complaint easy and efficient, and even better, create a blog post or send an email out that helps your customers and clients get the best possible service even at your busiest times. Include things like:
● Your busiest opening hours, so customers can plan their trip
● Realistic delivery times during the Christmas period, to manage expectations
● Advice on beating queues or avoiding delivery delays
● Offers of bespoke or personalised help and support
● Direct contact details
● Tracking information — you could even write a blog post about how customers and clients can track their goods.
My advice here is: be honest, and be accountable. Make sure your social media managers are totally up-to-date with your complaints procedures, and give your whole team the same information you give to your customers to make sure you’re all on the same page.
Need some help with your content and marketing over the Christmas period? Let’s talk today about how I can support you with a short-term digital marketing solution.