When it comes to holiday campaigns (or any campaign for that matter), your calendar is your BEST FRIEND. The most important thing you can do right off the bat is figure out your timeline. Once you have dates in place, you have both an objective and a deadline for your work – and everyone knows work with a deadline gets done much faster than work without one.
So what do you need in your calendar and timeline for a successful holiday campaign? Let’s talk about it!
The first thing you need to structure your holiday campaign are your major milestones. This includes:
Launch dates can be any time you want, I would just recommend you give yourself enough time for a full campaign. As I mentioned last week, November 1 is a great launch date, as it more or less officially marks the beginning of the season.
“Change dates” is a term I’ve come up with to describe any milestones in your campaign where something – you guessed it – changes. Whether it’s a change in discount percentage, the adding or removing of a free gift, or just a change in focus, these dates are important to note.
Your end date can also be whenever you want. If you have a product based business, sometimes special promotions will end on your final ship date – the last day you can ship out your product for it to be guaranteed to arrive by Christmas. For a service based business, there is obviously more flexibility. But in reality, you can run a promotion for as short or as long as you’d like. Just make sure the end date on the calendar.
I also want to note that sometimes it’s good to start with the end in mind that is, figure out an end date and then work backwards to determine your launch date. It truly doesn’t matter how you determine each of these dates, it’s just important that you know what they are.
Once your major milestones are in place, it’s time to decide how you want to cascade your customer communications (how’s that for some alliteration!). How do you want to launch? How frequently do you want to touch base?
Maybe you start with weekly communications, then move to 3 times a week, then daily as you get closer to your end date. Some of your communications should be an email or a newsletter, some should be social media – determine how much of each you want to use.
If you choose to run ads, make sure the timing of the ads coincide with your social media posts and emails. If your change dates include promotion changes, make sure the change is reflected in all your posts and communicated clearly.
Ultimately, your promotion should determine your communication style. If you’re doing some sort of flash sale, a lot of touch points with your audience in that short period of time gives them a lot of opportunities to take advantage of the offer. However, if your promotion lasts 2 months, bombarding your potential customers daily or multiple times daily for the entirety of those 2 months will likely turn them off.
Now that you’ve determined when, how, and how often you’re going to communicate, it’s time to decide what you’re going to say. The point I want to make here is that your content should be dictated by your timeline just as much as anything else.
For example, leading up to Thanksgiving, your focus should be on whatever Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, or Cyber Monday deal you’re promoting. After that, the focus should be on Christmas or your target holiday. If you have that final ship date for Christmas gifts, that should be mentioned in nearly every email and social media caption between Cyber Monday and that date. And if your special is going all the way to the end of the year, you can have a New Year’s focus after Christmas is done.
Knowing what you’re promoting at any given time will help flesh out your timeline for an effective holiday campaign. And like I said, once you’ve got dates, frequency, type, and promotion focus, all you need to focus on is the content itself. And while that may be the easy part for some and the hard part for others, it is definitely easier to take it one step at a time instead of trying to figure it all out as you go.
Was this helpful? If you have any other holiday calendar planning tips, I would love to hear about them!
Lorem ipsum dolor amet mumblecore stumptown meggings, poutine quinoa brunch waistcoat fashion axe paleo williamsburg.
With over 15 years of experience, I've worked with countless small businesses just like yours. I can provide you with the tools and resources that will help make marketing less overwhelming.