It’s mid-October, Thanksgiving has already passed for Canadians, but it looms for Americans, so too does Halloween and not long after that Christmas. It’s a time of year where holidays are abundant and a whole new season is sweeping out the warm weather.
This is the time of year when people are searching for new products, gifts, inspirations, and recipes. It’s also the time of year when aligning your marketing with the coming season and holidays is a smart move. The holiday season will allow you the chance to reach a new audience and attract new customers through smart themed marketing.
We’ve thrown together some creative ways to connect your marketing to a season or holiday.
I’ll start by mentioning that not every holiday may be right for your business, so when you’re thinking about the upcoming holidays make sure to build out a strategy around the holidays that are applicable to your industry.
That being said, blogs are the perfect opportunity to get ahead with seasonal keywords, and to connect your products or services with that holiday. Search out topics that relate your business to the season and then write them with your keywords in mind.
Some blog topic examples by industry:
During holidays, you should be really focused on delighting your customers. It’s the perfect opportunity to humanize your brand by giving your audience highly shareable graphics.
Your graphics could include quotes, messages of thanks or well wishes. They could be funny, the could be bright, they could be cartoons or images that tell a story. You know your brand and your business, it’s up to you to find what fits, but always keep those potential customers in the back of your mind.
Here's an example of how Hughes & Co. celebrated the last long weekend of summer with our followers:
If you can provide an offer during a holiday, you’ll have a great promotional tool on hand. The offer could be a coupon or some free content. For example, we at Hughes & Co. could offer free customizable e-cards or facebook shareable graphics to help our audience build out their holiday campaigns.
If you choose to provide an offer you will need to create content around that offer like a landing page, CTA, social shareables etc. in order to really drive the campaign home for your potential customers.
Many social media sites allow for profile and cover photos, great examples include Facebook and Twitter. You can easily swap out your cover photos for something with seasonality. Add a Santa hat to your logo or a few snowflakes, the possibilities are endless.
You should also be researching #hashtags that connect your business to the seasons and be using those hashtags often in your posts.
Seasons and holidays offer the perfect opportunity for you to optimize on long tail seasonal keywords. By creating and optimizing your content with these keywords, you increase your chance of being found by search engines and therefore, new audiences. For example, it will be very difficult for Hughes & Co. to rank in the top 10 searches for the keyword "inbound marketing," but we might just have a chance with "inbound marketing and Halloween." A search term that only grows with popularity around this time.
To further the success of these keywords create strong call-to-actions for the end of your blog posts so that those potential customers have a reason to continue to comb through your website.
Holidays and season changes are a great excuse to have fun with your social media marketing and blogging. Using these suggestions, you can maximize your marketing around a holiday and ideally attract new customers and committed followers.