The festive period is upon us, which as we all know is a period of excess spending. In fact, the “golden quarter” may be a platinum one, with PWC statistics indicating consumers are prepared to spend 20% more than last year. This is set to be a very lucrative period for businesses, but in order to make the most of this period, businesses will have to adapt their marketing strategy. Luckily, marketing strategy is just what we at Social Chameleon specialise in, and we’re on hand to help you ramp up your Christmas content efforts.

Dasher, Dancer, Vixen and Content

The old adage of “content is king” is never truer during festive periods like Christmas. Content consumption is always higher during this period, so not only should you be increasing your content marketing efforts (without compromising quality), but you should also look to embrace the season with Christmas themed content. It’s always key that you make content useful for your users, and making them current with the festivities is a good way of doing this. Christmas blog posting shouldn’t just be recycled content with festive keywords thrown in, it should be produced with the user in mind.

Quite often we see many businesses trying to “tick a box” with Christmas content, and undoubtedly this type of content never really works. The question you should be asking is “what will my users find really helpful this Christmas”. Christmas content should be delivering a want or need to the user that is specific to the time period. Many times, we’ve seen really helpful content that can be used throughout the year wasted through the insertion of Christmas themes. Seasonality can really affect your click through rate. So, adding “Christmas 2021” to your blog post can be affective at the time, but if it’s really useful content that can be used throughout the year, then in January your click through rates will undoubtedly reduce. Below are a few tips you can use to help make your content a bit more Christmassy:

Google Trends –
Utilising the data from Google trends is a really great way of seeing what people want and the topical subjects at the time. Adapting your content to google trends is a great way to make your content current.

Christmas Nostalgia –
Christmas is an emotional time of year, if it’s not watching the little ones faces as they open their presents, it’s a bottle of Bucks Fizz and the ending of Love Actually. Evoking emotions can really make your brand and content memorable and evoking them through Christmas nostalgia is a great way of making your content festive and brand memorable. Happy, sad, or even controversial content can do wonders for your brand at this time of year.

The Time of Giving –
Corporate philanthropy is something else you should be considering as part of your Christmas marketing strategy. It can be a great way of evoking emotion, helping others in need and aligning your business with purpose and/or a cause it really cares about. In fact, aligning your business with purpose is great for sales, as recent research revealed that consumers are four times more likely to purchase from a brand with purpose.

Santa likes this

Social media use is always high during the festive periods; creating fun and engaging content on the run up to Christmas can be a really handy way of increasing your following, and even boost your sales as part of your wider business strategy. This will often coincide with some of your web content. Your social content should be about engaging your users and NOT trying to sell them things constantly. Social media is a soft sell, if you are constantly linking to your products for sales, it won’t do your engagement any good from both the social media algorithm’s perspective, and more importantly the user’s. Whilst you should always ensure your social posts are specific to your audience, here are a few ideas that may work well for you:

Christmas Giveaways –
Everyone loves a freebie, especially at Christmas. Christmas giveaways can really ramp up your online engagement and following. We often see brands utilising strategies such as live video streaming Christmas draws and people tagging. People tagging involves getting users to tag their friends in a specific post of yours for the chance to win a prize. An example of this could be: “for a chance to win 4-person holiday to Lapland, tag three friends you’d take with you” – this can increase both your social following and sales.

Scheduling Content –
Scheduling content on key days of the festive period is a really good way of staying relevant. Of course, social media marketers won’t be posting on Christmas day but they can schedule posts to coincide with key events. Key events such as Christmas films and the Queen’s Speech always do pretty well in terms of engagement, so it might be a good time to invest in the TV times magazine.

Polls –
Polls can be a really handy way of getting customer insight and engagement. We’ve seen many instances of businesses putting “this or that” polls up of their products, which can give really useful insight. We’ve also seen a number of Christmas related polls to drive engagement such as “is Die Hard a Christmas film?” – (Of course it is!)

That’s a wrap

There are many other forms of Christmas marketing that you can embrace that we have also seen do really well. Making your Christmas ads more festive can increase your sales, as well as Christmas discounts like “12 Days of Christmas” and even offering free delivery. These are all great ways of marketing your business this Christmas. If you’d like more information on how to up your festive game, then get in touch with our team who will be happy to assist, and if we don’t see you before… Merry Christmas and a happy new year!