For influencers, business owners, and marketers alike, the Designs.ai Social Media Marketing Calendar is an excellent tool to leverage upon holidays or important dates for cohesive marketing campaigns. Successful digital marketing during holiday seasons has been proven to heighten brand awareness, loyalty, engagement, and conversion. With our mini tool, you won’t miss any of these valuable opportunities and will have the outlook to go further and build resilient digital marketing campaigns by planning ahead to target a variety of important dates.
We are here to help you understand how digital marketing campaigns are rising in prominence post COVID-19, the uses of our Social Media Calendar, and offer tips to keep in mind for successful digital marketing campaigns during holiday seasons.
Make sure to continue reading so that you don’t miss out on all the points covered in this blog post.
Effect of COVID-19
In a piece of market research conducted by Deloitte, the pivot to digital business is clear from the digital sales growth of 19% in the first quarter of 2020 in comparison to that in 2019. Moreover, according to a report by Adobe, COVID-19 has accelerated the pace of the eCommerce landscape by about four to six years, with consumers spending $82.5 billion online in May 2020 alone. This is a 77% increment from the same time last year. With this unexpected maturity in the developing digital market, it is clear that successful digital marketing is a necessary process to capitalize on. This pivot can also be owed to the increasing barriers on face-to-face marketing, live events, and conferences, forcing businesses to move such approaches online.
All of these changes hurt B2B companies who rely on trade shows or exhibitions to network and build consumer relations and small businesses who thrive on word-of-mouth referrals or the strength of their hard-won reputation. Even larger businesses or those with a significant online presence will have to reallocate a significant portion of their expenses into creating successful digital marketing campaigns, search engine optimization (SEO), and influencer-led campaigns.
Given current circumstances, as well as the general increment in consumer’s digital presence, the Social Media Calendar is an effective stepping stone for brands and companies to attain a better understanding of the timelines in which they can structure successful digital marketing campaigns during the holiday seasons to ensure effective engagement with their audience.
Maximizing the use of the Social Media Marketing Calendar
1. Free, online, easily accessible, and navigable collection of national, international, and social media holidays
With our calendar, you’ll be able to attain a global outlook and awareness of events and important dates tailored to various cultures, religions, or countries. In addition, you can leverage upon social media holidays, such as #internationalpancakeday or #dayofawesomeness which could potentially be relevant to your business.
With this, you can plan further ahead and be more ambitious with your marketing campaigns, as well as strategically participate in worldwide or niche movements in line with the branding of your business.
2. Detailed description of context and celebrating countries
Beyond listings of important dates, the Social Media Calendar goes above and beyond with each holiday listing containing useful information, including a detailed description and celebrating countries. For businesses looking to expand to other regions, understanding the context of important dates is a great starting point to plan out successful digital marketing campaigns overseas.
Designs.ai’s Social Media Calendar makes sure that you don’t miss out on any opportunities to increase profits and build trust with your audience. With this useful collection of information, you can engage your audience with countdowns, giveaways, and targeted questions to capitalize on the festivities.
3. Refine your digital marketing opportunities with access to integrative AI-powered marketing software through a single subscription
Designs.ai’s Social Media Calendar is free to use, and a single subscription grants access to innovative tools that simplify and speed up the marketing process. We are here for your business through this unprecedented and trying period, offering free access, offers, and bundles to support any of your marketing needs.
For example, through Videomaker, holiday videos can easily be made in a matter of minutes. Moreover, Designmaker allows for easy access to beautiful designs and illustrations to be included in the branding toolkit of products or campaigns.
Tips for digital marketing during holiday seasons
1. Be prepared.
Gift-giving is a commonality for celebrations all around the world. Therefore, it is important to target both international and regional audiences to generate brand loyalty throughout the different holiday seasons. This could also extend to discounts or bundling of products relevant to the season or holiday period to maximize profits and customer satisfaction.
By preparing ahead of time, you will be able to set a timeline to better engage with other marketing means, creating a cohesive campaign over emails, launch sites, and social media pages.
2. Tailor your message to your target audience.
Optimize your campaigns to selected platforms targeting your audience on where they spend most of their time. Also, it is also important to identify when people use or want your product and analyze the profitability of previous promotions to highlight the goods to be discounted. Next, make sure that your message gets across with relevant content. Examples include choosing a hashtag to grow your campaign and including relevant photos to enhance your message.
3. Always adapt to reception.
Information is power. Adapting your responses and posts throughout your campaign involves real-time monitoring of consumer response of content to further refine your campaign. By doing so, your message and goals grow increasingly aligned to what your customers wish to see, and will enhance brand loyalty and overall response in sales, etc.
4. Stand out from the competition.
As it is unlikely that your competitors are not engaging with digital marketing similarly during the holiday period, you should try to make your campaign stand out by being creative but still keeping it relevant to your business. Therefore, content ideas for your campaign should align with your current business goals and should not be too complex so it can be executed successfully.
Incorporating an influencer strategy into your campaign is an effective way to break through the competition. Although the holidays present great opportunities for engagement, it is also the most competitive time for businesses to be “heard”. Leveraging on influencers by incorporating them into your marketing timeline will draw responses from their followers to try your products. By breaking down the “noise” of your competitors, an influencer strategy is a great way to broaden brand awareness and engage with potential customers. Going beyond countdowns and clues of upcoming collaborations with influencers, ensure that you maximize engagement further with affiliate links on influencer content offering promotion codes and discounts.
5. Avoid false urgency.
A common mistake in an effort to drive up sales, it is rather more important to ensure that your campaign creates a real reason for consumers to make a purchase. Experienced shoppers are conditioned to search for special offers and the lowest prices, especially during periods where most businesses would set up special offers or promotions. Great ways to create appeal to your audience include genuine-time exclusive sales or donations of a portion of holiday proceeds to meaningful causes such as charitable donations to NGOs or to tree-planting initiatives to offset the carbon footprint from the delivery process.
Discounts and giveaways should be balanced with creating a relationship with your customers, as you should not devalue your brand to the point where consumers form the opinion that it is cheap, deterring them from making a repeat purchase. It is important to note that your goal for holiday marketing should not just be generating revenue, but also connecting with and converting customers who will return to purchase in the off-season. Continued consumer retention and conversion are the keys to ensure the success of your long-term marketing plan.
6. Don’t neglect the returning customers.
Given the appeal of holiday seasons, it is likely that consumers will include a healthy mix of new and returning customers. It is important to note that returning and net-new customers differ in their purchasing behaviors, so this factor should be adapted into your digital marketing strategy as well.
For your returning customers, look back at buying patterns in previous sales seasons, analytics of people who have visited your business in the past, and people who belong in loyalty programs under your businesses. By comparing the data of these consumers over different time periods, you will be able to get a better understanding of how effective your previous campaigns have been in retaining your customers.
Looking forward
In the creation of time-exclusive marketing campaigns presently in conjunction with the increased consumer presence online, choosing the right timing to pursue a digital marketing campaign is a great way to connect with consumers and boost profitability, if you play the right cards. Especially in the present time where many businesses are moving their operations into the sphere of the Internet, in creating a successful digital marketing strategy across holiday seasons, you will be able to cater to a broader audience and increase your market share to boost awareness and profitability.
As a parting note, you should treat the process of digital marketing as a marathon rather than a sprint, as improvements made after every campaign will benefit the next. With this, start identifying opportunities that fit your business and come up with campaigns to capitalize on them!
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