B2B Digital Marketing for the Holidays Made Easy
It’s that time of year again; every grocery store is selling pumpkins, your neighbors have spookily decorated their front lawns, the air is crisper, and soon all we’ll hear in the stores is Christmas music. That’s right – it’s holiday season.
This time of year is extremely busy for businesses, big and small. Larger organizations are typically more slow to move and produce items so holiday marketing should definitely be on the radar of any savvy marketing team. What I’m saying is, start now. Ready? Set. Go!
B2B Marketing: Preparing for the holidays
Many industries see a decline in web traffic and digital engagement around this time. As employees take time off and customers get busy with their own holiday activities and wrapping up end-of-year projects, this is to be expected. Luckily there are a few things you can do to shift your digital marketing strategies slightly, and be less stressed about your B2B holiday marketing efforts – and still see results!
Deck the halls of social!
Hopefully your B2B organization has already recognized the importance of social media, not only for B2C companies. (More on that here, in case you need more convincing.) This time of year provides plenty of photo ops, so if your Facebook and Instagram feeds need a little more cheer consider sharing a look into festive office decor and gingerbread making contests. Don’t forget to interact with the community!
Social is also a good arena for visually sharing information on volunteer hours and impact and holiday matching programs your business might take part in…
Do you give back?
What causes are your employees involved in? Towards the end of the year, many folks participate in food drives or marathons for various charities or other fundraising efforts and now is a great time to highlight this awesome work, particularly on social media.
Click here to download the complete guide to timing your holiday campaigns.
The volunteering and fundraising efforts might not take place for a month or so and that’s ok. You know that it’s coming up and can start strategizing how to best share it with your audience. Start by letting your employees know you want to highlight key people and will be asking for photos and other pertinent information. If you have a blog or newsroom section of your website, be sure to do a write-up highlighting how your organization gives back!
Start design task now.
We recently wrote about end-of-year design tasks that should be started early and one of them was holiday graphics. Perhaps you want to create a little year-in-review video to share with your followers? Or maybe you want to send a card out to your customers? Set a meeting with your design team ASAP to go over project details.
And don’t forget about email!
That holiday card mentioned above could be sent out via email. Or you could use email to promote your holiday giving program. Be sure to think about how best to incorporate call to actions that make people want to click – so that they’ll be happy to have landed on your website.
Plan any paid marketing campaigns.
The B2B industry is a little quieter this time of year, at least compared to their retailer counterparts, due to factors like a longer buying cycle and a more complex decision-making process. Despite this, it can still be a great time to run discount, promo, or general awareness campaigns.
If you’ve decided to run an end of the year marketing campaign, do your research and promote it well. Is a Black Friday campaign right for you? Ask around and see if other B2Bs have had positive experiences. Then set goals and develop your offer. Before launching your campaign, identify the key marketing channels you want to use (email, blog, social, etc.) Be sure to budget for promotion. Google Ads, social media ads, and banner ads can all work together to get the results you want. People like discounts so make sure you’re offer is a good one. Or go another route and create great educational content that you can use to raise awareness about your business!
Post less frequently.
It’s fine to publish less content over the holidays. There, doesn’t that make your job easier? 🙂 One, there isn’t usually a whole lot of fresh content to share. You should still be sharing curated content but it can be a lot less. Two, people are busy with their own holiday activities and might not be spending as much time looking at your content. That being said, you should still create original content. But you can certainly reduce the amount that you publish over the holiday season. As always, we’re starting this process now so that you can create content well ahead of schedule, automate the publishing, and be ready to take it easy during the hectic months ahead.
An easy win is to repurpose your content. Reshare the most popular pieces you’ve created or curated. Update and republish previous blogs or articles. Review the past year, highlighting your successes. All these, coupled with the other social strategies discussed above, should give you plenty of content for your audience to engage in.
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B2B holiday marketing campaigns can be really great. They can also fall flat so be sure to consult your creatives now and plan it all out. It’s all about being personable and showing the human side of your business! Whether that means snapping a few photos at the company holiday party or highlighting your employee’s fundraising efforts, be sure to plan ahead so you’re not left scrambling at the end of the year.
Overwhelmed by the prospect of holiday marketing? Get in touch!
