November 2020: Holiday Marketing Tips
Woohoo—this is the inaugural edition of The Good Stuff! Thanks for being among the first to sign up.
I want to kick things off by addressing a timely marketing challenge that gets tougher every year—and this year is on track to be the most chaotic ever (of course).
Holiday marketing. The window for holiday campaigns has expanded to consume almost a third of the year. More dollars are getting pumped into holiday advertising each year, often making ads more expensive because of the competition.
We all have something we really need to promote right now. For nonprofits, it’s end-of-year fundraising. For businesses, it’s getting your products or services stuffed into as many stockings as possible.
Here are my top recommendations to shine bright and bring home the bacon:
1. Run social or display ads targeting the fans you already have
I recommend doing this in two ways: by retargeting your website visitors who haven't yet purchased or donated, and by uploading a spreadsheet of your most engaged email contacts who haven't yet converted, to target these people directly. These folks are your low-hanging fruit because you don’t need to explain yourself. They already know you; you can hit ‘em straight with your ask.
2. Send a bunch of emails
“Wow—you know what I love? I love that <insert name of your business or organization> hasn’t been sending me many emails. I think I’ll get out my credit card and see what they're up to!” If a single person thinks this about you, it will be a Christmas miracle.
Every business and organization is pushing out more emails this time of year for good reason. You should send at least one email per week between now and Christmas, then hit your list with a series of “last chance” emails in the last few days of the year.
3. Make your designs festive and bright
If you and Canva aren't already close, it's time. She's packed with lovely, festive templates you can use to create ads, email banners, and anything else under the sun. Sign up for a 30-day free trial of Canva Premium or get it for free if you’re a nonprofit to access their wonderland of templates, photos, and icons.
Aside: If you have trouble sourcing high-quality photos, go to Canva right now and download ten, twenty, or a hundred for free with your Premium account or trial. Big problem solved.
4. Testing, testing
Now is not the time to put all of your golden eggs in one basket. Every holiday ad campaign I’m running right now is testing multiple creative assets (i.e. graphics, GIFs, videos), headlines, ad text variations, and audiences, significantly increasing the likelihood of striking gold. Facebook’s Dynamic Creative functionality makes this easy; their mad-creepy algorithm will do 99% of the work for you, learning and then prioritizing the top-performing combinations.
In addition to testing different ads, every email you send out over the next six weeks (and ‘til the end of time) should A/B test something—whether it’s the button text, photo, sender, or subject line. Why not double your chances of getting it right?
A note on messaging:
A lot of nonprofits and small businesses are still crying out with messages of despair, e.g. "In this unprecedented year, when everything has gone to shit, we need you now more than ever." Oy. We all have COVID fatigue. My best advice is to do the exact opposite, which will make you stand out: Distract and delight people with a holiday campaign that is joyful or even—dare I say—funny! Using humor right now is not tasteless, it's doing people a service. We all need it, and people will pay for it; they're more likely to give to or buy from you if you warm their hearts and make them chuckle.
Feel free to email me if you have specific questions on any of these tips, or if you have a more complex question you'd like me to answer in a future newsletter.
Sing loud for all to hear!
