Holiday Marketing a Bust? Be Prepared for Next Year

When it comes to holiday marketing, many business owners feel deflated when the sales don’t come rolling in. After all, aren’t millions and millions of people spending more money than usual?

Yes, but without a holiday marketing strategy (and the content to back it up) you won’t see the escalating sales numbers you want. If your December marketing plans missed the mark, don’t fret.

There is more than one factor in play for what makes or breaks holiday marketing success. Read on for insights and strategies that will make your holiday marketing a hit come this time next year.

Black Friday and B2B Marketing Are Strange Bedfellows 

Many Internet marketers develop holiday-centric sales plans for both Black Friday and Cyber Monday. If you’re in the B2C marketplace, you’ve got a leg up, because December means consumers purchase gifts for family, friends, and co-workers.

B2B businesses, on the other hand, focus on giving gifts to clients and colleagues. This means that the B2B audience may not be as receptive to holiday marketing—at least not in the traditional sense.

Instead of concentrating on the business-building benefits of your services in a generic way, frame your marketing in a way that grinds the pain most common in December. Maybe your customer base is scrambling to meet end-of-the-year financial targets, or they’re scrambling to meet their own holiday-related sales goals.

In other words, B2B entrepreneurs have to use a different focus than B2C, even though the slant is holiday marketing. When you put the spotlight on the pain, and highlight the benefits with transformational storytelling, your holiday marketing will be vastly more effective.

Is Your Target Audience Receptive to Holiday Marketing? 

Holiday Marketing, as with any strategic marketing content, is not one size fits all. If this year’s efforts went belly-up, you might think that your target market simply isn’t receptive to holiday marketing.

Fair assumption, but it’s not so much a question of is, as a question of how your audience receives holiday marketing. Not everyone feels giddy for Jingle Bells and Egg Nog. But they might be into the idea of unwinding after an arduous year.

Bottom line: just because it’s the holidays, it doesn’t mean that you should throw your most strategic marketing plan out the window. 

Holiday Marketing Requires Marketing Content

(Especially for B2B Sales)

The reason some holiday marketing equates to wasted time and effort?

There’s no marketing content behind it.

So often Internet marketers and small business owners push, push, push during the Holiday season. It’s not so much a race to the finish line, as it is a thoughtful process that drives benefits home with compelling marketing content.

Here’s what we mean by “marketing content:”

• Blogs that cater to your market’s needs and delivers value with content that’s pertinent to what they go through during December.
• Lead generation and opt-ins that culminate with marketing sequences that nurture.
• Freebies (such as white papers and eBooks) that help your marketplace do exactly what they need to.

Ready for content marketing that compels and converts in the holiday season and beyond?

Check out our professional copywriting services.