With the holiday season right around the corner, having a cohesive marketing strategy across your different channels is imperative. Not only can a well thought out marketing plan increase your bottom line, it can keep some of the panic out of the season. Today we are going to look at planning and connecting your content across various channels.
Not Every Channel Caters to Every Customer
People consume media, and therefore your brand, in different ways. Having a firm grip on who your customers are and where they browse, shop and buy is a powerful tool in your strategy. This can not only increase the efficiency of your marketing budget; it can save your team valuable time. A mistake we often see at Lett Direct, is clients attempting presence on multiple social media networks. What typically happens is they lack the bandwidth to support all these platforms, so social media falls by the wayside. This makes the entire brand look, at best, disorganized and, at worst, out of business.
Mine the data at your fingertips to discover who your customers are and where they shop. Don’t assume! If you are a catalog retailer, tap the co-ops to provide this information. Check through your Google Analytics which can show you where your traffic comes from and how what channel drives the most conversions. Having a good grasp on this information is crucial for our time and budgets. Maybe social media marketing isn’t for your brand or maybe you haven’t properly invested the time and resources to reach the potential available.
A Calendar is Clutch
While we never recommend “winging it,” this is the truest during the insanity of the holiday season. Build a content calendar now if you haven’t already done so. Seriously, stop reading this article and go build your calendar! Creating a calendar through a program like Google Sheets makes it available to your entire marketing team. Your email person always knows what is happening on social, while the PPC manager(s) can see and prepare for any upcoming sales. Don’t forget to include mail dates and in-home dates for your catalog.
A Cohesive Plan
Yes, when you have a big sale or event, it should be promoted across your channels. That doesn’t mean, though, that you should use the exact same content. Creating a variety of content is an idea many retailers struggle with. This goes back to your demographics and where they purchase your product. Say you have your annual Big Holiday Sale:
- you will want to write compelling copy on your site with a corresponding hero image
- send an email with different copy and the same image
- post a version of a very similar image on Facebook with different copy
- create and post a short video on IG which explains the details of the sale
These are the basic recommendations; the more time you have the more refined your holiday content strategy can be. You want cohesive messaging across channels with a slightly different twist that appears to the consumer on that platform. Don’t be tempted to recycle content across platforms or for the duration of the sale.
Managing the Workflow
If this sounds like a lot of work, it is. Various apps like Hootsuite can lend a hand by allowing more of your content to be preloaded and scheduled for publishing at a time of your choosing. What we have found to be most helpful in preparing for the holiday season is creating and organizing all copy, video, images, and other content ahead of time. Any 3rd parties, such as influencers, should have exactly what they need for promo posts or sweepstakes.
If your team has everything they need for the upcoming three months, time is freed up for any fires that will inevitably pop up over the holiday season. Plus, your team will have more time to engage with customers, answer any customers questions and provide a better customer service experience. No one will be scrambling to put the finishing touches on images or banners; videos with the corresponding copy will be ready to upload at a moment’s notice. Opportunities for reaching more customer are created, not missed when the work is organized and completed ahead of time.
Lastly, it is not to late! You might look at the calendar and feel overwhelmed. Perhaps you don’t have time to build out the next three months, but what about the next month? Break the season apart so building your calendar is more manageable. And if you need advice or an extra hand, feel free to reach out to [email protected] or visit www.lettdirect.com!