Plan your Holiday Campaigns Like a Marketing Pro

Q3 is here, and that means it's time to start planning your holiday marketing strategy. You might be thinking it's a bit earlier to get started, but it's not. Planning is a key aspect of a good marketing campaign. And planning takes time, so let's jump into it.

Begin your campaign planning at the end. Ask yourself these questions: What is the ultimate goal of your marketing campaign? How many leads do you want to generate? How many sales are hoping to make? Beginning with the end in mind gives you a foundation to build your campaign.

Research your market. Spend one to two weeks getting feedback from your target market. Find out what products or services they like the most from your business. Ask what new products or services they would like you to offer. Get a read on what they see as valuable related to the results your products or services can provide them.

Craft your offers. With the first two steps done, you can now begin crafting your offers. Outline which products or services you will be promoting. Determine your pricing structure. Will you discount your services and products? Will you create limited edition packages to market during the holidays? Will leverage "buy 1 get 1" scenarios? The answers to these questions is based heavily on your research results.

Choose your platforms. The next step involves determining where to promote your campaigns. A multi-channel strategy is always ideal. Some channels to consider are social media, email, website content and offline channels. This step is crucial in the success or your holiday marketing campaign.

Create your assets. Create the assets that will support your campaign ahead of time. Organize them into folders for each campaign to save time when your marketing goes live. Make sure to create ALL assets: copy, graphics, videos, landing pages, and lead magnets. This is why it's important to start early.

Build your calendar. Create a campaign calendar. What dates will you start promoting each campaign? How long will the campaign run? What will your posting schedule look like? What will your email schedule look like? Outline it all in a calendar to make it easy to stay on track.

Set your KPIs. Last but not lease, identify your key performance indicators (KPIs). What will you measure to determine the success of your campaigns? Where you get the data? Do you have any data to compare it to from previous years?

The holidays are a time when people spend and spend big. Be sure to stay tuned for more marketing tips to win the holiday season.