How to Create a Viral Holiday Marketing Campaign?

In marketing, finding the perfect opportunity is the key to success. The holiday season is ideal for almost all industries to show their marketing talents. Many people are ready to buy products/services from you during the holiday season. Hence, you must get your marketing team working on a holiday marketing campaign and start promoting them as soon as possible.

In this blog, we will brief you on creating viral holiday marketing campaigns that will give your brand the limelight it deserves. Moreover, we will also explore some examples of excellent holiday marketing campaigns to inspire you.

Steps to Build Successful Marketing Campaigns

Irrespective of whether you are a B2B or B2C organization, the holiday season is the single most valuable time to sell your products actively. Therefore, you and your marketing team must give your everything to creating holiday season marketing campaigns.

The most effective holiday marketing initiatives are the product of a well-thought-out plan and diligent implementation of that approach. Let’s take a look at a few things you can do to start your campaign rolling.

Step #1: Choose a theme for your campaign

Choosing the most relevant and appropriate theme for your marketing campaign is crucial to its success. The theme you select must go well with the message you’d like to convey with your campaign. All your marketing efforts that follow will adhere to this theme.

Be sure that the theme you select is relevant to your brand and intrigues your target audience. Your theme should stand out from that of your competitors. Also, it is essential to listen to what your customers want. It can help you find relevant themes.

Step #2: Choose realistic goals for the campaign

This step will determine what you would like to see your campaign achieve. Goals are essential to measuring the success of your campaign. More importantly, they are crucial for framing the content, visuals, and everything that comes down the road. Without proper goals, your marketing team has no direction they can point their efforts towards. So, establishing practical goals will help them create actionable steps and plans.

During the holiday season, you might want to see higher conversion rates. Or you might want to create brand awareness, and through that, you may want to increase the rate of existing customers making another purchase. Likewise, the goals of the holiday season marketing campaigns vary based on what the business goals are.

However, one can broadly categorize them into three categories: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversions. For example, creating engagement on your social media posts comes under consideration. Whereas encouraging people to make certain decisions that will impact your revenue comes under conversions. Hence, you must understand the various types of goals your campaign could have before listing them out.

Step #3: Get to know your target audience

The holiday season is always buzzing with products that suit every age group, gender, and other such demographics. Yet, for a holiday marketing campaign to be successful, careful selection of the target audience is of the utmost importance. You might have products in your catalog both for youth and the elderly. So, it is vital that you carefully decide what will sell more during the holidays.

Assume that you sell nutrition supplements. You have two product categories, one that suits every age group and the other that suits only young adults. So, what product would you select to be the star of your campaign? An average marketer will tell you to choose the first one. But a wise one will ask you to perform a current market survey to determine which one performs better. And then, you’d have to select the group that is more likely to buy these supplements as your target audience.

Step #4: Construct the holiday offer

Viral holiday marketing campaigns go viral because they offer discounts during the festive season. Customers expect you to offer discounts, free shipping, BOGOs, and the like this time of year. Listen to what your target audience wants from your business. This will help you arrive at a compelling campaign offer during the brainstorming sessions.

Plus, it is always a good idea to create a landing page dedicated to your campaign offer. Successful holiday marketing campaigns from popular brands always have a webpage that details everything about the campaign.

For example, a company runs a contest on social media to create brand awareness, and in return for the audience’s participation, they give out discounts. They have a holiday marketing campaign that increases their engagement, website visits, and conversion rates. So, now the landing page should have all the information about what it offers, how to participate, and specific terms and conditions.

Step #5: Choose how you reach your audience

The next step in creating the best holiday marketing campaigns for your brand is to choose a channel to communicate the offer you designed. Social media is the most effective way of expressing your holiday season marketing campaigns. However, you must also not ignore the potential of other channels such as email marketing, PPC Ads, blogging, etc.

The people coming to you through these channels are just prospects, and you have to turn them into nurtured leads by providing them with pertinent information about your product/service. Your nurturing must encourage them to make a buying decision. But, be sure that your templates, posts, and other visual elements match the theme of your campaign.

Step #6: Establish backup plans

Make a contingency plan for each phase of your holiday marketing campaign approach; if you don’t have time to write a big article about Christmas gift ideas, make a quick social media post about it. Because writing, creating, and approving a social media post takes less time. These backup plans will help you make your campaign one of the best holiday marketing campaigns. Simply because you have got a foolproof way to ensure that your month-long efforts do not go to waste.

Step #7: Record your actions

Almost all famous and viral holiday marketing campaigns result from learning from past mistakes. You must use your past campaigns to improve your current campaign. Similarly, take note of all your current marketing efforts to be useful for you during the following year’s preparation.

Finally, it is all about standing out from the crowd. Try to rope in influencers who are currently the talk of the town. It will help you boost awareness of your campaign and your brand. Now that you know how to create a holiday marketing campaign, let us look at some of the best.

Examples Of Great Holiday Marketing Campaigns

1. McDonald’s “Famous Orders”:

Every year, McDonald’s “Famous Orders” gains enormous popularity among the customers. It increases the frequency of people buying from the restaurant chain and thus increases sales during the holiday season. What’s unique about these kinds of viral holiday marketing campaigns is their various promotion methods.

The Famous Orders have your favorite celebrity’s order as a package meal. They hire these celebrities to promote their products as well as merchandise. They’ve roped in none other than Mariah Carey, the Queen of Christmas, to encourage their Mariah Carey-themed merch and their exclusive “Mariah Menu” for this year’s campaign.

The fans who order through McDonald’s mobile app will stand a chance to win free Mariah Carey merchandise. The campaign sure does make us feel nostalgic, with “All I Want For Christmas” playing in the Ad’s background.

2. Microsoft’s Find Your Joy

A campaign that runs not only for personal gain but also to spread a message is sure to win. Microsoft’s Find Your Joy ad campaign did precisely that. Instead of focusing on the features of their products, they reminded us that we have to show appreciation and love for our near and dear ones.

You can find the 2020 commercial of a pup trying to get the attention of its family members, but they are too busy using Microsoft products. It’s a moment most people can relate to; thus reminding us the reason for the season – spending quality time with those you love and who love you.

Conclusion

As you can see from the above examples of excellent holiday marketing campaigns, it is essential to do something personal and unique. That is what attracts the customers. As the holiday season approaches, you can see many brands bring out their best holiday marketing campaigns.

Don’t get gloomy by brands doing better than you. There is always space to learn and evolve when it comes to marketing. We hope you have a holiday marketing campaign and a delightful holiday that rocks!