What ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ Can Tell Us About Holiday Marketing
The nightmare before Christmas, in this case, is not Tim Burton’s unique tale, but the mindset of every customer and retailer alike. Summer has ended, September rolls over into fall, and those stressful holiday months are now a reality.
How early is too early for holiday planning? For many businesses, holiday marketing begins as soon as summer, and the plan comes even before that. But much like Tim Burton’s overlapping holiday film, The Nightmare Before Christmas, as a business, you don’t want your seasonal marketing ads to collide in a manner that causes customers disgust.
Early holiday planning is good. Many of your customers will do it too. According to Statista, 39% of consumers start purchasing Christmas gifts and Hanukkah gifts before October’s end, 21% percent in November before Thanksgiving and 27% in November after Thanksgiving; the shoppers that start in December are much lower at about 11%.
With that said, the merge from Jack-O-Lanterns to Santa Clauses needs to be handled delicately. Think of stores that start playing Christmas music too early or sticking holiday decorations right next to their goblins and ghouls. Customers will revolt.
But not if you’re smart about it.
Adverts that include a Christmas in July sale’s event where Santa is shown barbequing in a Tommy Bahama shirt and flip-flops or surfing a wave or sipping a drink poolside, at least, add an element of humor to it. This is not to state that you have to go the humorous route; many holiday ads are sentimental and some preparatory for saving on the good deeds you do for others during the holiday season.
Gear up your holiday campaign ideas to tackle the issue of holiday overload with dignity or at least a jest at its expense. Here are some ideas.
1. Merge Holiday Themes
Incorporate your products and services into all holidays and show how they connect seamlessly. What do Christmas, Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, New Year’s, and Halloween all have in common? While it’s a rhetorical question, think about ways that your products and services can improve the quality of each simultaneously.
If there’s a will, there’s a way to make the connection.
Food and beverage. Entertainment. Clothing. Travel and tourism. All cornerstones of each holiday. And, while this doesn’t begin to cover the spectrum of industry, creative thinkers can make these connections with their business too. And so should your customers, whether you sell automobiles, web design, medical services, or ice sculptures. After Halloween has rotted your kids’ teeth, you should get to the family dentist, and what better way to make the rest of your appointments this year than in your new car; if you need to sell your old car before that big holiday purchase, let company X create your website, and so on…there’s always dots to connect.
2. Multimedia Ads
The months from September to December may be prime time for a TV commercial, and with streaming sites like Hulu, the ads are cheaper than ever. Starting in October, more viewers take to their televisions to digest horror movies and then come Christmas movie extravaganzas. You want to grab the attention of your holiday viewers? Now’s the time.
If you aren’t ready to tackle TV, a video ad shared on social media and the like is a good option. Use real actors and a film crew or people around the office. Some great videos can be shot with an iPhone and people with acting chops they never knew they had.
Alternatively, you can try a holiday animation. Feel free to outsource to an animation company if this is unfamiliar territory for your graphic designers. Weigh the costs of the staff-hours versus the price of an outsourced team; some animations companies will offer services under a thousand dollars for a 30-second ad, and while prices will vary, animation teams like Animation Sharks offer services as low as $199.
You can even try a radio ad on a digital space like Spotify – another cost-effective option for multimedia advertising.
3. Cards and Other Mail
Send Halloween cards with Christmas themes to your customers, like the design shown above in our featured image. Then send Thanksgiving cards. Then send Christmas cards. Business greeting cards are a great way to reach out to customers. Okay, so most companies bank far more of their business off Christmas-oriented sales than anything on All Hallows Eve, and this is a way to get them thinking about that.
Direct mail, in general, if done correctly, can be professional, personal, cost-effective, and highly trusted.
4. Retargeting Ads
Retargeting ads are an effective form of marketing throughout the year, but now people are in buying mode. Let your products and services start to follow them around a bit across the endless digital landscape of the internet. If you got something that’s worth the attention, a digital reminder or two might be all you need to convert those views into sales. According to Wishpond, the click-through-rate of a retargeting ad is 10X higher than the CTR of a regular display ad.
5. Black Friday & Cyber Monday
Now is not the time to forget about other well-know and widely anticipated sales events that happen amid the holiday marketing overload that comes between October and January, like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The fact is people are willing to tolerate the overlap of holiday themes and preemptive seasonal advertising if it affords them the best possible sales on the best possible products and services. Take for instance the droves of people that flock straight from their Thanksgiving feasts to physical stores to wait in long lines at odd hours for the shops to open their floodgates on some of the best holiday sales. Becoming increasingly popular is Cyber Monday, basically a digitized version of Black Friday, because why head to the stores when you can shop online in the comfort of your home?
6. Displays
If you’re a brick-and-mortar store, be clever with your window displays. Beloved holiday characters, symbols, and staples can be merged for one entertaining scene. Use your visual merchandisers or your own skills as a creative director to design fascinating window displays that bring the holidays together with the right use of color, space, symmetry, and light – create an irresistible aesthetic that customers are guaranteed to enjoy.
If you’re an e-commerce business, use your website and social media platforms as your window displays – entice and spread the cheer with your photography team, designers, and writers. Craft moving works of art with an animated gif or a display ad that evokes a positive purchasing experience.
7. Email Marketing
Email blasts give you the power to reach your widest audiences with clever holiday marketing. Tailor and pull lists based on demographics and do your due diligence to target a specific market in need of your products and services. Ensure a catchy subject line, copy, and design that works for all email platforms.
8. Limited Time Offers
Remember these words, ‘For a Limited Time Only.’ Limited time offers and specialty products, services, and packages that are only available for a short period will help to beat out the extended self-argument customers go through on whether to buy now, later, or not at all. If you only give the option to buy now, it will create exclusivity, and utilize impulse.
Customers make a large amount of emotion-based purchases. If you give them the opportunity to have something that only a limited number of people will have during the holiday season, it suddenly becomes an elite move for a deal they could not pass up.
9. A Subtle Shift in Your Holiday Messaging
Start shifting your talk; whisper the holidays in your ads before they happen, make it a veiled utterance; a subliminal message that develops ever-so-slightly from summertime to January 1st.
People like to be prepared. Prepare them!
Become that effective custom calendar that counts down the days. Businesses need to be prepared long before their customers, but a delicate message of ‘stock up, save, and buy now so you don’t suffer later’ is the holiday prep everyone needs to beat the holidays so they can sit back and enjoy the season stress-free.
10. Promos
Figure out your budget. Examine your previous sales last year during the holiday season. Calculate the effective deal you can offer to produce a satisfying ROR.
You can orchestrate a finely-tuned subtle increase in your prices before the sale; just enough to lessen the blow without raising any red flags.
When you start sending out holiday promos in the months before the actual holiday, people will appreciate the opportunity to save before the rush begins. Offer deals in conjunction with follow-up purchases or services that can help customers throughout the New Year.
