What can you do to boost your Christmas promotions this year? What type of campaign suits which target group and what kind of advertising is most effective at this time of year? Here are a few winning themes that we have selected – for those of you trying to figure out what type of Christmas campaign to go with this year.  

THEME 1: LET CHRISTMAS SHOW THE WAY

An effective Christmas campaign follows its own pattern of Christmas. The countdown begins with a Christmas calendar where something happens every day throughout December until Christmas Eve, where each Advent is a holiday in itself, and then – on December 24th – culminates into something very unusual and in a way spectacular.

It is also possible to run it once a week for four weeks, every Advent if you do not have the opportunity to run the entire setup in its 24 different steps.

Some tips:

Share a Christmas tip of the day from December 1st through December 24th. The Christmas calendar can often consist of tips, photos, and posts from your own followers. In this way, you will involve your current and potential new customers, create stronger relationships, get free content and build a desire in the target group to have their content shared by you. This type of content is called UGC, user-generated content.

Ask yourself: What kind of content could your followers contribute with?

Let Advent be your own mini-climax

Let each Advent be a mini-climax where you offer something bigger every time, like presenting an exclusive offer or publishing an interview.

Present your own baby Jesus on Christmas Eve

The culmination is on the 24th, then you can present, for example, your competition winner or an irresistible Christmas time-limited offer. You simply help your customers come up with smart Christmas gifts, just when they are stressed over their own lack of ideas and bad foresight.

The holidays: when everyone is dozing off with their mobile phone

Run a three-stage rocket marketing campaign during Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day. The days after Christmas Eve, we all lie on the couch with our mobile phones in hand, in silence as the only driving force to buy something stimulating. It opens up for a dialogue! Push notifications could be a great way to have a direct line of communication with your customers.

Invite your customers or followers to discuss the Christmas presents. Be there, where your customers are. This is an open door many companies unfortunately miss.

THEME 2: CHRISTMAS E-COMMERCE CAMPAIGN
E-commerce often thinks about goals before ideas. This is absolutely crucial, not least when planning a successful campaign. If you do not know what you want to achieve with your campaign, you will not be able to hatch any relevant idea or evaluate how well it is going, or for that matter draw important lessons for future campaigns.

If, on the other hand, you have set clear goals, it is easier to adjust the direction of the goal moves – and it most likely does. Therefore, define the goal and subgoals early in your campaign.

It can be increased awareness – reaching a certain part of your target group in the form of views and visits, it can be micro or macro conversions, purchases or subscriptions, lead generation, or a certain percentage of increased sales through social channels that can be traced to your campaign. If you need help with goals and measurement, we can help you set it up for your campaign within your Advedro account and our own in-house built tracking system, Vita.

Some tips:

Define market goals and save money. An overall goal makes it possible to define which marketing efforts are required to achieve your goals. In the same way, it becomes clear to you which marketing initiatives would be fantastically fun to implement, but which can not be justified when you look at the goals. Maybe you should save your money for next Christmas!

Reasonable goals – for a reasonable budget

With clearly set goals, it will also be easier to set a reasonable budget for your campaign.

If the goal is to pull in X dollars, and you know that Y impressions yield Z conversions, then you can easily calculate and find out which investment should yield which income. This is something we at Advedro can help you with if you want, so don’t hesitate to reach out to us!

Remember that the key figure CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) must be updated and reasonable.

THEME 3. GO EMOTIONAL – CLASSIC DIGITAL CHRISTMAS CAMPAIGN

Emotions sell. What are the feelings and experiences that unite your brand with your target groups? Once you figure that out, start creating your campaigns around it.

Some tips:

Understand the feeling!

Do you help your customers save time? Then it may be the feeling of not having enough time that is your common denominator.

Do you offer products that simplify a process? Then you have the feeling of being really tired of all the hassle certain things bring.

Do you sell good-looking clothes of good quality? Then perhaps you can reach one of your target groups with the feeling of expressing themselves who they become when wearing certain clothes.

Meet customers in themes

These themes are perfect for inviting your customers and potential customers to build your story (brand) together.

Create the campaign together with the customers

An effective campaign can be based on a concept or a basic idea that connects your target group with your brand. Do you sell insurance? Good, then start from the feeling of safety.

Here, your customers can share their own stories on your digital channels – about when they felt completely devastated or their best memory when insurance covered their medical bills.

All storytelling takes place under a hashtag you yourself sat.

Top three ad channels

But on which channels should you advertise this Christmas campaign, and how? There are so many!

That’s right but bet on the following three if you have to choose and you’ll see a big difference in your ROI.

Facebook. Everyone still has Facebook and Facebook’s target group tool in Ads Manager (Facebook Business Manager) is very sharp and accurate. You learn more about your target group and see in black and white what works or not. In addition, you have the chance to reach a high conversion rate during Christmas.

Advedro is a DSP, connected with many large ad networks, but also it has its own publishers and a fully integrated tracker, Vita. Advedro is the place where you can reach your customers, even outside of their social media channels, when they are in a buying state – which is not the case for those who have just entered Facebook to check what their friends are doing.

Google Ads (banners and search ads). Google Ads (formerly AdWords) often has by far the highest conversion rate. This is for the simple reason that your brand’s offer appears at just the right moment for those who long for your company’s offer (or a competitor, if they have overbid you on the keywords.)

Just keep in mind that no one will click if you have not done the basic job, that is, expose the customer to your brand enough times. Reach, impressions, conversions = evaluation.

Do you have to choose between Facebook, Google Ads, and Advedro? Not necessarily. Often a smartly distributed combination is most effective – something that can be planned based on your data insights.

Tis the season!