Wondering how to handle your marketing during the festive season? Here’s our advice for brands in hospitality, including top Christmas marketing tips for:
- Social media
- Emails
- Websites
- General marketing tips!
1. Social media
#festivehashtags
Past campaigns such as John Lewis’ #MakeItThoughtful – which encouraged users to strive for thoughtful gift giving – and Ted Baker’s #TedsElfie – which corresponded to an Instagram-based game in which users had to hunt for ‘missing elves’ across multiple profiles – have generated tens of thousands of interactions across social media.
If you don’t have the means to create a fully interactive campaign, you could try a less complex approach. For example, Not on the High Street simply encourages customers to share photographs of the gifts they have purchased from the website using #NOTHSChristmas.
Motivate user-generated content: Tis’ the season of sharing!
Social media is all about being social, so make sure you interact with your followers!
The more you interact with your audience, the more they will feel valued by your company. Users may share images and posts about your products or services on social media; find the best ones and share them on your channels, responding to them as you go and possibly adding your hashtag.
This will develop a sense of community, with more people feeling motivated to interact with you if it appears that you’ll share and respond to their posts. As a result, your brand’s visibility to potential customers or followers may increase.
Competitions: On the 12th day of Christmas, my pub gave to me…
Social media contests are a great way to gain awareness for your pub, bar, or restaurant, boost engagement, and build your following. As more people interact with your brand on social media, the chances of people going to your website or choosing your brand increases.
Here’s a few Christmas competition ideas you could use:
- The best Christmas cocktail contest: Get guests to upload a photo of the Christmas cocktail they’ve made and vote for the favourites.
- Offer a voucher for a meal: Everyone loves a get-together at Christmas, so why not offer the chance to win one? Get customers to like the post and tag the person they’d take. All Bar One shows how it’s done on Instagram.
- The best-dressed venue: For those bigger brands, why not get all venues involved and get customers to vote for the best-dressed venue?
- The ugliest Christmas jumper: Guests must share their ugliest holiday jumper photos.
Season’s Greetings
While in the holiday spirit, why not use your social channels to post relevant, festive content about what’s happening in and around your venue? Regular snippets will generate post interaction, and potentially help you reach and gain new followers.
For example, post pictures showing the decorations going up, your staff in their Christmas outfits, or your Christmas menu. Or why not share the local events happening in the area?
There are plenty of events happening across the UK, from Christmas markets to the Christmas lights turning on – your venue might even be able to get involved in the event, giving you even more reason to talk about it.
To complement the season further, adapt your social cover photos with pictures of Christmas trees, wreaths, festive symbols… Anything that feels festive will do the job!
@theglobemoorgate♬ Tactical Christmas – Chivi
2. Christmas marketing for email
Build a Christmas email series
During the month of December, an email series is a great way to reach out to guests daily without being pushy. And, with 75% of businesses agreeing that email provides a good to excellent ROI, a strategic email campaign could be valuable this Christmas season.
For example, you could send an email with an advent calendar each day. Subscribers must click on the box daily to be eligible for a prize, such as a free meal or afternoon tea. It’s entertaining for guests and creates anticipation for receiving your emails.
If you want to shorten the campaign, run a giveaway promotion for that only lasts for the 12 days of Christmas, rather than the entire month of December.
3. Christmas marketing tips for websites
Create a seasonal landing page: Don’t be a website Grinch…
Got all the engagement? Make sure your customers have somewhere to visit when they come to your website. The best plan is to create a dedicated landing page to ensure all the Christmas information can be found in one place.
Why not offer a voucher if people sign up for your emails to make things sparkle? This means you can continue to keep in touch with customers all year round.
4. General Christmas marketing tips
Timings: It’s never too early for Christmas… or is it?
There’s no harm in starting your Christmas marketing efforts early to allow for maximum traction and interest, but strike the right balance…
Many customers will be put off by the sight of a jingle bell at any point before Halloween, while waiting until mid-December will cause you to miss much of the Christmas shopping or booking rush.
Early to mid-November is generally the prime time to start your Christmas marketing.
Need a last-minute Christmas marketing campaign?
Had Christmas on the to-do list for a little while, but struggling to find time to create a marketing plan for the holidays? We get it.
Get in touch and let’s chat through what you’re after – maybe we could take it off your hands entirely, leaving you with all the time in the world to actually enjoy (or cater for) the season.