It may feel like summer only just ended, but before you know it, the holiday season will be upon us. Soon enough, customers will be on the lookout for the finishing touches to complete their seasonal decor and impress their guests.
According to Wordstream, eight in 10 holiday shoppers are influenced by the internet before making a purchase. If you want to make sure consumers choose your showroom for their holiday decor shopping, you can start planning your marketing strategy ahead of time. Here are three steps you can take now to start to prepare for the holidays.
1. Take a look at last year’s performance
First, review your marketing performance from last year and see what went well. What social media posts got the most engagement, and which ones didn’t? What times seemed to work best for sending emails? You should also take a look at your sales numbers and compare them to your marketing efforts — maybe your successful promotional post the Friday before Thanksgiving seemed to give your foot traffic a boost that weekend. When you have a better understanding of what works well for your business, you can replicate that success moving forward and focus your budget more effectively.
2. Create content ahead of time
Let’s say you know your holiday-themed blogs usually perform well, and you want to write a couple more this year than last year. Now is a great time to get started writing — you know how easy it is to lose track of time and realize you have too much to do at the last minute. Brainstorm some topics, which could cover anything from holiday decorating tips to a behind-the-scenes look at your showroom’s holiday displays, put on your favorite holiday music and start writing. You’ll thank yourself later when you have a million other things to do.
Whatever content you can’t get to now, try to plan it out as much as you can. If you don’t already use a calendar for your social media posts and other digital marketing efforts, creating one can simplify the process and make your tasks more manageable.
3. Revisit your email list
There’s really no bad time to revisit and clean up your email list, but the approaching holidays offer a welcome nudge. Consumers are going to be bombarded with emails during the season, so you want to make sure your emails are going to people who actually want them. Start by removing any non-responsive recipients who have never opened your emails from your list. While this will lower your subscriber count, you want your email list to be engaged with your business anyway. If your email list isn’t segmented, you could consider creating segments now to see how they perform. For example, you could create a segment for designers and a segment for consumers and send out more targeted and relevant emails to each. The more personalized your emails are, the more effective they will be.
How are you preparing for the upcoming holiday season? Let us know in the comments!
Photo: Pexels user George Dolgikh
