Bring on the festivities! Every festival, occasion or event is just another way for your brand to connect with its customer. So, keeping a festival marketing plan in place is a fantastic idea for your brand. It is all about crafting a smart marketing strategy during festivals that will touch every target group and connect with each customer. The festive season is the perfect opportunity to showcase your inventory, introduce new products and services and reach out to a larger audience. While there are several festive season marketing strategies to implement, we recommend a holistic approach. This means as a brick-and-mortar store you create a unique marketing strategy during festivals, and augment it with digital festive season marketing strategies. The team at Mindstorm, a leading digital marketing agency in India, ensures a complete focus on creating winning social media strategies throughout the year. The festive season is no different. It simply means that the ad experts and content marketing team at Mindstorm jump into more focused festive season marketing strategies.
A robust festival marketing plan is crucial with 8 million active advertisers on Facebook. The vast majority are small and medium-sized businesses, which makes it even more important to ensure presence. (Facebook Insights, 2020) (Source)
We’ve created a checklist for your digital festival marketing plan to boost business and drive engagement with your customers online.
FESTIVE SEASON MARKETING STRATEGIES
Get your E-Comm website festive ready
With all the big days to celebrate online, customers choose to shop online. The #1 reason people shop online is that they’re able to shop at all hours of the day. (KPMG) Now which business wouldn’t want to capitalize on this, especially during the festive season! All you need to do is get your E-commerce website ready for the festive season. This means showcase new inventory, retouch the old inventory, digital festive campaigns and more. Make sure you have landing pages for special promotions, that way you can calculate your ROI on festive season marketing strategies. Rework the content on your website with attractive banners, product images and stunning pictures to push your products. Make digital shopping easy for your customers, by relooking at your website navigation -offering them festive season products first. Upsell and cross-sell on your website to leverage the festive spirit.
Don’t forget mobile! Your website needs to be mobile ready before the festive season kicks in. 59% of online shoppers confirm that being able to shop on mobile is important when deciding which brand or retailer to buy from. (Source: Think with Google, 2019) If in-store business is already roaring, then boosting your corporate website with e-commerce is not a bad idea. Transform a regular corporate website to e-commerce before the festive season, so that you can capture the online sales too. Read on to know how you can prepare your e-commerce business for the upcoming festive season with top digital marketing.
Power your website with SEO
Boost the SEO efforts as part of your marketing strategy during festivals. As a digital marketing consultant in Mumbai, we advise all our clients globally and nationally to add in some extra SEO efforts. Your business website or e-commerce website must rank among the first few searches with the festive theme. Whether its pumpkin during Halloween or handmade Diya’s for Diwali – enabling SEO before the festive season is a must. 51% of shoppers surveyed say they use Google to research a purchase they plan to make online. (Think with Google, 2019) Research festival-related keywords that reflect consumer demand in the season. Work the website content with blogs, testimonials, and more to drive better rankings for your website and more shoppers to your website.
Connect with Email Marketing Email marketing during the festive season may seem inefficient due to the clutter. But, there is a way to ensure your festival marketing plan reaches your audience. Customizing your message. Message Personalization is the number one tactic used by email marketers to improve performance. (Source: HubSpot, 2020) From customized e-cards to personalized vouchers or just a reminder to come shop – tailor it for your customer. Customize it based on their previous shopping patterns as well as the general products and service customers avail during the season. A well-planned email marketing campaign could be just the thing that makes that sale happen for your business. Several large multi-brand retail stores and organizations implement marketing automation within their marketing plans. This ensures a careful segmentation of customers, personalized campaigns and qualified sales funnel. Read more on how Marketing Automation is More Than Sending Emails which becomes effective during the festive season.
Amplify and some more on social media
Every marketing strategy during festivals calls for a meticulous social media marketing plan. Festive seasons offer businesses and brands an opportunity to break through the noise and unleash their creative side. From driving emotional messages with products to boosting sales through exciting messaging – your social media marketing must capture the festive flavor.
Contests
What better way than a contest to put your followers and customers in a festive spirit! It encourages engagement, creates enthusiasm around your business and builds awareness. And the giveaways or prizes don’t need to be expensive. Offer vouchers, hampers, samples – get creative with the contest gratifications.
Check out the #25daysofVSChristmas campaign that launched right from December 1st to add to the festive spirit.
User Generate Content
Did you know that 56% of consumers say UGC photos and videos are the content they most want to see from brands? (SOURCE: Stackla) Around 70% of all UGC is contributed by Millennials (ages 25 and above) the biggest content drivers today. (SOURCE: DMNews) User Generated Content brings authenticity to your business and brand. So, running a UGC campaign as part of a festival marketing plan, can boost festive sales. Ask followers and consumers to tag your brand or business while posting a picture with your product or using your product. Imagine the visibility and engagement you can expect from this campaign!
Check out this UGC campaign by MTV India, encouraging followers to show off their DIY skills for Diwali. Winner’s videos featured on MTV!
Creative Campaigns
Give your social media followers more this festive season with creative wishes and campaigns. While you may wonder why invest that much time and budgets, remember it is a time of sharing. Your customers are just as much on social media as they are on personal chat apps. Facebook has made sharing across platforms so convenient, that images, reels, videos are shared across all the time. This cross-platform sharing has opened up a huge avenue for intelligent content marketing ideas. Think about it, when did you last receive a simple “Happy Diwali” text or “Happy New Year” text. So, create unique social media campaigns that give your customers a chance to connect and share. Like the Cadbury campaign that featured small retailers which received 1.2 million views and created a strong buzz.
https://www.facebook.com/cadburycelebrations/videos/375811460397289
Social Media Ads
While you are creating amazing content for every season as per your festival marketing plan, don’t forget advertising. Social media ads are crucial to your festive season marketing strategies. 33% of marketers use paid advertising to increase their brand awareness. (Source: HubSpot, 2020) It’s definitely cheaper than traditional media advertising and probably more effective for your business too. Here’s a quick read on How to Generate Sales through Instagram Ads? Create a healthy mix of traffic ads and conversion ads to drive sales on your e-commerce website. Need to figure out a paid marketing campaign? Connect with the Mindstorm team, a leading digital marketing agency in India.
Marketing Collaborations
Benefit from collaborations with other brands during the festive season. Find the right match for your brand and make a super successful collaboration. Indian festivals typically see clothing brands collaborating with jewellery brands. This helps both brands leverage each other’s social media networks and create an even larger buzz. Check out this cool collaboration between Zomato and prime video to celebrate International Coffee Day.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CUeP0QnIO35/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Influencer Marketing
There are several advantages to influencer marketing during the festive season. 89% say ROI from influencer marketing is comparable to or better than other marketing channels. (Source: Big Commerce) The right brand- influencer match can drive engagement and more eyeballs to your business. But first, selecting the right set of influencers that align with your brand is key. Evaluate an influencers social network, engagement and followers as well as the content, tone and style on social media. Don’t discount the power of micro-influencers during your festive season marketing strategies. Their networks are unique and most of them have an active engagement. If you haven’t figured out the right fit of influencers for your brand, maybe this will help – Micro Vs. Macro: The best Influencer Strategy for your brand.
Are you now confident and ready with your festival marketing plan? We hope we’ve given you some inspiration and way forward to building festive season marketing strategies for your brands. In the meantime, if you wish to get in touch with a best seo agency in Mumbai, look no further. Email aniketh@mindstorm.in.
