9 Tips for Engaging The Holiday Audience

Tips for Engaging the Holiday Audience

Tips to Engage my holiday audience are different than my everyday strategies. Really? Overall, the concepts stay the same; you should just be operating at a slightly higher cadence. And maybe with a few extra jingle bells. Your audience during the Holidays is generally under a time crunch, more likely to be stressed, and focused on what value you can deliver.

What are some ways that you can reach your audience and help them save time? Ease their holiday stress? How can you show them higher value from the services you offer? From social media posts to services provided, I am reviewing 9 Tips that will help you engage your audience this holiday and keep them coming back into the new year. And Right up front here is your bonus tip, don’t forget to sprinkle everything with a bit of Holiday Cheer!

Plan Your Content and Create an Experience

One of the most important things you should do leading up to the holidays to engage your audience is to plan your content. Make sure that what you are posting on social media and your website matches what is happening IRL! Scheduling your posts in advance will allow you to tell a cohesive and engaging story online while still providing varied and “edutaining” content. Planning will enable you to highlight specific products and services deliberately. Your marketing and social media should lay the groundwork for the fantastic shopping experience that they can expect when they shop with you. When they enter your store or website, greet them with an experience that exceeds their expectations.

How Do You Exceed Expectations?

You exceed your customers’ expectations through planning. If you plan your marketing, social media, promotional calendar, and in-store events collaboratively, you can create more with less. It is also easier to get others to work collaboratively with you when you create a shopping “event.” Which only requires a theme, a sign, and people saying it is a shopping event. You can also exceed customers’ expectations by offering unexpected service standards. For example, at my last Barnes & Noble College Store, we would wrap presents for any customer that wanted them wrapped. We never included that on any marketing; we just asked if they wished to have their gifts wrapped. In the first year, we delighted a lot of customers by doing this. The next year we had customers telling us that they came to us instead of a competitor across town because we would wrap their presents for them. And the overall shopping experience was better too!

Engage the Holiday Audience by Keep All Marketing Simple, Clean and Cohesive

As a small to medium-size business, chances are you do your marketing. During the Holiday season, it is more important than ever to keep it simple. Don’t confuse your customers. Eliminate the need for the fine print. Utilize the same elements in your marketing across all marketing, promotion, and in-store assets so that your marketing is yours.

Simple and Clean

Pick a holiday color and theme and stick to it. Make all of your assets match using the same background and color you decide to apply for Holiday. A great way to create an impact for the holiday season is to change out all signage in the store to a Holiday sign with a festive base that is different from your standard signage. Changing the assets is a reasonably low-cost way to dramatically change the look and feel of your brick-and-mortar location as well as your website and social media. The signs should be a part of the story that you are telling with your product.

Resist the urge to over-sign and do not make signs hard to understand. If you want to run a Buy One Get One Free Promotion in a category, then that entire category should be included. If your employees need a document to decipher the sale, then you are going to have customers that are upset or don’t understand the restrictions. Clear, easy to understand, no explanation needed signs and policies are essential if you want happy customers this holiday.

Cohesive Assets

You want your customer’s to be able to recognize your content and marketing at first glance. In seconds you want them to know that what they are looking at is representative of your brand. During the holiday rush, this is even more important as people have less free time to look further. Remember, you have 8 seconds to hold a person’s attention, you don’t want to waste that 8 seconds on them identifying your brand. Pick a Holiday color and stick to it. Use your brand color as the secondary color in all holiday marketing. If a background can’t be scaled appropriately for use on multiple platforms or signs, don’t use it. Keeping these assets cohesive across your brand will facilitate the storytelling and selling process.

Engage by Making Shopping Easy

A great way to engage your customers this Holiday Season is to make shopping with you easy. Create stories with your products, both online and in-store by grouping like products together. You can also cross merchandise items to tell a story. You can identify the connection between products in a well-displayed product story without a sign. If a customer needs a sign to understand the story, then that grouping may be a stretch. Clusters give your customers options and put items in their hands, or online carts that they might not have expected. Creating groupings like Great Gifts for Dad, Gifts for the Traveler, Gifts for Shoe Lovers also create a starting point for customers to look at what you have to offer.

Holiday Gift Guides

Another great way to make shopping easy is to create a simple holiday gift guide that features some suggested items in different categories based on what you want to highlight. A single sheet of letter-size paper on the counter can do wonders for your customers. While they may not shop at that moment, many customers will take one and may return to get something on it. These serve as tools to get your customers thinking about you as a resource for them during the holidays.

Create A One-Stop Shop Experience

What are some things that people ask you for that you don’t have? During the holidays, not having batteries if products you are selling require them may cost you a sale. When I say create a one stop shop experience; I understand you can not be everything to everyone! You should make sure that people can walk out with everything they need for anything you sell. Also, have an option available for them to wrap gifts, and either cards or gift tags. You want to make it easy for your customers to purchase gifts from you, you don’t want to send them elsewhere to get giftwrap, cards or batteries because they may just go elsewhere for the gift as well.

Engage the Audience with Events But Don’t Interfere

Events provide you with opportunities to engage followers, drive new business, introduce a wider audience to your brand, and to fill the environment with Holiday cheer. These are all reasons to have a robust calendar of events during the holidays. When planning these events be sure to take into consideration the impact they may have on your location. Will the event cause you to block off a portion of the sales floor customers may want to shop? Will a VIP Night require you to close the store early? Generally, the benefits of the event outweigh the impact on the customer in these cases but during the Holiday Season the opposite is true.

Showcase A Charity or Socially Responsible Brand

As you can see from the statistic to the left, cause-based marketing and socially responsible products are popular among consumers. These types of products will drive consumers to your location. Showcasing a charity or one of these socially accountable brands also allows your customers to feel good about their holiday purchase as a portion of the sales is going towards a good cause. Remember to research the values and goals of the brands that you bring in. Make sure that their stance aligns with your brand and beliefs, and you are publically aligning yourself with them.

Know Who You Are Aligning With

The public alignment between yourself and the cause-based brand or charity can yield many benefits. However, if the brand or charity you choose has values that do not align with your audience, you may have a small public relations situation on your hands. So do your due diligence, work with brands that have a proven track record, and be able to discuss the charity or brand you are working with in-depth based on facts.

Engage Your Audience by Adding Local Flair

Work with local vendors to showcase some unique items that will add a special touch to your holiday assortment. These individual items and local vendors will add another dimension to your product selection. It provides your audience with an unexpected option that will delight them. It helps you drive your business and gives local and small businesses more exposure.

Adding local vendors also opens up the opportunity to engage another segment of an audience. Small and local businesses have loyal followers that are willing to shop at establishments that support the local economy. Allowing these businesses to market select items as part of your holiday collection helps you engage a new audience that may not have shopped with you. The goodwill that is created by doing this also extends past the holiday season. Continue collaborating with vendors throughout the year, and you will see an increase in traffic and support from many other local businesses.

Celebrate the Season

This one seems obvious, but it is my experience that many times, businesses forget about this. Plan events, promotions, and train your staff to highlight the meaning of the season. Be authentic in your celebration of the Holiday. Include stories of hope and goodwill in the stories you tell as part of your holiday celebration. Bring your community together with special holiday events like tree lightings, caroler, and a reading of Twas The Night Before Christmas. Surprise your audience with a free beverage while they shop, or some warm hot chocolate during the first snow of the Holiday. Remember the spirit of Christmas in every interaction and see how you can use it to make each member of your audience smile.

Don’t Forget Other Key Holidays

Don’t forget the other holidays celebrated by your audience. Add Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Boxing Day, and others to your calendar and make sure to recognize them when they happen. In some areas, you may wish to bring in select merchandise for these holidays, as well. Also, make sure you use the term “Happy Holidays” when greeting your customers to be inclusive.

Thank Your Customers

Thank your customers for shopping with you. Thinking of you. Thank them for being loyal customers, and for choosing you to help them celebrate the Holidays. Another one that seems like a no-brainer, but many businesses do not do this enough. A great way to engage your audience is to thank them for being your audience. You should thank them for being loyal followers on social media, thank them for shopping with you when they make a purchase, thank them for stopping in when they come and browse your store or website. A customer that feels appreciated is more likely to purchase.

Thank Your Customers Advanced Move

Want to go one step further in thanking your customers? Run a Thank You drive! Create cards that say thank you, and have a spot for a customer’s name and a place to thank them for something, write one out for each customer with something unique on it. Create a location in-store where they can take a photo with their card and encourage them to post it on social media. Dedicate a few feed posts and maybe a lot of story posts to the customers that you thank during the Holiday. Imagine the goodwill this creates.

The 9 Holiday Engagement Strategies

These 9 Strategies are based on Jonathan’s 18 years of retail experience. He has seen success with these strategies used together or individually. They will help you engage the holiday audience this season. Depending on the type of business and your location these may be used at varying levels, however, we believe that the concepts are universal. Experiment with a few and build on your successes. We would also love to hear about how you engage your holiday audience and what has worked for you.