While we don’t work with many retail companies, I know some of our readers do. In today’s guest post by Alan Grainger, we look at ways to create appropriate seasonal messages for B2B companies.
With the last page of the calendar about to be turned and turkeys around the world beginning to look slightly nervous, the festive season is very much upon us. For many businesses, this period provides a vital trading opportunity, with Christmas offering a huge slice of annual income to a large number of companies.
With so much attention paid to the holidays by so many companies, the public is bombarded with marketing content that is filled with mentions of Santa Claus, tinsel, and presents, so how can you make your marketing literature stand out at such an important time of year?
Relevancy
It is quite easy to fall back on traditional festive imagery when writing, but is this necessarily relevant to the audience that you are targeting? While pitching the image of snowmen and fairy lights might appeal to the consumer and retail market, is this what a business wants to hear when shopping for corporate gifts for clients, for example?
In this particular scenario, content surrounding the motivational benefits of gifts might be more appropriate than just using Christmas for the sake of it, and targeting your content around what is relevant to your reader will be more appropriate than simply reverting to festive semantics.
Get Your Timings Right
When is Christmas? This seems like a fairly simple question but the peak holiday period can be at different times in different industries. If you are preparing content to promote yourself or your company to other businesses, make sure that you do your research to find out when their main holiday period is and more importantly, when they will be making their festive preparations.
Restaurants, for example, will encounter their busiest period through December, but will start their marketing activities as early as August. If your content is geared around holiday marketing and promotions, or involves products with any length of lead time, your peak may already have been and gone.
Be Unique
For many companies this is the most profitable time of year, which also makes it the most competitive. It is the one time of year where you can guarantee that all of your competitors will be promoting themselves, so it is vital that you stand out.
As well as stellar content, this is the time of year where something that stands out from what everyone else is doing will really grab people’s attention, so think about what it is that makes your proposition different to everybody else’s. Why should they choose you? Don’t rely on Christmas for Christmas’s sake.
Be creative in your content and unique in your distribution of it. Don’t be afraid to look for new avenues to distribute your work either, with social media such as Twitter and Facebook being increasingly implemented by companies that are looking for modern ways to connect with their audience. If this is a key period for your company then it will be for your competitors too. Go beyond the festive message with your marketing content and drill deeper into why this period is important for your target audience. Christmas won’t sell your company, it is up to you to differentiate yourself through unique content, good timing and innovative distribution.
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