The holidays are a time for reflecting, sharing, and giving. This year, we’re feeling grateful for our extended Hawke family and wanted to share with you the gift of holiday marketing tips from our experts! 

To make the information more snack-able, we’ve broken it down by service and focused it around the Q4 holidays. Here are some service-specific tips to help you crank your holiday marketing efforts up a notch: 

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Social Media Marketing: Dress up Content and Have Fun With Giveaways   

Any seasoned Thanksgiving-dinner eater knows that preparing one plate of food is simply insufficient. When it comes to social media marketing, it is important to maintain a similar mentality. The holiday season is made up of multiple days (from Black Friday to Cyber Monday to New Years), so prepare social content for each course (it’d be a shame if you missed out on pecan pie because you didn’t prepare a plate). 

Whether this year is your first holiday marketing rodeo or your 500th, it's always good to keep in mind the following tips to capitalize upon the holiday shopping season to drive traffic to your site, socials, and most importantly all of the potential sales you can earn:

1. Your social media presence should reflect whichever holiday is coming up on your calendar. Just as you would with a decorate a storefront, you should also decorate your profile in proper fashion. Swap out that cover photo for a festive one, tie a digital bow around your profile picture, and remember that these holiday changes do not have to be graphically intense—a small change can go a long way.
   

2. Giveaways, sweepstakes, and promos—oh my! Creating special offers, deals, and discounts around holidays like Black Friday and Christmas is a great way to generate buzz around your brand help generate more sales from shoppers that are already actively looking to buy and save.
   

3. Create holiday-specific hashtags and get into the spirit. With so many brands out there trying to catch a piece of the holiday marketing pie, keep the hashtags fun, festive, and simple so your audience is more inclined to use it when it comes to posting their own content‍

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Strategy: Flesh out Processes 

Like navigating your favorite department store, marketing on Black Friday requires serious strategy. In the crowded digital space of today, one easy way to stand out amongst your competitors is to have unique and creative content that appeals to your target demographic. 

Whether they're static images, dynamic video, gifs, or even curated blog articles, you have every opportunity to make your UVPs shine. Ensuring that you have a process set in place to create and A/B test to give yourself the best chance of winning Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or Super Saturday.

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Influencer Marketing: Create Genuine Partnerships and Giveaways

Christmas can be the most wonderful time of the year to stand out! The holiday season is saturated with endless sales and promotions. 

Influencer campaigns are here to help your brand shine bright. Here are a few tips on how to make the most of your brand’s influencer engagement: 

1. When looking for an influencer to activate with, make sure to only engage with influencers who are NOT planning on partnering with multiple other brands during the holidays. This will present a more authentic partnership and create more value for your brand in front of a new audience. 
   

2. As part of your holiday campaign, send the product to your influencers in advance and ask them to post about the product in their Instagram Stories so their audience is familiar with your brand before the giveaway. 
   

3. Some of the most successful influencer campaigns during the holiday season are giveaway contests. Everyone loves a free gift that they could perhaps gift to a friend or family member and cut their shopping list shorter. In the rules and regulations of this campaign, make sure to articulate that all parties that enter must be following both the brand and influencer account to qualify to win. This will grow the brand’s following and increase impressions. 

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Content Marketing: Work With the Past, Present, and Future

The New Year is often a time to think forward and plan ahead, but, as a brand, it's also an opportune time to look back. While the content you publish on your blog is permanent real estate on your site, it's still important to go through older pieces with a fine-tooth comb and update them accordingly. With 2020 right around the bend, take the time to review the content you published at the beginning of 2019 or earlier, and consider the following tips:

1. In your editorial calendar, dogear the articles that would benefit from a punch-up—which can include refreshed links, updated sentences based on the latest industry developments, or even entire rewrites.
   

2. Peek into Google Analytics and ask yourself if there are opportunities to build content clusters around previously successful posts. If the stray lifestyle piece, Q&A, or listicle performed exceptionally well, consider creating more of those topics and formats in the coming year.
   

3. Don't be afraid to repackage content. Take topics you've already covered and create new ways of communicating that information—such as podcasts, infographics, and videos. Be sure to revisit your keyword strategy and optimize your reach by targeting new keywords for any repackaged content.
   

Do you want more where these tips came from? For more secret holiday sauce from our Hawke Media marketing experts, check out more insights on our blog. For even more information from us, fill out the free consultation form below. 

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