2018 Holiday Marketing Guide: How to Prepare & Promote

Most businesses spend each new year’s beginning developing a plan for the coming months. This program serves as a high-level guide to help you reach significant milestones for your business. Without it, goals are worth nothing more than the digital screens on which they’re displayed.

So how do you create a dynamic promotional plan and calendar to reach your marketing goals for 2018 — especially by leveraging time-sensitive events like holidays, major events, and seasons?

Here are five steps:

How to Create a Promotional Plan

1 – Outline Succinct Goals

Before you create your plan, outline your business’ top marketing goals for the year. Your goals need to be specific, measurable, and time-bound so that you can choose the right promotional strategies and appropriately measure the success of each goal.

For example:

Gain 3,000 Facebook likes in 2018
Increase an email list by 45% in 2018
Increase new customer sign-ups by 15% in 2018

2 – Set Your Marketing Budget

The cost of running a promotion varies widely depending on tactics used to reach your marketing goals. A photo contest might cost you nothing more than a few hours of administration time and the cost of one product to give away. Meanwhile, a sweepstake for a lifetime supply of your best-selling product might cost thousands of dollars.

Also, consider how seasonally relevant content or promotions might factor into your budget as some quarters or months may require a heavier spend. For example, if you sell tax software, you might want to budget for a promotion at the end of March versus a promotion in August.

4- Choose Promotional Tactics That Fit Your Goals & Budget

You’ve set up goals and a budget. Now it’s time to decide what promotional tactics are most beneficial for your business.

To start, take inventory of what you’ve done in the past, examine what worked. Then use those examples to explore new promotional tactics that help your business grow in the coming fiscal year.

For example, you want to increase Facebook page likes. You might use a coupon campaign that asks the user to like your page before entering to receive the coupon code. Or, you could host a sweepstake where users earn additional chances to win by referring friends to the campaign.

5 – Build a Promotional Calendar Around Holidays & Events

Next, you must operationalize your goals and tactics by putting them on a promotional calendar. Before mapping this out, consider essential holidays and events that occur throughout the year.

Capitalizing on major holidays and events to create content or promotions that attract additional coverage and awareness for your brand is critical. When done correctly, seasonal promotions result in higher engagement and conversion rates. Why? People are already focused and interested in the event.

But remember: Quality seasonal marketing requires more foresight and creativity than simply publishing a topical post or promotion.

First, said marketing should internalize and honestly relate to the holiday and your industry or product. If you achieve this, customers can make a connection, and the marketing is more likely to resonate. So keep the content interesting, useful, or entertaining.

Last but not least, you probably want to avoid 100% on seasonal content — your promotional calendar should also have time-tested, evergreen content. A kind of relevant content your audience doesn’t quite get anywhere else, if possible.

Take a look at the following calendar with crucial marketing holidays in 2018 — keeping in mind the importance of choosing relevant seasonal holidays and events for your promotional efforts; these holidays will most resonate with your core audience.