A marketer’s worst nightmare in the holiday is fierce competition. Everyone puts their best foot forward, blurring the lines for the next person. Content marketing helps brands to beat the competition by connecting with their audience in relatable ways.
They say content is king. Now is the time to showcase the power of your content.in shaping perceptions and influencing reactions to your brand.
Here are five ways to create a holiday-friendly content marketing strategy:
- Focus on an objective
There’s so much happening this season – it’s tempting to want a piece of it all. Adding a little bit of everything will dilute your content marketing strategy. Identify an area of most interest, and focus on it squarely.
What’s your objective?
Content marketing is used to achieve a number of results – facilitate sales, increase brand awareness, educate prospects and foster consumer to brand relationships.
Selling your product might seem like the most productive thing to do at a time like this. But the best holiday content marketing strategy is brand awareness. It’s an opportunity to highlight ways in which your brand resonates with the holiday. Doing this effectively, inadvertently sells your products.
Be consistent with your objective. Craft uniformed content throughout this period. Let every new content reiterate the previous one, emphasizing your objective to your audience.
- Target a niche audience
The consumer base consists of different audiences. An existing “need” may be constant across all audiences, but differs in specifics.
Content marketing yields substantial results when it’s tailored and targeted at an audience with an identified need for the product or service in question. It’s bad enough that competition is at its maximum, channeling your efforts to the wrong audience will yield little or no results.
Develop an audience persona. Have it engraved on your mind as you create your content.
Selective exposure is a prerogative of audiences. They expose themselves to mediums and messages that appeal to them, ditching others that don’t align.
Identify where your target audience spends their time, and take your niche-crafted content to them.
- Build the holiday nostalgia
Speaking to the emotions of your audience, positively, is a great way to be in their good graces. The holiday isn’t just a season, it’s a feeling. Memories built over the years are cherished and re-lived.
For example, adults of the Christian faith have fond childhood memories of Christmas. They get nostalgic when reminded about celebrating Christmas as kids. Incorporating this theme in content for such an audience will stir up pleasant emotions that’ll trigger your desired reaction.
Think of other holiday traditions, stories or myths that you can build your content around. Connect with your audience in ways that make them reminisce about the essence of the season.
- Offer helpful advice
Your end-game is most likely to win over prospects with the hope of making sales either now or sometime in the future. The person on the receiving end is probably aware of this too. Don’t make it more obvious than it is by forcing your products down their throat.
Beyond spending their money on items for the holiday, consumers are happy to learn a thing or two about making the holiday less stressful and more enjoyable. Don’t be selfish by making it all about your brand. Offer practical holiday survival tips in your content. You can show your readers how to save money, get the best deals and fun places to visit among other things.
Take the focus away from yourself for once, and make it about them. The thing about being selfless in content marketing is that, it makes your audience to develop trust in you. Once trust is in place, it’s very easy to get a chunk of the consumer’s holiday shopping budget.
- Be inclusive
The end of year is filled with several holidays. For some, end of year holiday is Christmas. But there are many others who don’t celebrate Christmas. Focusing only on this one theme excludes them from your offerings.
Inclusion is a major discourse all over the world today. Let it reflect in your content marketing strategy. Draft a calendar to include other major holidays at this time such as Kwanza and Hanukkah. Create something for everyone. Read up on the holidays you aren’t familiar with in order to provide accurate and useful information.
An effective holiday content marketing strategy outlives the holidays. The effort and time dedicated are worth it. And with the longevity of the internet, your content becomes relevant every holiday season especially when it’s written with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques for organic visibility.
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