Preparing for seasonal marketing - timelines for promotions, when to start ads, types of campaigns for seasonal promos

Union Metrics keeps track of annual statistics behind holiday marketing. Union noted that on Twitter, the conversion rate is trackable at specific times, and with specific metrics for a bulk of people. These discussions start at a specific time, and that timeframe is good to plan your social media and strategies for marketing around. 

According to their editor-in-chief, Twitter starts talking about the holidays as a trending topic at the beginning of November, roughly three weeks before Thanksgiving. The growth of holiday discussion and searched keywords is exponential daily up through Black Friday. 

“We view Twitter as the pulse of the planet because it’s where people go to talk about everything,” she adds. “We kind of use it as the canary in the coal mine, so we look at Twitter and see the same trends elsewhere. People are already talking about their holiday deals on Instagram and on Facebook, too.”

When you’re designing your marketing campaigns and strategies, it’s important to make sure that you don’t alienate your consumers. By posting sooner, you’ll know that by Black Friday your consumers won’t just be seeing them the day of. 

You want to treat your ads similarly to your social posts. Your holiday search ads shouldn’t go up too early, however, they will be in planning longer. It is recommended to work on your holiday ads throughout the fall.  That planning is meant to make sure that they are categorized accordingly for your markets and target demographics. After the Labor Day and back-to-school timeframe have passed, you should begin working towards your holiday ad plans. In an effort to avoid spending too much money on your ad plans, you should be launching each ad closer to the day of each deal offered. Longer promotions remove the necessity of the deal as a time-based promotion. 

Building up your SEO before the holiday ads go up is an optimum strategy to index your website alongside your search ads for the holiday season. Running ads in tandem with your social media presence for the holiday season is an ideal way to ensure that your maximizing the strategy for the greatest efficiency. 

Email Marketing is in the same realm of timeliness as marketing holiday pushes. However, you should plan your email campaigns to start a bit earlier than your social media posts. It was found that email campaigns had a positive open rate versus social campaign engagement.

When planning a calendar for your campaigns, by September you should be figuring out how to divide your demographics so you know how to plan ads. In October, send a mix of holiday emails and non-holiday emails. Once November hits you can begin your full campaign strategy implementation. Finally, by the week of Thanksgiving, you can release your search ads and run those budgets.