A marketer's guide to navigating through the holiday season
Ragnarok, Inc.
Ragnarok is a full-service agency. As cross-channel experts, we bridge the gap between creative and technology.
Feeling holi-dazed thinking about your holiday marketing to-do list? Here’s a handy step-by-step planning guide to bookmark to get ahead of feeling frazzled this holiday season!
Step 1: Host a Pre-Season Brainstorm
The best way to get creative is to plan ahead! Get your team’s creativity flowing as soon as possible before you need to lock down plans. The extra time will allow the team to think big before moving into execution mode.?
Be sure to bring historical results to the table to ground everyone in an understanding of what has worked and what has not. We also always like to include a competitive review that summarizes trends seen from both direct competitors and the broader landscape over the past few years.
In addition, pulling trend forecast reports from well-known industry experts and thought leaders can help to predict what may be brewing for the year ahead.?
Articles we suggest:
Step 2: Set Your Goals?
Achieving your goals starts with being clear on what those goals actually are!
“SMART goals” is a commonly used framework for individual goal setting, and can also be applied to organization-level objective setting. So what goals are smart goals? The S.M.A.R.T. in SMART goals stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.?
Step 3: Start with a High-Level Calendar
Once you’ve done your brainstorming and finalized your goals, the next step is to create a high-level calendar that defines your core messages by time frame.? It’s important to create a high-level view of your key messages before spinning out into execution to ensure your messages hit in a focused way.
Slot in the best bets that came out of your planning sessions.? If there’s anything that feels like a risk, try to test it out in a smaller way in advance of the holidays to gather data to prove that it will work. Here’s an example of what a high-level calendar may look like:
Holiday 1:? Holiday Launch (Oct 24 - Nov 6)
Holiday 2: Friends and Family (Nov 7 - Nov 12)
Holiday 3: Black Friday Teasers (Nov 13 - Nov 21)
领英推荐
Holiday 4: Black Friday / Cyber Monday (Nov 23 - 30)
Holiday 5: Gifting Last Chance (Dec 1 - Dec 20)
Post-Holiday? (Dec 21 - Jan 31)
Step 4: Set Your Marketing Channel Plans
Once you have your core messages defined in the high-level calendar, take it a step further by deciding which channels you’ll be deploying for each campaign period. Below is an example of some of the considerations for each phase.
Holiday Planning Channel Checklist
Step 5: Create Your Campaign Content
By the time you’ve reached this step, you know your high-level messages, as well as each channel you’ll be using to distribute those messages. So now it’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty of briefing in each individual asset.??
Q4 can be a cluttered time for messages, so as a general rule we aim for simple yet also engaging content with clear prompts for action.? The full user journey should be considered - from the first ad the customer sees to the point of checkout - to ensure the experience is clear at all stages.
Step 6: Recap (and Relax!)
The best time to regroup on results is immediately after your campaigns wrap up.? Pop open some cider (or mix up a Ragnarok Purple Haze) and celebrate your successes! Share out those post-mortems while things are still fresh.? Be sure to capture detailed notes and ideas that you’d like to pull forward to optimize the next year since it’ll be time to plan again before you know it.??
Need some holiday helping hands?? Contact Ragnarok today!