The holidays are coming whether you like it or not. Is your marketing plan ready?
Well, here we are…only a few days until October and about 90 days until Christmas. But first, we have quite a few things going on until then:
Halloween (do we trick or treat during a pandemic?)
A national election
Small Business Saturday
Thanksgiving
Black Friday
Cyber Monday
Giving Tuesday
And then Christmas and New Year’s…
If 2020 has proven anything, it is that we can’t rely on our old ways of thinking when it comes to marketing, public relations and social media…or can we?
While October is a bit late to start the process, we do think that businesses are nimble enough to get back on track in a hurry.
There is no time like now to plan out your marketing and communications strategies to set your business up for success over the next 90 days, and start planning ahead for 2021.
Budget: Your budget was most likely blown into bits this year. Start figuring out what you can spend, what you need to spend it on, and think of ways you can rethink your budget numbers in order to reallocate those funds.
For most businesses, this may mean taking a look at your advertising spend. With work-from-home playing a big part in our work lives now, perhaps bus shelter ads aren’t going to give you the ROI that you are used to. Start rethinking and focusing on your social media content and ads, Google Ads, and joint-marketing campaigns that you can tie your business or nonprofit into.
Campaign Themes: As the list above shows, there are several ways to tie your content to what is happening from now until January 2021. Take each event, break it down into a two-week campaign, brainstorm content (social media, emails), tie in your email marketing and landing pages, and spruce up your promotions.
Create: Once you have your themes laid out, get to work on your creative assets. Build templates for each campaign so you aren’t recreating the wheel every time you want to make a new social post or ad. Use your brand colors and logos, take pictures, videos and use the images to tell your story.
Schedule: Using a third-party platform to schedule and post your social media content is a great tool to help you plan out your next 90 days. If you don’t have access, or if you are working with a very tight budget, you can pre-schedule your Facebook content via the platform itself. If you are going old school and posting each day, then set up a calendar and reminders so you don’t miss your posting schedule.
Try not to wait until the last minute, but if you do find yourself overwhelmed, let us know. Contact us for a Discovery Call to see if we would be a good fit for you and your business. We would be happy to help!
