With the impending season officially being declared open with Black Friday (27th November) and Cyber Monday  – the putting together of your marketing plan to handle the season better should be well under way by now. If you are finding it hard to figure out what new strategies to implement in order to be successful through the clutter, here are few ways to get you started:

1. Create  Content for the Holiday
   Use email and social media channels to release content that is relevant to the season and not just about your brand’s seasonal offer. Create sharable videos etc., so your brand has an automatic spill-over on these platforms.
2. Be Mobile Device Friendly
   If you haven’t considered optimizing your email content to read and flow better on mobile platforms then you really could be losing out. People are in a rush this season and constantly on the go meaning the best chance to reach them would be on their smartphones or tablets while they are out and about.
3. Be Reputable
   If you have mechanism in place for customers to give you feedback, leave testimonials etc., it would be good to go through them in advance – if there is any negative feedback for instance, it would give you a chance to rectify this and focus your content in that area in order to ensure that your reputation also rises.
4. Be Well Stocked
   If you are planning on having larger sales, you also need to have larger stocks – so ideally plan to have larger dealer purchases and more regular deliveries to ensure that you have enough to meet the demand that you will be creating with your marketing efforts during the Xmas Holidays.
5. Pre-Holiday Marketing
   If you’ve planned early enough, you could actually start your campaign a month in advance allowing you to get to your consumers with your stories before the rest of the marketing world jump in and steal your thunder. Start a campaign early and even try to bring in the sales pre-season.
6. Be Loyal to the Loyal
   If you already have a strong, regular customer base – chances are they will turn to you during the holiday shopping season as well. The point is to recognize and reward these customers with special holiday discounts, freebies etc., so they have more reason to stay with you even when the competition may have a better offer.