5 (Mostly Effortless) Ways to Keep Your Holiday Marketing Momentum Going Through 2021

For retailers, marketers, and many small business owners, September brings more than a chill to the fall air - it brings the anxiety-fueled anticipation of the impending holiday season.A successful holiday season can make or break a business’ bottom line, but ensuring that success takes a hefty (and costly) holiday marketing push. Your budget and capacity to take on extra work may already be stretched thin, but what if there was a small measure you could take to build up your leads, engagement, and brand awareness throughout the year to give you more of an edge during the holiday season?Take a look now at contests and giveaways, which have always been a smart way to promote your business. Contests and giveaways foster excitement, allow you to leverage data collection in exchange for the chance of winning a prize, and position your brand in a positive light. There is a misconception, however, that contests and giveaways must be short-lasting. A campaign that is set up and left to run continuously can actually help you get the results of a typical contest or giveaway but on a continuous basis. Use these simple, long-term campaigns to boost your business throughout the year - taking the anxiety out of your next big holiday marketing hill climb.

What if there was a small measure you could take to build up your leads, engagement, and brand awareness throughout the year to give you more of an edge during the holiday season?

What is a Continuous Campaign?

In a nutshell, a continuous campaign is just as the name suggests - any type of campaign you can leave running for an extended or open-ended amount of time. Unlike many contests, giveaways, or promotions you see, a continuous campaign can boast a weekly or monthly winner or simply be a promotion or tool that is always available to your audience.In this post, we’ll show you five examples of simple continuous campaigns that require minimal upkeep, allowing you to boost your business all year long in preparation for a successful holiday push.

Monthly Giveaway

The parenting blog and online community, What to Expect, hosts a monthly giveaway that acts as a powerful magnet for new subscribers. This $1,500 monthly giveaway is simple to maintain as it only requires a bit of advertising and the random selection of a winner once a month. Apart from announcing each winner, the entry form and landing page can stay exactly the same from month to month.

The giveaway not only continuously attracts new readers with it’s hefty $1,500 prize, but it also allows What to Expect to collect valuable marketing info from its participants. For example, the entry form includes a field that asks “are you pregnant?” Answering “yes” to this question offers marketing insight opportunities and positions What to Expect to send promotions from affiliate pregnancy and baby-related businesses.View and Create Your Own Monthly Giveaway

Personality Quiz

Although the name ‘Personality Quiz’ may not be familiar to you, you’ve certainly seen one of these in your Facebook feed and may have even taken one (or a dozen) on a lazy Sunday afternoon. A personality quiz is a type of quiz that gives you a specific outcome after you’ve answered questions about your personality. For example, to find out which character on Game of Thrones you’d most likely be, you may have to pick your favorite movie, your favorite character from the Simpsons, and even your favorite emoji. Based on your answers, the quiz will reveal your outcome. (I got Hodor.)A quiz like this may seem silly and pointless apart from offering up a bit of fun. However, it can actually be a powerful tool in your marketing toolbox. Take this example from Hulu - participants can take the quiz to find a movie or tv series to watch. I don’t know about you, but picking something to watch can be a real struggle in our household. Sometimes, offerings like this are not only helpful, they engage their participants and prolong their subscriptions by helping subscribers discover new shows. For instance, I would have never picked The Hotwives of Orlando to watch, but after seeing my quiz outcome, I might just give it a shot.

If collecting leads is important to you, you can include a lead collection form within the quiz to gate the outcome reveal. In other words, the participant would answer the questions, but before they can see their outcome, they would need to submit their name and email address into a form.View and Create Your Own Personality Quiz

Weekly Trivia Challenge

A great way to educate your audience about your business or industry is with a trivia quiz. Asking a weekly trivia question and entering all who answered correctly into a drawing can help keep current and future customers coming back to your website or landing page, which in turn, keeps your business on the forefront of their minds.Check out this example from the Greenbay Packers. A simple entry form collects participant info while keeping fans engaged and coming back week after week to see if they’ve won.

Not all businesses will inspire the same level of enthusiasm as a national sports team, however, most businesses can think of a clever way to peak interests. For example, a bridal company could ask trivia questions related to wedding tradition history or a brewery could ask trivia related to brewing and beer style knowledge.View and Create Your Own Trivia Quiz

Hashtag Giveaway

Creating a branded hashtag is a must-do for any business with a social media presence, or in other words, any business. Encourage customers to post your products or experience with your business on social media with your branded hashtag and offer to enter them in a giveaway in exchange.

You can draw once a month or even every week if you want to keep the excitement high. Then, post the winners on social media to alert others that it pays to post. This type of incentive not only helps promote your business through word of mouth marketing, but it also helps attract new eyeballs to your brand.

Review Giveaway

Much like a hashtag giveaway, reviews offer a valuable channel to promote your business through word-of-mouth marketing. The power of positive reviews is indisputable. In fact, 91% of consumers say that positive reviews make them more likely to use a business.

Building up your reputation through reviews has other benefits as well. Whereas hashtagged posts typically live on a social media channel, you can promote reviews anywhere. Add quotes from reviews to a website, landing page, ads, promotional videos, or anywhere your promote your business. Reviews can even be grouped together and displayed in a gallery for additional impact.View and Create Your Own Review Gallery

To summarize…

You can put all of your eggs in one big holiday marketing push basket, but you’ll be missing out on a year’s worth of potential. So don’t wait until the September chill. Start thinking about next year now, and use a continuous campaign to slowly improve your success metrics.If none of these examples ignites inspiration, think of the bigger picture - to keep your audience engaged throughout the year. Check out some of our other templates and hit us up with any questions - we’re always happy to help brainstorm ideas specific to your business.

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