Get your brand marketing ready for the holiday season 2020

When you run a business, it’s essential to have a clear idea about your branding. You likely know already this can involve things like a recognizable logo, a coherent color scheme, as well as any key visuals you use for social media and blog posts. That is, you might have a particular header image style you use for your blog, you might format your tweets in a particular way, and so forth. Whatever it is, you have brand marketing figured out already. Or, at least you should. But when the holidays come around, a lot of companies have a tendency to do either one of two things: 1. Keep doing what they’ve always been doing or 2. Throw consistency out the window. Thankfully, there’s a way to remedy this and that falls in how you concoct a brand marketing strategy for the holiday season. 

Your Website Brand Marketing Strategy 

First thing’s first, you need to get your website in order for the holiday season. You can take several approaches to this: 

1. Swap out your site header to something festive. It doesn’t have to be extreme, but adding a festive image or background to your site’s header can really put site visitors in a cheerful state of mind. 
2. Add an animated effect. If you use WordPress, there are all sorts of little plugins you can add to your site to create fun effects. Some are a bit too much, but something subtle might be appreciated by visitors like WP Snow Effect. 
3. Change wording to be in season. Adding cheery greetings to your site could be a nice touch.
4. Add a topbar that announces a holiday sale. Topbars are a nice addition anyway and can be very convenient for announcing sales or special deals. But you can really make use of them around the holidays to post a festive greeting and/or announce a holiday sale. 
5. Acknowledge the very strange times we’re living in. Spreading holiday cheer is all well and fine but it’s important to acknowledge the reality of the world we’re currently living in. 2020 has been a difficult year, so be sure to include that reality in any holiday messaging you write. 

Completing these steps will help you maintain your standard brand while also recognizing a time of year when many appreciate seeing a bit of festivity in their day-to-day lives. And honestly, this year’s news has been so bleak that any extra steps you can take to tastefully crank up the “cheer” factor is bound to be appreciated. 

Your Blog Brand Marketing Strategy 

If you blog regularly on your site, then you likely have consistent imagery you use across each post. A blog header will often include the post’s title or something related to the content. If you use blog headers already, keep up that trend during the holidays but modify their look for the season. If you normally use a monochrome image, for instance, you could add a pop of holiday colors to the design. 

Or, you could include some festive cheer to the content of your posts. Traditional line breaks could be replaced with a bit of holly. Calls-to-action inserted throughout your posts could be swapped out with holiday-specific ones that promote time-sensitive sales or ongoing deals. 

The key here is to not steer too far away from what you would do typically, but to also make it obvious your brand has a sense of fun and interest in celebration. These sorts of personable touches resonate with potential customers and client prospects. It doesn’t matter what sort of business you’re in, your blog readers will want to know they’re dealing with real live humans. 

Your Social Media Brand Marketing Strategy 

When promoting your business online, it’s essential to use social media as well. Posting regularly and engaging with your followers are great ways to build an audience and establish your brand personality. As the holiday season begins, adding a festive touch to your social presence will further solidify your brand marketing strategy overall. Here’s how: 

• It shows you engage with and regularly update your social accounts. 
• It puts a “face” behind your brand that is more personable than generic posts. 
• Creates a sense of community for your followers. 
• It’s fun! 

To prep your marketing strategy on social media for the holiday season this year you can: 

• Create new graphics for headers and profile pictures. Give your social profiles a holiday-themed makeover. It’ll attract attention when you click “update,” too. 
• Write seasonally-appropriate bios. Add in a holiday greeting or link to a holiday-specific section of your website. 
• Pre-write social posts. Most people take some time off around the holidays, so plan with this in mind. You’ll want to write any social media posts that you want to share around the holidays ahead of time so they can be scheduled and sent out even if you’re out of the virtual office. 
• Create custom graphics for your posts. This is a must. Social media content does so much better with images so creating some with holiday imagery can help to further bring attention to your site and your CTAs. 

Your Email Brand Marketing Strategy 

Your brand marketing strategy will naturally extend to how you approach your email newsletters and autoresponders, too. So, if you have header graphics in your emails, update them. You can likely modify any branded images you use on your website or blog for your emails as well. Keep your messaging consistent with your overall brand messaging but add touches of festivity and celebration where appropriate. Here are a few additional tips:

• Be culturally sensitive. As with any holiday season, you want to make sure you use inclusive terminology and to ensure anyone reading it feels represented. 
• Be sensitive to the state of the world. As mentioned above, 2020 has been a very difficult year, so it’s important to reflect that in your messaging. Not everyone will be able to spend time with their families this holiday season, so it’s essential you include this possibility in how you address how readers might be spending the holidays. Instead of saying, “as you sit down to holiday dinner with your family,” instead include a few options like, “As you sit down to holiday dinner with your family in-person, socially-distanced, or over Zoom.” 
• Always end on a positive note. Bring your emails back around to a message of hope and looking forward to the future. Pandemics don’t last forever. Sign off with a positive tone. 
• Use your emails to promote special holiday offers. Promote holiday deals, discounts, and coupons as you normally would. Add the holiday messaging to your usual promotional efforts, if need be. 

By following these tips, you’re certain to ensure any email messages you send to your subscribers will be convincing and seasonally appropriate. 

Prepare for Holidays with a Consistent Brand Marketing Strategy

Your existing brand marketing strategy is hopefully serving you well. But when the holidays approach, you will need to make a few adjustments to fit the mood of the moment. Reflect the generosity and excitement of the season, and you can’t go wrong. 

And really, with a year that’s been so dismal in so many ways, any effort you make to bring a bit of cheeriness to your site visitors, blog readers, social media followers, or email subscribers will be a welcome reprieve. 

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