I feel confident saying that just about everyone is ready to put 2020 to bed. This holiday season offers a welcome chance to disconnect (as much as possible) from accumulated stresses as you rest, recharge, and get ready for a productive 2021. But even if you're on vacation, you don't have to let your marketing efforts go on hiatus as well. If you want to keep your target audience aware of you -- and perhaps even buying from you -- all the way through the end of the year, consider adopting the following smart strategies to keep the ball rolling, not only this holiday season but whenever you decide to get away from it all.
Stockpile That Social Media Content
Internet traffic stops for no one at any time of year. Your target market will continue to communicate, search, and shop online, especially in the face of ongoing pandemic precautions and restrictions. You'll want to keep up your regular schedule of social media posts, from blog articles and Tweets to YouTube videos and Facebook updates.
If you have a vacation coming up, make sure you've created a stockpile of extra social media content that you can keep feeding into your marketing machine. If necessary, hire a freelance copywriter, video production company, or other marketing professional to generate this surplus of material. You can stick to evergreen topics that will work for any time of year, or you can pre-plan specific items to accommodate holidays or other calendar milestones.
Automate as Much as You Can
All that ready-made marketing content won't do you much good if you fail to put it out there on schedule -- another necessary task that can impose on your rest and relaxation. The good news is that technology makes it easy to automate your marketing content distribution. For instance, most online blogging platforms allow you to pre-schedule your posts for any future dates you prefer. Twitter automation tools can provide a wide range of scheduling, sharing, social listening, bookmarking, and other helpful options to take work out of your hands.
Automation can also mean placing your marketing content in the hands of providers for distribution on a pre-arranged schedule. As long as your Web developer, social media strategist, copywriters, graphic designers, and other marketing professionals are working from a detailed editorial calendar, you should be able to count on those digital and print marketing pieces going out according to plan. Just make sure that all your providers are on the same page, with any tweaks to the editorial calendar shared by all concerned.
Outsource, Outsource, Outsource
All this discussion of third-party marketing providers points toward one other huge vacation saver for business owners and small marketing departments: outsourcing. The more marketing content creation and execution you can delegate to outsourced professionals, the less of it you have to bother with yourself. This lightened marketing workload makes holidays and other breaks much easier to accommodate.
Do you feel odd handing over the keys to the car, so to speak, to outsiders? If you've chosen skilled, trustworthy marketing experts, you may find that the quality of marketing improves dramatically even while you're sitting back and enjoying a break from that activity. You always have the option of contributing as much (or as little) as you like to the proceedings if you just can't resist getting involved.
Try these strategies on for size. You may find that they enhance your holiday enjoyment as well as the quality and effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. Have fun!
