How to do holiday marketing most effectively?

It’s the annual “buy, sell, buy” Double 11 shopping festival again. In recent days, a joke has been circulating on the Internet: What is the most worth discounting on Double 11? The answer is: your own hands.

Joking aside, it also reflects from the side that everyone is already gearing up for this artificial shopping festival and is ready to go on a shopping spree.

Looking at such holiday enthusiasm, as an operator , you should feel very relieved: the year-end KPI is no problem.

Is it really no problem? Not necessarily. Almost all Internet marketing is eager to take advantage of the " festival marketing " to achieve multiple operational indicators in one fell swoop. However, although the "festival marketing " is a good thing, it can often fail if you are not careful. So, what is the most effective way to conduct holiday marketing in the Internet age?

Advantages of festival marketing

The so-called marketing is to create excitement. When there is excitement, users are attracted and there will be traffic available for conversion .

From ancient times to the present, anything that can be called a "festival" is a spiritual and cultural product that is jointly formed and recognized by the entire society and belongs to the entire collective. So on these special days, no matter what specific expectations we have, deep down we are all looking for some way to gain a sense of participation as a member of the collective.

This is an emotion buried in everyone's heart. If not properly released during the holiday season, it is often accompanied by depression and a sense of loss. In other words, it is a feeling of frustration after falling behind in the group. In order to avoid this frustration as much as possible, we will be more proactive and willing to participate in various activities to celebrate the festival.

Therefore, every festival is a national-level large-scale atmosphere-creating machine. There is no need to create a lively atmosphere. Carrying out marketing activities at this time can often achieve twice the result with half the effort. For example, when e-commerce did not exist, long holidays such as May Day and National Day were good opportunities for offline stores to offer discounts and promotions. Consumers would release their enthusiasm for shopping during these holidays, even though they did not have time to do so during normal work days. With the rise of e-commerce, consumers can shop anytime and anywhere, and their enthusiasm for consumption is not as high as before, but the inherent impression of festivals still exists. Therefore, e-commerce companies seize the fact that users feel like the festival is not over if they don’t do something during it, and often achieve good results by carrying out marketing activities during the festivals.

Overzealous holiday marketing is gradually backfiring

However, in view of the significant positive impact of festivals on the effectiveness of activities, the slogan "No festival without marketing" has become louder and louder, so that Internet people have become more and more obsessed with festival marketing, as if they would be embarrassed to say hello to colleagues when going out if their company does not hold an event during the festival. In this situation where a hungry tiger pounces on its food, the traditional festivals that the Chinese nation has accumulated over thousands of years are far from enough.

If traditional festivals are not enough, then we can transform Western festivals to make up for it. Is that still not enough? Then just make up a name and create your own festival! Tmall Double 11 , JD 618, and the anniversary celebrations of various e-commerce companies all use the Internet to create a festive atmosphere and use emotions to coerce the public into their own set world, in order to achieve the purpose of motivating users to buy. This obsession with festivals among Internet users has nothing to do with the release of group emotions, the sedimentation of traditional culture, or the psychological intersection between people.

So, when Internet marketers all rush to jump on the bandwagon of "festival marketing" and when the concept of timeliness is taken as a common work skill, the serious consequence is that every festival is an overdraft of public sentiment, and users are overwhelmed.

Three ways to make holiday marketing less "greasy"

what to do?

How can we make holiday marketing less vulgar and outdated, and make users feel that it is not too aggressive?

Here are three suggestions for your reference:

Build an emotional bond between the brand and the festival

From the user's perspective, an effective holiday marketing plan should be able to restore people's expectations of the festival and allow people to taste the unique flavor that the festival should have. Therefore, by helping to create a festive atmosphere and linking brand characteristics with festive connotations, we can enable target users to participate in the festival more quickly and conveniently through our products or services at a lower cost, and we can gain users' heartfelt recognition and positive communication power.

Take NetEase Yanxuan ’s “Yanxuan Qixi Festival Event” as an example. Unlike most e-commerce companies that simply use the Qixi Festival as a gimmick for promotions, the NetEase Yanxuan team achieved good results by building an emotional bond between the brand and the Qixi Festival and playing the emotional card in many ways: building a love museum to display the love stories behind users of the products, allowing users to feel the warmth of the products; the monologue album "Don't Give Me Gifts" impresses users auditorily; and jointly creating a series of black pineapple products with the hit show "Let's Fall in Love", giving the products the meaning of beautiful love.

Love Museum: Use comics to tell the stories behind Yanxuan products. Users can also submit their own love stories on the "Join Yanxuan" page, and these stories will be displayed at the bottom. A carefully selected love museum was also held offline for people to visit.

Give it to her/him/yourself: The best gift selected for a specific person, no longer has to worry about buying gifts. The "Give it to yourself" product page also reminds users not to forget to love themselves while loving others.

Love monologue album "Don't Give Me Gifts": A CD will have two sides, A and B. This album tells the stories of the gifts they encounter in their lives from the perspectives of men and women respectively. The gifts separate them from the wrong people and eventually bring them together with the right people. Touch users through hearing.

Love Season: Cooperate with the program “We Are in Love” to launch holiday-exclusive discounts on the Black Pineapple series of products, and leverage the influence of the program “We Are in Love” to achieve sales targets.

This series of emotional combinations will greatly benefit users, and subsequent product sales will follow naturally.

Pay attention to non-holiday-themed groups and give them a voice

Many years ago, there was a classic plot about Valentine's Day gifts in the idol drama "My Lucky Star" which was broadcast: on Valentine's Day, the heroine designed a Valentine's Day gift for single people all over the world - a single ring.

“Yes, the romantic Valentine’s Day is a day for lovers.

But, do single people not have to celebrate Valentine's Day?

Miss, do you have a partner for Valentine's Day? If you don’t have one, you can buy my single ring!

This is the Valentine's Day gift I designed for single people all over the world .

Just wear this ring that symbolizes being single,

No matter where you go, everyone will know that you are single and worth pursuing.

Are you worried about how to send the message that you are single?

Wear this ring to let everyone know that you are a person.

It means I can pursue you, which is more powerful than the power of words~

This is an innovative design that transcends race, language, culture, and country.

Just wear a single ring.

You can meet people who are looking for happiness just like you in every corner of the world~

There are a wide variety of Valentine's Day products on the market.

But I hope that single people can find their own happiness through this ring ! ”

"Blue Diamond" represents looking for love. I am single, you can chase me~

"Purple Diamond" represents my current mood. I don't want to be disturbed, so please don't "bother" me!

The beauty of this plot is that it draws attention to the fact that although singles are not the main demographic for Valentine's Day, they are another large group of people. Among these people, some are longing for love but do not have a suitable partner for the time being, while others enjoy being alone and do not want to be disturbed. Normally they get along well with their lovers , but on Valentine's Day, the romantic atmosphere and the overwhelming "dog food" always irritate their nerves and make them overwhelmed. It is said that there are a total of 14 Valentine's Days under various names, but there is only one Singles Day, which is on November 11th. Just this one thing was turned into an online shopping carnival by Alibaba , so how depressed single people must be. Therefore, if a brand can speak for them during such a festival, it will naturally win their heartfelt approval and love.

For example, the fashion watch brand Weilushi booked the Shenzhen subway during the Chinese Valentine's Day, and used thoughtful copywriting to speak for singles, a non-holiday-themed group: It doesn't matter whether you are in a relationship or not, you can still live a cool life even if you are alone. Be yourself!

It should be noted that although using this method can make you stand out, it is easy to fail if you are not careful.

First of all, you have to make sure that there are enough people with non-holiday themes. Otherwise, your carefully planned and expensive marketing activities will be ineffective because they target too few people, and the ROI will be too low, so it will be unnecessary.

Secondly, you need to make sure that you can appeal to the non-festival-themed crowd while not offending the mainstream festival crowd.

Finally, the values ​​you promote should be positive and constructive, and should provide comfort and hope to the target audience. This is the only way to win recognition and gain dissemination.

Create an exclusive festival that matches the temperament of your own products

Good products have an unshakable monopoly on product price range, and anyone who dares to intrude will be killed.

Good products should also create exclusive festivals that suit their own product temperament and form festival barriers.

The reason why users feel annoyed by many holiday marketing campaigns is that too many products neither consider user needs when planning holiday activities nor consider the user usage scenarios of their products. As a result, the planned activities were extremely embarrassing, laborious and thankless.

Take Hujiang as an example. As an online education platform, during holidays, various indicators such as the opening rate and activity of some products generally decline. This is the normal usage logic of users for Hujiang's products: Who doesn't want to take a break, relax and have fun during the holidays? If you launch an event at this time, calling on everyone not to slack off in studying even during holidays, it would be strange if users don't roll their eyes. Therefore, for Hujiang's products, such holiday marketing is obviously inappropriate. It would be better to wait until the holiday is over and users have had enough fun, and then use the users' guilt to hold an event to tell everyone: the holiday is over, you have eaten enough and played enough, it's time to focus on studying, come and use Hujiang's products. This way, users will be more receptive.

For example, Hujiang Online School will create a series of online and offline welfare activities at the beginning of the school season to help students quickly get back into their learning state and give users a refreshing experience in the new semester!

Such activities can naturally achieve better results because they fit the user's psychology, meet the user's needs and usage scenarios. So, do you know which holiday nodes are suitable for your product’s temperament?

Summarize

It’s good to take advantage of holiday marketing, but what’s most important is to make it suitable for your product. Let go of your obsession with festivals, deeply understand the characteristics of your own products and the needs of your target groups, and combine the two. Only then can the activities you operate achieve both success and good reputation.

The author of this article @梁谦峰 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

Product promotion services: APP promotion services, information flow advertising, advertising platform