Holiday marketing promotion strategy!

Stimulating consumption has become a common consensus among all sectors of society today.

So we see that everyone from the national level to local governments has taken action. Among them, the most representative measure is to directly issue consumption coupons to consumers and stimulate public consumption sentiment through subsidies.

Trying to drive consumption growth through the multiplier effect!

In order to stimulate consumption growth, brands have tried every possible means to increase product sales as much as possible to ensure cash flow security. In this situation, many businesses pin their hopes on holiday marketing.

To some extent, holiday marketing is being regarded as a "panacea" by major brands.

01 The tricks behind “festival marketing”

In 2009, Taobao Mall chose a date close to the end of the year and gathered 27 merchants to carry out an online promotion activity. The results were surprisingly good, with sales reaching 50 million yuan in one day. After that, "Double Eleven" is not only Singles' Day, but also a synonym for shopping spree!

Looking back now, why was the first Double Eleven so successful?

Because, the price is cheap!

In fact, low price, as the most prominent feature of holiday marketing, is the most important reason to attract users to watch. The reason is easy to understand. Faced with a large number of discounted goods, consumers will have a feeling of getting a bargain and benefit. As for the brand, although the profit will be reduced, the sales volume of products will increase significantly and the total profit will also increase.

In addition, holiday marketing has another major feature, that is: limited time.

The purpose is to create a sense of urgency for consumers so that they can make purchasing decisions based on emotional thinking. Think about it, as a consumer, when you see information like "The first 500 consumers can enjoy a 50% discount" or "You can enjoy a 300 yuan discount in the first hour", can you still think calmly?

Of course, as marketing methods continue to mature, the methods of holiday marketing are becoming more and more advanced.

For example, coupons can be obtained through small games to achieve the purpose of social fission and enhance consumers' sense of participation and interaction; for example, group buying, pre-sales of new products, installment payments, etc. can further reduce consumption price sensitivity and increase consumer experience.

In short, behind holiday marketing is actually a "conspiracy" between brands and platforms, the purpose of which is to create enough hunger so that consumers spend money happily.

The result, naturally, is that brands, platforms and consumers are all happy!

However, some people have put forward different views and opinions.

02. Create a festival with a loud and powerful slogan "Poisonous"

Some people say that as festivals become more and more frequent, with one festival taking its place after another, consumers are experiencing serious aesthetic fatigue.

The reason why Tmall's Double Eleven Carnival became such a hit is that there had never been such a large-scale collective discount event before, which instantly ignited consumers' enthusiasm.

In other words, the value of Tmall Double Eleven lies in its first-mover advantage!

Although in terms of prices nowadays, Tmall Double Eleven may not be the lowest on the entire Internet. However, consumption habits and the collective participation of many well-known brands have ensured that this event always attracts the attention of the whole society.

If the biggest advantage of the "618 Shopping Festival" is that it occurred in the first half of the year, then the "818 Festival", "520 Festival", "38 Queen's Day", "88VIP Membership Day" and so on are far inferior.

Fundamentally speaking, a large number of homogeneous festival activities do not reflect sufficient differentiation, and cannot give consumers a reason to buy!

Not only that, the creation of the festival itself actually indirectly caused some negative effects.

Take Double Eleven as an example.

A week or even half a month before Double Eleven, many consumers will choose to add items to their shopping carts but will not place orders, especially for daily consumer goods. As a result, the number of orders in the week before and the week after "Double Eleven" will decline to varying degrees.

Since the product has a limited usage period, consumer demand is constant within a certain period and will not increase significantly. But at the same time, holiday marketing will have a significant impact on price-sensitive consumers. That is, if the product is not used urgently, it will lead to the phenomenon of "no festival, no buying".

This is not worth the loss for the brand.

More importantly, every marketing activity that a merchant participates in has costs, and a lot of product costs, labor costs and marketing costs need to be invested.

From this we can conclude that:

Although the "festival" itself can stimulate consumers' desire to buy, the increasingly serious homogeneity of marketing content has led to consumers becoming increasingly tired and indifferent. Even if sales can be increased in the short term, if the time dimension is extended, it is actually just a loud shouting.

03. The key to having too many festivals is to create a nationwide shopping frenzy

Generally speaking, marketing has two purposes.

First, create enough noise, preferably by swiping the entire network, for the purpose of exposure; second, under the concept of product and effect integration, the more product sales, the better.

As for the current situation, the second point is more in line with reality!

As mentioned earlier, although holiday marketing looks good, it also has many disadvantages. This raises a question: Is it still necessary to do holiday marketing?

The answer is of course, it is necessary!

However, adjustments and optimizations can be made to the holiday marketing methods instead of simply copying the experience of 618 like the 818 Shopping Festival and only offering discounts and offers on prices.

So, what should we do?

Here, I have a few thoughts and suggestions.

1. Create a “New Product Launch Festival”.

Based on past experience, March and April and September and October each year are the golden periods for major brands to launch new products. Therefore, instead of letting brands “fight alone”, it is better to turn it into a shopping carnival and provide a platform for concentrated exposure of new products.

Then, methods such as “doubling the deposit”, “limited coupons” and “lottery” are used to stimulate consumers’ purchases.

2. Create an “Old for New Festival”.

Take smartphones as an example.

Whether it is Apple or Huawei, every time a new phone is released, they will launch an "old for new" campaign, that is, the old phone can be deducted from the corresponding cash.

It turns out that this marketing method is very successful.

Therefore, we might as well make a bold attempt, with the e-commerce platform taking the lead in an “old for new” campaign with the participation of many brand merchants. By shortening the product life cycle and improving user experience, consumers can enjoy a shopping spree.

3. Create a “rural carnival”.

On many occasions, the government has mentioned that it will try every possible means to unleash the consumption potential of the rural market. So, how to release it?

Among them, the biggest commodities are undoubtedly cars and home appliances going to the countryside!

However, since specific policies are issued by local governments and information channels are blocked, even good policies will be greatly discounted. At this time, if we can create a festival event like "Country Carnival" where consumers can enjoy super low discounts when purchasing within the specified time, it will surely ignite consumers' enthusiasm.

The role of the platform is to allow more exposure to holiday information and let more people know about it.

04. Make use of the public nature of “festivals” to help brands take off

As mentioned before, we need festival marketing, but we don’t need festivals that are simply renamed. In other words, the "festival" itself must be sufficiently different.

Ultimately, it’s about giving consumers a reason to consume. And this reason must be convincing!

In terms of quantity, holiday marketing does not require too much. One is distributed in the first half of the year, one is distributed in the second half of the year, and another is distributed before the Lunar New Year. Combined with the various holiday activities with special tendencies mentioned above, marketing activities can span the whole year.

It can meet the needs of both sensitive consumers and non-sensitive consumers!

More importantly, whether it is a merchant pursuing brand exposure, a merchant pursuing volume and profit, or a merchant clearing inventory and recovering funds, they can all find their own position in different holiday marketing.

In this way, we can achieve the best marketing effect and minimize costs.

In addition, it is also necessary to point out that the reason why "festival" is called "festival" is because "festival" is the common customs and habits of a region or a nation. Simply put, behind the "festival" is commemoration, carnival, and inheritance.

Because of this, "festival" has a public attribute!

"Holiday marketing" should not be seen as the patent of a certain platform or brand, but should truly play its public role. Only in this way can the brand truly take advantage of the festival traffic and further enrich its connotation.

In this way, holiday marketing can become a point hidden in consumers' consciousness, awakening consumers' desire to consume and giving the brand wings to take off!

Author: Lin Chuan

Source: Brand front page