We are down to the last few months of the year, which means it is time to kick it into high gear if you want to meet your quarterly and yearly goals. Understandably, you may have had to adjust your goals due to the pandemic, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still meet them.
Having a hard time coming up with ways to help your organization meet its goals? Marketing during the holidays could give you just the boost you need. Consider the following ideas to help you end the year on a high.
The Gift of Experience
While material gifts are always in style, the desire for the gift of an experience has jumped exponentially in recent years. Your organization is primed to offer great experiences to your community, which in turn can help create wonderful memories. By offering unique experiences that are also convenient, you will be top-of-mind for your community when it comes to gifting an experience worth remembering for loved ones.
The holidays are a great time to help your organization recapture lost revenue as a result of the pandemic. With school being mostly virtual for a lot of children, parents are trying to find ways to maintain educational enrichment for their kids. Market your programs as an alternative option to traditional toys and clothes.
According to Deloitte’s retail and distribution team, holiday spending is projected to result in over $1.1 billion of sales during the November and January timeframe. E-commerce sales will grow by 25 to 35% year over year during the 2020-21 holiday season. And although this holiday season will “be marked by unparalleled uncertainty,” 64% of consumers polled say they plan to spend more online this year than last year with 70% of consumers in the United States intending to make the majority of their purchases online, PowerReviews Holiday Consumer Survey reports.
Marketing Your Programs During the Holiday Season
The most cost-effective way of making your community aware of your programs this holiday season is through digital marketing efforts like email and paid social, as well as the easy-to-implement—and free—SEO. Traditional advertising, such as placing an ad in your local newspapers, magazines, on the radio or via a billboard, can be incredibly expensive. Save time, worry and money by utilizing digital marketing, and meet your target audience where they already are—online.
The Advantage of Email Marketing for Your Programs
For every dollar spent in email marketing, you get $44 back, according to Campaign Monitor. That is a huge ROI, and it would be detrimental if your organization didn’t take advantage of it during the holidays. Make sure to follow email marketing best practices before you hit send, such as:
- Include a catchy, clear and concise subject line.
- Know your audience—write to them specifically and include an offer tailored to their needs.
- Send segmented email marketing messages.
- Use images and branding.
- Include a clear call to action.
- Don’t forget to add a button that links to your website where interested individuals can register or learn more.
Utilize Paid Social Tactics
Seventy-four percent of consumers rely on social media to help make their purchasing decisions, according to an ODM Group study. Consumers spend an average of 3 hours per day scrolling through their newsfeeds (Globalwebindex, 2019), so be where they already are and advertise your programs on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
Every business page within Facebook has access to Business Manager and has the ability to create dynamic ads and place them in front of a target audience. But there is more to creating ads on these platforms than just picking a post you already have about your programs and putting money behind it. You have to:
- Demonstrate your organization’s worth and show your target audience how you can solve their problem with short, informative and enticing copy. Do not include links in your copy.
- Keep imagery simple and related to what you are offering.
- Using dynamic, high-quality imagery—something that will make someone stop scrolling and start reading.
- If using text within your image, keep it simple.
- Limit emoji usage to two at the most.
- Utilize high-quality video related to your programs.
- Turn negative comments into an opportunity.
- Target your audience by location, hobbies and more.
- Include a call-to-action button and use it to link to the registration page for your programs.
Special Holiday Tips:
- End your campaign at an appropriate time. You don’t want to run Black Friday ads after Black Friday.
- Don’t overdo it with puns.
- Be inclusive and aware of others, as not everyone in your community looks like you or celebrates the same holidays.
Optimize Your Website to Gain More Traffic
The most cost-effective digital marketing tactic is SEO, also known as search engine optimization. SEO is the process of increasing the relevancy of your website on search engine results pages, or SERPs. Google crawls websites for keywords that are relevant to a search inquiry and serves up results based on that relevancy. When you optimize your website, you also create more trust for your band and website, which helps your organization’s overall reputation.
You could hire a firm to help optimize your website, but you can also easily make some tweaks yourself. The goal is to try to get to that first or second results page on Google, as consumers are less likely to go beyond that when searching for specific keywords or key phrases within the platform.
- Increase your website speed by removing anything that is slowing it down. You can test your website speed via Google’s PageSpeed Insights.
- Keep your site speed to 2 to 3 seconds.
- Post blogs and ensure they have links to other websites with relevant content.
- Write strong and relevant meta descriptions for each page on your website.
- Focus on optimizing your website for mobile.
- Create a custom 404 page.
- Increase site speed by compressing and optimizing your images.
- Remove broken links.
- Include relevant keywords or key phrases in your page titles or product or program descriptions.
Help your members give the gift of experience through our amazing ACTIVE partnerships. We partnered with some of the best in the business to provide exciting activities to help keep kids entertained and learning both on and off the computer.
- I’m The Chef Too: I’m The Chef Too breaks down the steps of cooking for kids and incorporates science-based lessons along the way. Kids enjoy the fruits of their labor while also learning about STEAM-based concepts.
- Brain Chase: Adventure awaits with Brain Chase! With both online and offline activities, kids will have a blast with gamified learning. Customized for your needs and white labeled with your branding, this program contains personalized electives in the form of treasure hunts and escape rooms.
- MEL Science: MEL Science was created to encourage a fascination with chemistry and dive deeper into the why behind how science works. Any child can be a scientist, and MEL Science wants to support and inspire excitement for kids and their families.
ACTIVEWorks Camp & Class Manager is an all-in-one online registration, camp management and marketing software solution. Whether you run overnight summer camps, day camps, sports camps and clinics, art classes, educational camps or any other type of youth program, Camp Manager's cloud-based software is at your side to lighten your load and allow you make smart, data-driven decisions while also helping you deliver great customer service.
