Hanukkah, Christmas, and New Year marketing, part three of the holiday season
Whether you believe in “saving the best for last” during the winter holidays or not, there’s no denying that December offers the most opportunity for holiday-themed marketing.
OEMs seem to understand that. Just consider all the year-end sales that take over national ad campaigns following Black Friday. However, what can dealers locally do to take advantage of all this positive energy?
Bring a festive flair to your outreach
Every December, advertising across the board adopts a holiday-themed aesthetic for a reason: this is the busiest shopping month, and covering your ads with cheery graphics serves to emphasize how important gift-buying is!
This entails incorporating artistic images into your display campaigns, promoting pertinent holiday deals through direct mail and focused email, or simply generating interest with a cheap postcard showcasing your staff members’ tacky holiday attire.
In fact, statistics support allocating a disproportionately large chunk of your budget to advertising in December, when consumers are more likely to spend time buying. During the holiday season, advertising impressions often increase by 50%, click-through rates by 100%, direct traffic by 1500%, and conversion rates by 60%.1
Make a festive impression by being there
The “presence” of your dealership at this point includes both your website and your actual showroom. Both should aesthetically coordinate with the Christmas theme you’ve developed for all of your other ad campaigns.
In order to do that, you should decorate your showroom appropriately (and tastefully — don’t let your passion cause you to lose your professionalism). You could also spruce up your website with new banners and original artwork.
Making your dealership feel festive also increases customer interaction options, such as offering free holiday cookies in the waiting room or taking pictures of families.
In summary, it’s best to create as much family-friendly warmth as you can in a setting where customers could anticipate a drawn-out and possibly stressful shopping experience.
Enter their DMs with ease.
Yes, direct mail. During the holidays, consumers are not only more responsive to marketing, but they are also more eager to get letters. Most individuals anxiously check their mailboxes at this time of year in the hopes of finding messages from friends, presents from loved ones, and offers from the brands they adore. No period is ideal for a direct mail campaign. It’s critical to apply skilled targeting, printing, and content strategies because so many other businesses take advantage of sending letters during this period to stand out.
Utilize This Chance to Give Back
One of the main advantages of adopting a Christmas theme is that you’re well-positioned to reward all of your devoted consumers while cultivating connections with prospective new ones.
For current clients, this can take the shape of entertaining and reasonably priced gifts, social media competitions, and numerous other initiatives intended to both inspire interaction and potentially entice them back into your showroom for some crucial face time.
Get engaged in your neighborhood to reach folks who haven’t made a purchase from your dealership yet. You can do this by organizing a toy or food drive, supporting volunteer work at a nursing home or emergency shelter, or by supporting any number of other deserving charitable endeavors.
Here, there are two distinct advantages. First off, your efforts will directly help those in need. Second, your efforts will pay off later on since your firm will logically benefit from a more successful community. Second, this is a great opportunity to grow your dealership’s reputation locally and position it as more than just a location to buy and service cars.
By doing this, you can demonstrate to potential clients that your business is more than simply another dealership and that it is conducted with the needs of its customers in mind.
Leave People Grinning
The end-of-year holidays are a time to honor the greatest qualities in individuals and to look forward with a fresh outlook. You’ll be able to capitalize on special chances and tap into that good spirit if you let your holiday-themed marketing reflect that more than anything else!
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