• About Us
    • New York
  • Work
  • Capabilities
  • Careers
  • Technology
  • Blog
  • Contact Us
  • About Us
    • New York
  • Work
  • Capabilities
  • Careers
  • Technology
  • Blog
  • Contact Us
December 20, 2016

A Digital Marketer’s Guide To Surviving Holiday

Posted by Ashley McMahan

The time of year has come again. Working in this industry, the chaos of the holidays is amplified in the crossroads of your personal and professional life. You’re currently recovering from tryptophan overdoses, Black Friday stampedes, and last minute Cyber Monday creative rotations but, it’s not over yet. If you’re not well prepared, it’s easy to let things slip through the cracks.

Enter the Digital Marketer’s Guide to Surviving Holiday – a short and easy list to make sure all your boxes are checked, literally. It’s not rocket science, but this list can ensure you are crossing your t’s and dotting your i’s in the fast paced, sometimes overwhelming, environment filled with last minute client requests and quick turnaround deadlines that we as digital marketers call, Holiday.

1. Regularly Update Your To Do List and Actively Take Notes

Santa makes a list and checks it twice, but do you? With last minute client requests, additional holiday related campaigns, incremental budget pushes, etc. it is important to stay ahead of the workload. Taking notes in every call and meeting leaves opportunity to look back on things that you may not recall otherwise. It informs your To Do list and allows you to check yourself to ensure you are staying current with all the remaining items you need to finish.

2. Pacing schedules

While not the sexiest task in the world, pacing schedules are important to have; especially during this time of year. Excel is your friend, utilize it. Have columns that take into account your overall monthly budget, media spend to date (that you will constantly refresh) and remaining budget with percentages allocated to certain flight dates. Be sure to take into account any date ranges where the client may want to push, such as last day to ship deadlines or sale dates, as well as any dates they would want to pull back – perhaps Christmas Day.

3. Team Communication and Scheduling

Setting up a skeleton schedule on holiday days, where the office may be closed, and over the weekends ensures there are eyeballs on campaigns at all times.Best practice: Have some people check campaigns in the mornings and others check in the afternoons. Work around when teammates are traveling or have family plans to make sure nothing slips through the cracks.

A quick checklist of the below will ensure your campaigns are running smoothly and efficiently:

Emails – any urgent or SOS emails will be marked as high importance or noted in the subject line. Be sure to read anything from your clients first, then vendors, then internal communication to make sure you’re catching the most important notes first.

Pacing – pacing schedules should be made at the beginning of the month. It’s important to make sure you are on pace to spend in full by the end of the month so no revenue is lost for your client. If you are over or underpacing, making those optimizations early in the morning will help correct any issues ahead of when it would become problematic.

Pixel fires – if you’re running retargeting campaigns, make sure to check pixel fires in case anything may have dropped off

Creative rotations – setting up and scheduling creative rotations ahead of time makes for easy transitions on the holiday days. Be sure to stay proactive and schedule rotations as far in advance as possible.

Slack, Gchat, Text, Email, whatever your preference, make sure you utilize the tools you have at your fingertips to effectively and frequently communicate the status of your campaigns. Optimizations, strategy discussions, pacing, etc. can all be easily shared within any of these platforms.

4. External Communication

During this time, it’s important to have a means to contact your clients and vendors should anything happen during the days where most offices are closed. In your skeleton schedule, be sure to add a tab for vendor contacts. Whether this is emergency aliases or phone numbers, it will come in handy should anything “hit the fan.” Client contacts should not be used unless extremely necessary. Always give out your info to them, yes that means giving your client your cell number, but try and exhaust all means necessary before contacting your client on their personal time. This may seem like common sense, but you’d be surprised. Golden rule: Always, always, always come to your client with a solution if you are delivering bad news. Figure out everything for them and have a plan of attack in place before informing them of any mishap. That is the reason they hired the agency; to stress over the little things for them.

5. Enjoy it!

Holiday is the greatest time of the year. If you’re a Christmas lover like me, you count down the days to when Santa and Rudolf come to town. It may be stressful and overwhelming, but be sure to take the time to enjoy the little things. Take a 5 minute break and dig into the mountains of chocolate and snacks that inevitably end up on your desk. Be sure to show your appreciation to your coworkers and vendors who lend a helping hand during this time – even a quick note of thanks will move miles. And of course, be sure to spend time with your loved ones. Work will always be there and there will always be something to do, but keep yourself in check and make sure to close your laptop and spend time with your family and friends, especially if you don’t get to see them often.

Previous
Next

Latest White Papers

  • Shifting Plans for 2020 & Beyond
  • Game On: How Brands Can Log Into A Diverse Multi-Billion Dollar Industry
  • What CCPA Means For Brands
  • How Google is Improving Consumer Data Privacy
  • Ways to Prepare for the Cookieless Future
  • See all White Papers

Featured Posts

  • Ad Age Names PMG #1 Best Place to Work in 2021
  • Hindsight 2020 & Looking Ahead to 2021
  • Preparing for Streaming’s Growth & The Future of TV Buying
  • MediaPost Names PMG Independent Agency of the Year
  • PMG Client Portfolio Trends During Amazon Prime Day 2020

Categories

  • Consumer Insights
  • Content
  • Creative Design
  • Data Analytics
  • Development
  • Digital TV & Video
  • Ecommerce
  • Industry News
  • Local
  • Mobile
  • Paid Search
  • PMG Culture
  • Programmatic & Display
  • SEO
  • Social Media
  • Structured Data
Fort Worth

2845 West 7th Street
Fort Worth, TX 76107

Dallas

3102 Oak Lawn Avenue
Suite 650
Dallas, TX 75219

Austin

823 Congress Avenue
Suite 800
Austin, TX 78701

London

33 Broadwick Street
London
W1F 0DQ

New York

120 East 23rd Street
New York, NY 10010

Get in touch

(817) 420 9970
info@pmg.com

Subscribe to the PMG Newsletter
© 2021 PMG Worldwide, LLC, All Rights Reserved
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy
 Tweet
 Share
 Tweet
 Share
 Tweet
 Share
 LinkedIn
We and our partners use cookies to personalize content, analyze traffic, and deliver ads. By using our website, you agree to the use of cookies as described in our Cookie Policy.