Your Digital Marketing Holiday Planning Checklist

A successful holiday season for you and your client depends a lot on the planning that has been done in the months leading up to the holiday period. Starting as early as summer for some. But, as early fall is in full swing you still have some time to get your holiday checklist in line to set you and your client up for success.

Plan resources and budget accordingly around key dates. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, shipping cutoff days and key client promotions, are all important dates to have your programs fully funded. Take last years trends into account. Were CPCs a lot higher than initially projected? What audiences were the strongest? What creative worked well? Was post-holiday more successful than you projected?

Make sure your mobile strategy is in place. 58% of shoppers plan to use their smartphone while holiday shopping this year, according to Google. And in 2014, 90% of holiday sales took place in store, but 56% of in-store sales were influenced by mobile, according to Facebook.

Segment your audiences and decide the best strategy for going after each specific audience. For example, site purchasers might just need a clean promotional message, while YouTube viewers might need more branding-centric messaging before pushing them further down the purchase funnel.

Creative Testing. Have you run any creative tests to see what resonates well with your key audiences? Does lifestyle imagery or more product-focused imagery resonate with your audience, based on your objective. Does promotional copy or more brand-centric copy work well for your holiday goals? The months leading up to holiday are prime testing periods as you should see lower campaign costs and less digital environment influences.

Set client expectations based on holiday campaign objectives. This is the last and possibly most important step in holiday planning. If previous trends dictated higher CPCs during holiday, make sure that is clearly communicated to the client. Or if there are creative or audience needs, be sure to ask in an advance amount of time so the client is able to provide what is needed. And know what these expectations translate to as far as client updates/communication, reporting and data analysis goes.

Once it is all said and done, kick back and enjoy the success of another holiday season.