How Do You Stand Out During the Holiday Season?

[kvlschaefer]

Hey Community,

With so much marketing noise during your respective holiday season, it can be hard to stand out in your customer’s inboxes and online. 

Here are a few tips to help your personal brand or business stand out among the crowd:

• Focus on brand evangelists – Delighting your existing customer base is less costly than acquiring new customers. Acknowledge your customers and show appreciation for them in the form of a personalized email, a discount code, or early access to a special sale.  
• Create content that provides value - Know your audience and their needs. Find a balance between sales messaging and providing helpful content. Are you a B2B company? Create a survival guide that helps solve your customer's common pain points. 
• Storytelling - Let your audience get to know who you are as a brand. Add a personal touch by making a holiday video of the humans behind your brand or hosting a live video on your social media channels for customers to connect with an executive or founder of your company.

We would love to hear your thoughts on how to stand out during the holiday season! 

Reply in the thread below with a tip that has worked for you or with a memorable example from a brand.

[danmoyle]

In addition to the helpful advice and insight already, plus the great info that kicked this off, I'll throw in a small thing. During this season when we're all busy, and many of us are on the go a lot, we'll be on our phones. Succint communications are critical. Clear subjects, concise copy, and plain calls-to-action so your reader has no doubt about what you're asking them to do. And I'm watching Jay Schwedelson's content this month for sure, thanks to seeing him at INBOUND this year. 

PS thank you for the thoughtful tag @kvlschaefer 😊

[kvlschaefer]

Love this, @danmoyle! 

An attention-grabbing and straight-to-the-point subject line stands out among the rest 🙂 

Thank you for sharing this tip with the Community! 

[JenBergren]

Thanks for the tag @kvlschaefer ! These are great tips! Love the storytelling mention of showing people you are human(s)! I think another part of remebering people are...people...is thinking of your audience or customers as humans and that they may be spending time with other humans, and not on their email, during the last two weeks of the year 😉 So B2B businesses may want to think twice about sending emails or requesting meetings for this time, especially in countries where it is more common to take those weeks off of work. 

[kvlschaefer]

That's an excellent point about meetings and emails, @JenBergren! 

We are all human and need a break from technology once in a while 😄 

Thanks for sharing this with us! 

[danmoyle]

That's a great point @JenBergren about the emails and meetings. Also if you have meetings, the day before a holiday isn't the best, even if you're working. I found that out last week 😂 

[kvlschaefer]

Let's get this conversation going with our awesome Community members! 

Hey @danmoyle, @JenBergren, @christopher-RVO - Do you have any tips for standing out during the holiday season?

Thanks! ⭐ 

Best,

Kristen

[christopher-RVO]

@kvlschaefer  Thanks for the tag on this!

This is a super interesting topic (I'm totally stealing this for LinkedIn)

I am a big fan of companies like Sugarwish and Sendoso for clients during the holiday season. Sending something small like a pack of hot chocolate or cookies goes a long way during the season, and it's typically equivalent cost to paying someone to run a full stack holiday campaign. 

In addition to this, purely free content is another great way to stand out. Purely free meaning that your content isn't gated or blocked by any data collection / payment. 

An out of the box method that I've explored in the past is a review trade with clients. They review you on whatever platforms mean the most, and you do the same for them. Very nice way of standing out to your customers and being an evangelist for them!

[kvlschaefer]

Thank you for the mention on LinkedIn, @christopher-RVO! 

I love the purely free content and review trade! These are great ideas 🙂

Thanks for sharing! 

[danmoyle]

Love the small gift idea @christopher-RVO. They're fun to receive, especially from a brand you love to rep, or just a thoughtful gift. I'm also a fan of Alyce for that.