It’s Christmassssss! It’s officially the first day of December, and I’m kicking this episode on The BrandMade Podcast on a very festive note. So if you’ve had suddenly realisation…you’ve got no clue how to yup festify your brand at Christmas, or you don’t want to do the same generic things everyone else is, I’ve got you covered ladies and gentleman!
I actually encourage you to read or listen to this episode with a glass of mulled wine in hand and mince pies in the other. Because I’ll be revealing 10 different great ways in how you can festify your brand this Christmas. But not using Christmas for the heck of it, find out how you can use this festive season to actually grow a bigger community, boost sale within your product or service based business, or simple helping you and your brand get noticed by your ideal audience, all through the power of Christmas spirit! Too busy trying drinking your mule wine and eating that mince pie? Listen how to festify your brand on the podcast instead! – episode 013 on >>Apple Podcast<< or >>Spotify<<
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Thank you, Olivia x
Nobody Puts Christmas In The Corner!
Time: 1:10
This episode really needs no introduction other than, if your letting Christmas slip through your solopreneur fingers… don’t. I understand your probably overwhelmed, busy with batching you’re marketing content, producing more inventory than ever to cover this busy season, possible even tying up all those lose ends before January. Even though your preparing for Christmas behind the scenes, remember your customers don’t really see all this Christmas prep and planning effort. So make sure that this year your brand is harnessing the festive season through your brand put up a Christmas wreath to show your customers and clients your here for Christmas! Let’s start unwrapping this episode and the 10 ways to festify your brand this Christmas.
The Unwrapping Experience
Time: 1:55
How to festify your brand number one! We’re starting off by talking about all things Christmas themed packaging. This is the time to create an enchanting moment for your customers through presentation. Customers love businesses who embrace the sprit of Christmas. They also like it when packaging shows their loved one that a considerable amount of time and care has gone into choosing them, that specific present! I’m not just talking about the deliver box, but also the actual packaging on your product. You could offer a limited addition Christmas packaging for your products. Say you make and sell delicate jewellery pieces you could include instead of clear plastic pouches you could offer more expensive material pouches that are reusable. You should also think about also offering your customers gift-wrapping available on orders, and give them the option to choose from a range of of wrapping paper options. Saving your customer time and if they’re known for there shoddy wrapping gift abilities they will defiantly take you up on it!
But, before you reach for the tinsel and glitter, make sure you using the spirit of Christmas meaningfully. I’m not trying to be Crinch here, but don’t forget your brand values and positioning on things fly out the window for a month of tacky tinsel, trust me it’s not worth it. If your business prides it’s self on being green with their packaging make sure you stick to using decomposable paper and not get persuade to use shinny foils and coated wrap. Stay true to your brand values, remember who you are and why customers should choose through the festive season too.
Holiday Offers
Time: 3:55
Many business offer discount at Christmas, and although that’s tempting for small business to do, and does pull customers to purchase. It can also make customers think that your discounted products are diluted in quality and less valuable, sort of cheapening the experience. Maybe leave big hard cutting discount to Black Friday and use Christmas for a time to be extra thoughtful by include a freebie in your deliveries instead. It gives your customer the best option, to keep that freebie for themselves or re-gift it to another friend or loves one. It’s a double bonus you’ve helped your customer tick off two pressie on their Santa gift buying list!
Advent Calendar CountDown
Time: 5:09
I know that for service base business it’s a little different for us at Christmas, we can offer gift wrapping or offer extra freebies. Specially when your a b2b you don’t need to use the gift giving tactics! But that doesn’t mean to say you too can’t use the power of Christmas to boost sales or drive hype around your brand. There are more active people searching online, use a advent calendar campaign to boost your brands awareness.
The advent calendar concept is where you can offer something free but valuable everyday, the 1st December could be a simple worksheet, but by the time you hit the 15th you might of upped it to a webinar and so and so forth. As the days get close to Christmas the daily freebies should be getting better and better to help you build buzz. If people want to be involved all they have to do is sign up, it’s a great and powerful way to celebrate Christmas and the gift of giving, whilst being business savvy and growing your email list with more potential clients.
Make It A No Brainer!
Time: 6:26
Make it an easy decision for customers to pick your online shop, with free and next day or super fast deliver. We’ve all on occasions become that last minute shopper make sure you’ve got them covered. But really, free delivery at any time of year makes customers feel like their not wasting money. Obviously deliver isn’t ever free! And I’m not suggest you take deliver cost out of your own pocket. I’m suggesting you put your delivery charges into your product price tags. So if your selling a product for £5 and your delivery charge is usually £1.99, start selling your product at £6.99 and make the delivery free. It’s happen to me so many times i’ve been prepared to buy something but then, a £2.99 delivery charge makes me question the whole purchase! So when we don’t have to pay extra fees, it feels like we’re getting more for our money and spending more on the present then silly annoying deliver charges.
Amazon has really put the pressure on all businesses to be quick and efficient with delivery times, plus as people we have really just got more impatient and expect instant gratification when we’ve made an online purchase. So make sure your delivery times are as fast as you can possibly get them. Make sure you customer know you offer fast delivery and a good rule of thumb try to provide accurate delivery dates around Christmas, if your estimating deliveries within 5 day difference that’s too much of gap! Remember to send regular delivery updates so that your customer are kept in the loop and know you haven’t forgotten about them!
Christmas Themed Quiz
Time: 8:22
Help your customers find the perfect pressie for their loved ones this Christmas! This is one of my favourite ideas, offering a Christmas themed gift-giving quiz. I believe you can integrate Typeform quiz’s to SquareSpace and WordPress, Typeform just provide you with a simple embed code to copy and past. A Christmas themed quiz is perfect to get your customers online interact with you straightaway no risks involved just Christmassy quiz fun! It will help your customer find the prefect gift for someone within your range of products. Extra bonus these website visitors will have to provide a email to receive the present idea advice your offering, so you’ll be able to keep tabs on them after they leave even if they don’t purchase anything. And can alway send them an email nudge if they haven’t committed to the purchase you advised them later one!
This idea can also be implement within service based business too such as, if you’re a virtual assistant you could offer questions about how they tackle the Christmas season. Provide them at the end with a fun label like You’re a Chaotic Santa or The Bulking Elf then provide them with extra advice through email on how they could get save more time over the Christmas Period. Your business bags more emails to your list, and providing helpful time saving advice for small business owners, a Christmassy win win win!
The holy grail of Gift Cards
Time: 10:04
What do you do when you want customers to buy something within your little online shop, but they’re unsure about what to purchase for that said person? Ah the holy grail of Gift Cards. Gift Cards are a marvellous invention where you get the money upfront from the gift giver, but the gift buyer doesn’t actually purchase anything until after Christmas. Yes, Gift Cards have two great uses, especially for handmade makers. Gift Cards are not just for the like of JohnLewis and amazon! I recommend and would even encourage all smaller independent business owners to offer gift cards, you can obviously provide the purchases with an easy E-Giftcard PDF on their confirmation email to give there friend or loved one, they have the options to either forward it or print it off. Quick and easy automated, you don’t have to do anything!
But if I’m being on honest it’s best to make it extra special, by designing a Christmas themed Gift Cards with your logo and the code and sent it through the post, you can print Gift Cards in bulk through Moo, and decide on folios and emboss etc and can make it something really special. So that the person they are giving it to actual has something physical to hand them. People by Gift Card usually because they don’t know what to buy that person. But they don’t really want to give them money because it seems thoughtful and would like they to be able to open something! That why Gift Cards are an excellent Christmassy option to offer, plus added bonus you’ll have less product orders to fill over the busiest season.
Injecting Some Festive Colours To You Brand Palette
Time: 11:50
It’s time to eject and yup festify your brand colour palette. I’m not saying to completely walk away from your brand colours in this month…heck no! But I believe it’s definitely acceptable to join the sprit of Christmas through your brand colour palette with extra ones. How to not stray to far away from what you already have is by making a season palette for you brand that you will use every year to create consistency still. However, if you festify your brand colour palette make sure you pick Christmassy colours that will compliment the colours your brand is already currently using. You can add these extra colours onto your social feed, website and even on printed GiftCards, they shouldn’t be replace your primary or hero brand colour but they can be minimally and elegantly throughout your christmasy themed marketing.
Introducing Bespoke Festive Assets
Time: 13:01
This is also the time of year when you can introduce festive brand assets, brand assets are either patterns, illustrations and icons.The key rule here, just like your Christmas colour palette, make sure your brand assets are in-keeping with your brand style. For example you could include some Christmassy illustrations like a wreath, Christmas cake, presents or snowy patterns. but these assets shouldn’t just be randomly slap onto your website in place that make no sense.
I believe the best way to introduce festive vibes is looking at what you already have in the way of assets and recreating them to look Christmas so if you’ve got icons to present your different services or product categorise how could you edit these to add a Christmas touch. If you have images of you display on your website, you could replace them with slightly more christmasy images of yourself? Or frame them with a Christmas asset. Make sure your include Christmas assets tasteful to your brand. Some brand even go as far as altering their brand logo to be more christmasy, I would recommend hiring a professional to design your christmassy alternative than DIY! I think Google in the past have included Christmas lights to there’s, some logo may not give you scope to do this and therefore introducing more assets might be your safest bet!
Festify Your Virtual Space
Time: 14:48
So similar to how every year you get out your Christmas decorations out from the loft, it’s time to add a little festive cheer to your website, yup festify your brand website this month. I’m not saying you need to go over board, if your brand is rather minimal then stick to your guns! But it defiantly worth add a little Christmas spirit to your sit, as i previously mention changing up your images with more christmassy ones.
If you don’t have a great deal of time to change too much on your site, find a Christmas present affects. I love the ones where it looks as though snow is filtering down, you can just add one element don’t need to to go too crazy! However, your branded website don’t just have to only rely Christmas visuals, you can nod towards the Christmas season by injecting some festive lingo to your home page, service pages and even product descriptions…basically throughout your web copy. You can add a few christmassy reference through objects and traditions. Use this opportunity to relate to your audience by sharing your Christmas rituals. So grab your mulled-wine lingo and snow present affects and start festifying your your site today!
Introducing Seasonal Services
Time: 16:16
Last but by no mean least the 10 way to festify your brand! You can offer a seasonal service for your customers. B2B’s can’t really jump on the gift giving hooplar like independent makers and sellers can. So it’s time to get creative, and provide your ideal customers a seasonal service for a limited time only! I was thinking about this in relationship to my owner brand studio business. I could offer a collection of bespoke Christmas asset for small brands, that they could use every year. I could offer pervious clients a Christmas brand identity add-on pack that would included helping them select a Christmas colours palette that goes with there current brand colours, creation of bespoke assets, Christmas logo alternative, even help them make their site Christmassy for the month of December and design branded Gift Cards?
So before you think I couldn’t add a seasonal service to my business, I’m sure you can think of something! For example if you’re a wedding photographer offer a First Christmas Married Shoot to your previous couples worked with. Or if you’re a virtual assistant offer an emergency festive support in the month of December. If you’re a Copywriter, provide a Christmas lingo web copy update, help them inject christmasy lingo into there original copy. Think about a service they you would want to do and provide for you customers!
My Parting Words
Time: 18:05
This has been such a great episode to do, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed coming up with 10 ways for to help you festify your brand at Christmas. Like I said at the start, in the build up to the month of December, we can all get caught up in the hustle and bustle of our businesses and forget to really enjoy it. So make sure you take some time out, to actually use some of these way to festify your brand and put them into action. Make sure you pick the best festive options for your brand and for your ideal customers and clients what would they want to see from you? Remember to stop missing out on Christmas opportunities and use these methods to boost sales, grow you community, and get notice. But essentially just make sure you have fun and actually take time to enjoy your small business at Christmas.