The holiday season signals busy times for everyone – whether you are an individual consumer, a business, or a marketing agency. In fact, planning for the holiday season as an agency can be quite daunting. Not only are your clients dependent on you to deliver a persuasive holiday marketing strategy for their customers, but your employees are also reliant on you to provide a stress-free, productive, and even enjoyable work experience during this busy time. Agencies must, therefore, plan to have a productive and winning time during the holidays.
Below are ten vital measures that Ganapathy Sankarabaaham, CEO of Vajra Global suggests an agency takes to ensure that both their employees and its clients are well-prepared for the holiday season:
Prepare for employee welfare and time off:
An agency is built on having active and engaged team members, and team members are active and engaged only when they have enough rest. Agencies need to ensure that team members are given opportunities to take time off to engage in self-care and be with their loved ones. It is quite understandable that the holiday season comes with its added pressures, and mentally and physically drained team members will not be able to focus at work. Employees should be encouraged to take breaks in order to be refreshed and ready to take on new challenges post-holiday season!
Conduct employee engagement activities:
While time off is important, the time spent at work during the holiday season also needs to be pleasant. Agencies should promote inter-team and intra-team conversations, leadership meetings, and company-wide seminars to foster communication. It is essential to ensure that everyone is aligned with the agency’s mission, vision, and values. On the fun side, agencies should also organize get-togethers, office parties, gift exchanges, and other entertaining events. Incentives, and promotions for target fulfilment are some good additions that agencies could introduce during the festive season to motivate the employees to work harder to reach their goals.
Plan for recruitment:
Hiring new talent is critical for any growing agency, and agencies should take its recruitment and HR policies very seriously. The festive period is a wonderful time to plan for future hiring strategies. They should conduct internal meetings so as to understand what each team requires in terms of new resources. They should also try and hire new candidates during this time. As not many competitors remain active during the holidays, it is a great opportunity to lock in on new hires.
Analyse previous holiday seasons and learn what competitors are executing:
While each year brings its own trends and patterns, Mr Ganapathy believes that analysing the past can also be quite helpful. In the world of marketing, everything hinges on creating a winning formula for promotions, brand identity, and more. Agencies should make sure to not repeat mistakes from the past and instead derive better strategies based on those learnings. The different teams in an agency could also consider new trends, especially those related to technology and all things digital, to understand what can help their team grow. A thorough competitor analysis should also be conducted to ensure that the agency is on top of things.
Thank clients:
The holiday season is all about giving and being grateful, no matter what festival you celebrate. The festive period provides a great opportunity to thank clients. Agencies can take the simple route and send holiday cards (or virtual cards) to their customers and clients. Additionally, they can also send gift hampers, or free add-on services. Whether it is a big or small gesture, showing appreciation for your clients is a fantastic way to build and strengthen relationships in the long term. Everyone loves to be treated special!
Plan for client work in advance:
Holiday marketing is crucial for most businesses, and as an agency, you are in charge of the marketing of multiple brands! Agencies should make sure to have a solid strategy for each of its clients, customized to their individual brands. Be it SEO tactics, social media posts, blogs, or even videos, they should make sure to organize and execute the plan in a timely fashion. No stone should be left unturned when it comes to capitalizing on marketing, networking, and event opportunities for any client.
Create an internal business plan for the next six months:
In the fast-paced world of marketing agencies, planning is everything. Hence, planning ahead of time is an excellent strategy. Agencies must use the holiday season to strategize for the next half of the year. This includes preparing the budget, administrative preparation, refreshing HR policies, and of course, formulating operational plans. The new year will have its own activities, events, and so on, and designing a clear approach to stay on top of them should be a huge business priority.
Update your own content in line with holidays:
Just as it is important to have a holiday marketing strategy for your clients, you should have one for yourself too. Agencies should decide in advance what marketing goals they hope to achieve during the holiday period and they should focus on executing those goals successfully. For an agency, this can include promoting sales, creating festivity-themed brand awareness social media posts, building email campaigns, attracting new clients, and conducting holiday-related ad campaigns.
Promote giving and sustainability:
The spirit of generosity is everywhere during the festive season. While providing digital marketing services on a voluntary basis as part of an agency’s Corporate Social Responsibility activities, they should go the extra mile during the holidays. They should design deliverables aligned with the festivals for different non-profits, including brochures, social media posts, GIFs, and others. Promoting sustainability and conscious spending within the organization itself is also an area that should be given a lot of importance.
Get inspired by the holiday season:
Innovation is welcome at any time during the year, but there is just something about the holiday season that presents many sources of inspiration. Understanding what B2B and B2C consumers are most passionate about and how best to market to them is a must. If team members have shied away from presenting their out-of-the-box ideas, the holiday mood is the perfect scenario to encourage them to share these ideas. New channels, innovative campaign ideas, different metrics, and more can be thought of during this season. Having internal brainstorming sessions should be done to get such ground breaking ideas out in the open.
Wrapping up
Making the most of the holiday season is a must for marketing agencies. Planning was the element that was repeated across the different points above. Whether it is related to employee welfare, client strategies, business operations, or hiring, having a plan in place is what will lead to success. Agencies must ensure that they have plans galore to make their employees and clients very happy.
Thus, this festive season, it’s time to celebrate without compromising on work efficiency.
