Christmas campaigns and Digital PR
The festive season is fast approaching, and many shops are already decked out! After a couple of odd years, hopefully, this year’s Christmas for many will be a ‘normal’ one. However, it’s more important than ever to deliver quality coverage for clients in this festive season, and now is the time to plan your Christmas campaigns.
Christmas is always a tricky time to gain that cut-through for coverage, but below are some tips from our Digital PR Account Director Indy Deo to help your digital PR knock the stockings off your clients!
Know your clients
This tactic is crucial and not just exclusively for the festive season. Year after year, we see brands create campaigns with tenuous links to their brand, service, or product offering, and journalists see right through it. It’s essential to understand exactly who your client is and what they can speak about with authority. Looking at what subjects competitors have talked about and what has been successful is a great jumping-off point to know what your client can do better. What can they offer the media that is authentic, interesting, and unique?
Keep it evergreen
From an SEO perspective, this is an important recommendation. It isn’t always possible, but where you can, there is no harm in bringing back your previous Christmas ideas or content. It is crucial to remember that it needs to be updated to consider this year’s themes and trends, whether the data, research or visual assets that supported the campaign.
You can maintain and drive further authority to that page from active outreach and backlinks by re-using and tweaking past landing pages.
Data, data, data!
Using client data or commissioning a survey is a great way to gain unique insight to use in outreach. For example, having demographic splits means you have a wealth of angles, for example, age, city, and gender. This data, in turn, means you can broaden the target media list and gain that all-important cut-through at such a time. Also, using data gives you a direct link to the brand, which will help with the media sell-in and coverage.
Also, by having that data set and research allows you to be reactive when specific stories break in the media. So if you have an angle that can contribute to the conversation, you can reactively pitch that to journalists.
Timing is key
To achieve maximum impact for your campaign, your team should formulate your ideas and pitches earlier than you think.
During this time, brands will flood journalists with many emails and calls. Therefore, it is important for them to hear your voice. In addition, the journalists will be looking for those festive content angles in November, so you must ensure you are ready to go with your content and assets then.
The cut-off for pitches will be the first week of December, allowing for follow-ups the week after. At this point, you may start to notice some ‘out-of-office emails. Therefore, using tools like HARO, ResponseSource, and #journorequest, you can search for key terms and make sure you get in front of the proper journalist at the right time.
Seasonal vs Festive
It’s essential to understand that not everyone will be interested in Christmas-related content. So a great tip is positioning your campaign messaging as festive rather than Christmas. Also, not hinging your campaign on one day but a whole season allows you to get longevity from your campaign and make it work harder for longer.
From an SEO perspective, there may be broader ‘festive’ keywords to target as part of your strategy. These festive keywords words will help drive both traffic and visibility.
If you’re interested in finding out more about our Digital PR and SEO offering, get in touch today to find out more.
