The space in between Thanksgiving and New Years can sometimes seem like “no man’s land” for a B2B marketer. While the holiday season brings an avalanche of business and buzz to the B2C sector, many in the B2B sphere have an almost totally opposite experience. It’s feeling like your sales cycle will never progress, you’re receiving more “now is not a good time” e-mails, and you’re burdened with the task of attending party after party (ok, so maybe it’s not all bad).
Even if there is a degree of truth to the B2B holiday season gripes, it doesn’t mean your business has to lose almost a month of productive activity. Rather than scaling back on your marketing activities, the end of the year provides a multitude of opportunities for your team to get creative and engage with both current and potential customers. Let’s take a look at a few ways B2B social marketers can take advantage of the holiday season, rather than entering a “hibernation period.”
For starters, the holiday season can be an excellent opportunity for your company to add a layer of personality to its social marketing efforts. Spice up your profile pictures, backgrounds, and posts with holiday-themed coloring and imagery to stand out amongst the crowd. As we know, visual content is easy to consume and almost just as easy to share.
Businesses such as Hall and Company, which deals with liability insurance, have gained a great deal of publicity and goodwill from their creative and hilarious holiday cards. Even though there are not too many people waking up on Christmas morning hoping to find a new insurance policy under their tree, Hall has been able to attract an audience and publish content that people will look forward to for years to come. While you may not have the time or resources to create a card as intricate as Hall’s, posting pictures from the company holiday party or of office decorations will let people know your business is in the holiday spirit.
The holiday season can also be a great time to generate feedback and reflect upon the past year. If businesses are operating at a slightly lower energy level this month, their employees presumably have more free time on their hands. Perhaps your team could survey your clients, prospects, and colleagues to find out what they thought about social media marketing in 2012 and what they expect for 2013.
Along with external analysis, the holiday “lull” can also provide your marketing team the chance to look inward at what did and did not work in 2012, as well as what to plan for in the New Year. Review and measure the engagement your content had. Were certain varieties of content more successful than others? Is it time to get on/off “X” social network? If your company has a blog that has laid dormant for a few weeks or months, perhaps now is the time to devise an editorial schedule and establish a stronger commitment towards consistent publishing.
As this great article from Vocus notes, the holiday season also means that many companies have budget surpluses burning holes in their pockets. Get your company’s name, services, and content in front of these decision-makers, and your year-end numbers may experience a nice little boost. Even if you cannot complete the sale prior to the year’s end, you will be reserving a spot at the forefront of their mind when the holiday dust finally settles.
All in all, it is clear that the Holiday season is not a timeframe where “nothing can get done,” but rather an opportunity to reflect on the past year, finish it strong, and start the New Year even stronger! Happy Holidays and best of luck in 2013 from all of us at NNC Services!