Holiday Campaign Planning: 7 Tips to Create Seasonal Content Without the Stress

August is here which means hol­i­day cam­paigns will launch soon. And while we hate to pull out pump­kins and Christ­mas trees while it’s still tech­ni­cal­ly sum­mer, to avoid scram­bling at the last minute you need to pull your mate­ri­als togeth­er now.

Our rec­om­men­da­tion?

First, don’t stress! Sec­ond, start now and make a plan of action.

The hol­i­day sea­son offers brands a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to cap­i­tal­ize on the sale of their prod­ucts and ser­vices. How­ev­er, plan­ning con­tent and sales for 3 months of cel­e­bra­tions can also be incred­i­bly over­whelm­ing for small busi­ness own­ers, entre­pre­neurs, and even small­er cor­po­rate teams. Cre­at­ing hol­i­day cam­paigns takes a lot of extra time, ener­gy, and effort. 

We’ve learned a lot in what builds brand effi­cien­cy and what has worked over the years.

Here are our 7 tips for cre­at­ing hol­i­day cam­paigns that covert and don’t leave you feel­ing stressed. 

7 tips for low-stress seasonal branding

1. Diagnose Your Brand Health 

Before you cre­ate a sin­gle piece of con­tent for your hol­i­day cam­paigns, you need to get seri­ous about your brand health. What are your strengths? What are your weak­ness­es? This gives you a chance to course cor­rect and make changes before you put a major cam­paign out into the world. It also helps you ensure you are offer­ing some­thing your ide­al cus­tomers will be inter­est­ed in.

Not sure how to do a brand audit? Check out our Brand Path Nav­i­ga­tor. Not only will it walk you through the process of assess­ing your brand health, it will pro­vide you a cus­tom roadmap to address gaps. Plus you will get access to design tem­plates and con­tent cre­ation tools to help you get start­ed on your campaign. 

2. Be Honest About Your Capacity 

Once you have iden­ti­fied the hol­i­days you will be cre­at­ing con­tent for, you can nar­row down what type of designs you will need (social media, newslet­ter, ads, etc.). If you are pro­mot­ing across plat­forms, con­sid­er tweak­ing your copy to fit your audi­ence there. 

3. Create Your Plan 

Once you have iden­ti­fied the hol­i­days you will be cre­at­ing con­tent for, you can nar­row down what type of designs you will need (social media, newslet­ter, ads, etc.). If you are pro­mot­ing across plat­forms, con­sid­er tweak­ing your copy to fit your audi­ence there. 

4. Keep Holiday Campaigns on Brand 

Don’t cre­ate hol­i­day posts or cam­paigns just for the sake of cre­at­ing them. Make sure they are aligned with your brand mes­sag­ing. Per­haps run­ning a hol­i­day sale doesn’t make sense for your brand. Maybe a mes­sage of giv­ing feels more brand-aligned, so you donate to a Giv­ing Tues­day cam­paign instead.

Before you cre­ate any hol­i­day con­tent, get clear on your pur­pose. You can start with a sim­ple list, like con­tent buck­ets that reflect the type of con­tent that you can share relat­ed to your prod­ucts or ser­vices. Next, you want to define who you are try­ing to reach and how your prod­ucts or ser­vices will help them. You should be able to draw a clear line from your hol­i­day mes­sag­ing to your ide­al customer. 

5. Create Custom Branded Templates 

Cre­ate brand­ed tem­plates ahead of the sea­son so you can be inten­tion­al about con­tent, stay on brand, and speed up your con­tent cre­ation work­flow. We design tem­plates for our­selves and our clients using Adobe Express. It’s effort­less to use and doesn’t require them to learn Illus­tra­tor or Inde­sign. Adobe Express will help you main­tain brand integri­ty and take com­plete con­trol over your brand­ed con­tent.  And if you need some inspi­ra­tion, check out Adobe Express’s free hol­i­day templates. 

6. Don’t Forget the Power of Color 

Dur­ing the hol­i­days, use the col­ors red, green, white, gold, and blue to your advan­tage. It’s also a good idea to use a spe­cif­ic col­or for your call-to-action but­tons or text to dri­ve atten­tion and grab clicks. 

If you have an audi­ence who may not cel­e­brate Christ­mas, lever­age gold and blue hues to con­nect and still cre­ate a hol­i­day feel. You can learn more about how to lever­age col­or for your brand in our course, Hue Intel­li­gence: A Strat­e­gy for Col­or Trends. 

7. Start Now

The hol­i­days are incred­i­bly busy, but they should also be a time for rest and relax­ation. You don’t want to spend your Christ­mas plan­ning your New Year’s sale! Plan ahead, cre­ate your con­tent, and sched­ule in advance so you can be as hands-off as possible. 

Stress-Free Holiday Marketing

The hol­i­days real­ly are a mag­i­cal time of the year. Don’t let the stress of con­tent cre­ation steal your joy. With these tips and resources, you can cre­ate hol­i­day con­tent for your brand and still have time to enjoy your favorite things about the season.