5 tips for marketing this holiday season

1.) Educate. While education may not be top of mind when you think about holiday promotions, recent card breaches and health threating outbreaks have American consumers questioning their typical holiday routine. Crowded public spaces may be a deterrent for holiday shoppers and online shopping with cards may also not feel safe. Educate your members and put them at ease shopping with your products and services this holiday season.

2.) Create budgeting tools. Simple forms that help organize, and put holiday spending into perspective can not only help your members prepare, but bring to light any help they may need from you. A basic calculator that totals the amount of money they plan on spending per child, per immediate family member, per friend, and on meals will quickly illustrate the weekly savings they need and areas they may need to reconsider allocating their budget.

3.) #GetSocial. From all things Frozen® (Disney’s Frozen movie that is) to interactive toys with talk-to-text technology, your members are likely going to be using social media to research, check availability and ask friends for suggestions this year. If your social media strategy doesn’t include starting and participating in conversations about children’s’ toys you can still leverage this consumer demand by purchasing ads for specific searched terms and hashtags on Twitter, or with sponsored posts on Facebook with relevant content. For example, searched terms such as #Frozen could be met with your ad: ‘If ‘Let it Go’ describes the money skating out of your savings account this holiday season, we have a simple budgeting calculator that can help.’

4.) Promotional product. If you have the ability to offer a special rate savings product or discounted loan option that will help members survive the holiday spending mayhem be sure to utilize all media channels that will help put you top-of-mind over your competitors. Holiday campaigns are plentiful so you’ll need to be creative to make your product offer stand out in all the noise.

5.) Get started now. Better yet, start yesterday. With predictions 1/4 of Americans start holiday shopping before Halloween, it’s not too soon to begin marketing your holiday promotions. If you’re not sure which trends are going to be the hottest in your area this season, the employees of your credit union will be a great source of information.