A holiday PR campaign can be a strategic marketing effort; essentially, this strategy refers to promoting a brand or product during a holiday season. There are numerous reasons why it has the potential to be incredibly beneficial to a company - for example, a holiday PR campaign can increase brand awareness by reaching a larger audience and promoting your business to potential customers; it can also drive sales by creating a sense of urgency and encouraging customers to purchase gifts or products for the holidays. Holiday PR campaigns often involve a combination of traditional and digital marketing techniques, such as social media campaigns, email marketing, media relations, influencer partnerships, and event promotions. 

This can also create a festive atmosphere for customers - but what do you do once the holiday season is over? If you’ve done your holiday marketing right, your campaign should have created a buzz around a brand and drive significant traffic to a company's website or physical store. Effective holiday PR campaigns are often planned in advance, with clear goals and objectives, a targeted audience, and a budget for executing the campaign. The results of a holiday PR campaign can provide valuable insights for future marketing efforts and help a brand stay top-of-mind with customers.

The day after your holiday PR campaign is over, you should assess its success, gather feedback, and plan for future campaigns. 

Measure campaign results

Analyze metrics such as media coverage, website traffic, social media engagement, and sales to determine the success of your campaign. This is always an important step, but many companies find themselves pouring extra time, money, and energy into holiday campaigns, since this time of the year is typically huge for sales even without an extra marketing push. That means that analyzing the results of your holiday campaign is key to figuring out how successful it was and planning for next year.

To break it down a little, measure your sales by tracking revenue generated during the holiday period, and how it compares to previous holiday seasons - especially if this was your first holiday PR campaign. Take note of website traffic and the number of visits to your website during the holiday period to determine how many people were reached by your PR campaign. Similarly, track engagement on social media platforms, such as likes, shares, and comments, to see how well your holiday PR campaign resonated with your target audience. 

You can also monitor brand mentions and track the number of mentions of your business or products during the holiday period to gauge the impact of your PR campaign. It can also be helpful to collect customer feedback through surveys, customer reviews, or other methods to determine customer satisfaction with your holiday PR campaign and identify areas for improvement.

Gather feedback

Reach out to customers, partners, and stakeholders to get their feedback on the campaign. Use this feedback to improve future campaigns. There are several ways to gather feedback for your company's holiday PR campaign:

• Surveys: Send out customer surveys to gather feedback on the holiday PR campaign and identify areas for improvement.

• Customer reviews: Monitor customer reviews and feedback on social media platforms, such as Yelp, Facebook, and Twitter, to gather customer opinions about the holiday PR campaign.

• Focus groups: Conduct focus groups with customers to gather feedback on the holiday PR campaign and get a deeper understanding of customer perceptions and opinions.

• Call centers: Collect feedback from customers who call into the company's call center during the holiday period to gauge customer satisfaction with the holiday PR campaign.

• Online forums: Monitor online forums, such as Reddit and Quora, to gather customer feedback and see what customers are saying about the holiday PR campaign.

By gathering feedback from customers, you can get a better understanding of their experience with your holiday PR campaign and identify areas for improvement. This can help you optimize your PR efforts and improve your overall holiday marketing strategy.

Analyze the competition

Look at what your competitors did for the holiday and what worked for them. Analyzing your competitors' holiday PR campaigns can provide valuable insights and help you make informed decisions for your own holiday PR efforts. By monitoring their social media accounts, websites, online advertisements, news articles, and customer reviews, you can get a better understanding of their holiday PR tactics, promotions, and offers, and identify areas for improvement. This can help you optimize your holiday PR campaign and stay ahead of the competition.

It’s a good idea to take a look at campaigns run by competitors who have been in the business for longer than you have. You can examine their history and learn from their missteps and their successes, especially if you analyze other companies in your same industry. When considering their campaigns, evaluate the strengths and weaknesses to determine what worked well for them and what could be improved. In addition, track the results of their campaigns, including the reach, engagement, and conversions they achieved, to get a sense of the impact their campaign had.

You can also ask customers for their thoughts on your competitors' PR campaigns and gather feedback on what they liked and what they thought could be improved. Stay up-to-date with the latest PR campaigns from your competitors by regularly monitoring their social media accounts, websites, online advertisements, and news articles. By learning from your competitors' PR campaigns, you can improve your own PR efforts and stay ahead of the competition. This can help you create more effective PR campaigns that resonate with your target audience and achieve your business goals.

Plan for future campaigns

Based on the results of your holiday campaign and feedback from customers, plan for future PR campaigns. Set goals and objectives by defining what you want to achieve with your holiday PR campaign, such as increasing sales, building brand awareness, or improving customer engagement. Maybe you’ll have different goals next year, and you might not know that until closer to the time, so keep things flexible.

Identify your target audience by understanding who your target customers are and what they value, so you can tailor your holiday PR campaign to their needs and interests. Create a unique and engaging concept for your holiday PR campaign that sets it apart from your competitors and resonates with your target audience. Make sure next year has a different theme than this year’s campaign to keep it fresh and interesting.

Develop a strong concept by leveraging multiple channels with a combination of traditional and digital media to reach your target audience and maximize your impact. Keep an eye on which platforms are the most popular, as that can change from year to year, so you know where to focus.

Measure and evaluate results by monitoring your campaign's performance; evaluate its success using key metrics such as website traffic, sales, and customer engagement. You can use this year’s holiday campaign to learn for next year. What worked? What didn’t? What do you wish you’d done? Keep all that in mind for next year.

Finally, start early! Start planning your holiday PR campaign several months in advance to ensure you have enough time to execute your plans effectively. Think about shopping for last-minute Christmas gifts the day before - no one wants to wind up in that situation. Start your holiday campaign nice and early so you have room to maneuver.

Document your results

Finally, document your campaign results and takeaways, so you can refer to them in the future and make improvements to your next campaign. This documentation will be key to planning next year’s round of holiday PR.

To document the results of your company's holiday PR campaign, you can use the following steps:

• Define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Identify the specific metrics that you want to track to evaluate the success of your holiday PR campaign, such as website traffic, sales, and social media engagement.

• Collect Data: Gather data from various sources, such as your website analytics, sales reports, and social media platforms, to measure the impact of your holiday PR campaign.

• Analyze Data: Use tools such as spreadsheets, dashboards, or reporting software to analyze and visualize the data you have collected. This will help you identify trends and patterns in your results.

• Create a Report: Compile your findings into a comprehensive report that summarizes the results of your holiday PR campaign, including a summary of your KPIs, charts and graphs, and any other relevant information.

• Share Results: Share your report with key stakeholders, such as your marketing team, senior management, and any other relevant parties. This will help to ensure that everyone has a clear understanding of the impact of your holiday PR campaign and can use this information to improve future campaigns.

• Refine Your Approach: Use the insights you gained from your holiday PR campaign to refine your approach and improve your future PR campaigns. This might involve adjusting your KPIs, changing your targeting strategy, or tweaking your messaging to better resonate with your target audience.

Happy holidays!

The best thing about a holiday PR campaign is that it provides an opportunity to reach a large audience and create a memorable and impactful experience for your target customers. This can be a powerful tool for businesses looking to reach a large audience, build brand awareness, and drive sales during the festive season.

Imperium Group is an American public relations and marketing consultancy firm. Founded in 2016, it specializes in guaranteed placements, creating utmost transparency for its clients. Imperium Group generates over 15M impressions a month for its clients. Its team is based out of New York, Dallas, and Los Angeles.

For more information about Imperium Group, please see https://navigator.imperiumgrouppr.com/.