How I Plan Stress-Free Holiday Marketing Campaigns

Andréa Jones: [00:00:00] If the phrase holiday marketing makes you wanna climb under a blanket and hide and pretend that it's still July deep breath in, deep breath out, you can do this today. I'm going to give you a kinder, calmer plan as we head into Q4, which is the holiday season, but also with this episode, I made a handbook to go along with everything.

You can find it for free at onlinea.com/holiday. We're gonna get into all the details, but first a word from our sponsor. Riverside is the All In One podcast recording and editing tool that I use for this ride here show. I use it to edit not only the audio and the video, it is like chef's kiss magical making the entire process so, so easy.

Plus, I love their magic AI clips, their little. AI robot in the background pulls out the most impactful moments of the episodes without me having to comb through and do it myself, resizes them for social media. So those vertical videos you see on TikTok and Reels, [00:01:00] those all come from Magic AI inside of Riverside.

It's literally one click. It spits out 10 clips. I pick the best one and away I go. Saves me so much time. If you wanna get on the Riverside train, check it out today. The links in the show notes, and make sure to use my code Drea, DREA at checkout to get 15% off your membership. Hi. Hi. If you're new to the Mindful Marketing Podcast, my name's Andre Jones.

I'm your favorite mindful marketer, and around here, I like to keep things simple. I like to keep things sustainable. I like strategies that actually get you results and fit in with your real life, especially as we head into the absolute chaos that can be the holiday season. I've got two toddlers now and I'm like, oh my gosh.

We have to do the, this is like the peak time to do all of the activities that they're into. I'm talking, we're going pumpkin picking, we're doing photos with Santa the works. Okay. And I still have to run my business and do all the things around that. So I wanna talk about how I'm doing that in this episode.

And [00:02:00] yeah, I'm planning ahead. Now, I do think we can do this mindfully as business owners, as marketers, uh, because it can be very challenging in the holiday season because everyone's screaming at the top of their lungs about whatever it is they're selling. Right? Especially when we think about the biggest sales date, black Friday, it feels like.

Everyone's shouting out their sales. And don't even ask me if the algorithm is acting funky, like forget it. This year at least we don't have an election. So there's that. But I wanna talk through how we think about Q4, how we plan things around our launches and our business so that you can make it mindful.

First, let's talk about why mindfulness during the holidays is really important because I want you to shift your mindset from doing all of the things to doing the right few things, and I think this is where we get to throwing spaghetti at the wall because we want to make as much money as possible.

Hello. That's kind of like one of the perks of being your own boss is like you can, you can set up the sale hall however you'd like, however. [00:03:00] If you try to do all of the things and then they don't work and you're burned out at the end of the day, like you're not helping anybody. So I want us to focus in on the right things, and there's three parts to this framework that I really want you to think about.

The first one is leading with your values. I want you to pick. Your values and how you are heading into the holiday season and what is actually important to you, you as a business owner, what is your value? What are your goals? What are you looking at? Then I also want you to look at the values of your community.

What are they seeking? What are the solutions that they're looking for? What are the challenges that they're having? What is their mindset as they head in through the end of this year, for example? There could be in your community some tension happening or some sort of celebration happening or whatever the case may be.

We wanna acknowledge that that's happening in our community. And then also look at like the values and the state of the wider world. Um, I mentioned earlier that at least we don't have a US election this year, but there's [00:04:00] still lot shit happening in the world. Pardon my French. So I want you to think about what things are happening, um, in the world and how that will reflect in your offers, your stories, your sales, the graphics you design, the words that you write.

I want you to decide before we start getting into actually writing things, what are the foundations for that? So I'll give a quick example of this. For my business, for example, um, I'm all about mindful marketing, and in the past years I've done a Black Friday sale, and what I'm going to do this year is repeat the exact same sale.

This will be probably the fifth or sixth year that I've done this sale. Sometimes I also do it the midpoint of the year, which is also my business birthday. It'll be 50% off the Mindful Marketing Lab. Okay? I do this every single year. That's how I treat this mindfully. To me, it is a reward to myself to be able to repeat the same sale.

Yes, I could try something funky and different, but [00:05:00] that's a lot of work for me in this moment in my life. I do not have the capacity for that for my community. It feels like giving back. For those of you who are in the lab, you're more than welcome to opt in at half off. More power to you. I love that for you.

For those of you not in the lab, this is a great opportunity for you to try it out. Okay. For the wider world, I don't feel like it's disruptive to everything happening in the world. Especially there's like tensions right now between US and Canada. So this is the first year where I'll actually have Canadian pricing, even though I am in Canada.

Um, I am from the US Originally, I started my business. That way. And so all of my pricing is US pricing. This is a first year where I've had Canadian pricing, so for me it's like I'm looking at the global landscape going, Canadians, we need Canadian pricing right now because the, it's wild. Like the, the conversion rate is wild.

So. That's what I'm doing in my business to kind of participate, use active listening, but also be very mindful of my values. So that was just one example of that. Now, so values is the first part of this [00:06:00] framework. Second part of this framework is I want you to use your signature content as your anchor.

Okay. I want you to use your signature content piece as your anchor, and I've talked about signature content here on the podcast before, but just to recap, your signature content is a piece of content that you don't miss. It tends to be long form, but it doesn't have to be, I'm talking podcasts, emails.

Substack, YouTube videos, blog posts. These are the things that are the pillars in your framework and what you believe in. For me, for example, that's this podcast. This is the one format that you can sustain, and I usually like to lean into your preferences here. So for example, for me, I'm a talker. You can tell I like talking.

So for me to sit down and record a podcast episode feels very natural. It feels very organic. I can do a million of these in a day. If you ask me to sit down and write a blog post, I can do it. It's gonna take me a sec. Okay. And so some of this too. As we really leaning into [00:07:00] the skills that I have. Okay, that's your signature content.

And then the third thing that I want you to really think about as you're framing out your kind of messaging for the holidays, we've got your values, we've got your signature content. I want you to think about your benefit statements, okay? Your benefit statements, not. Not the facts. Okay? Sometimes when we're selling our offers, we like to say, okay, I'll use the Mindful Marketing Lab again, as example I, I could say like dozens of courses, thousands of Canva templates, like already.

That feels like a lot of work. But instead, I lead on the benefits. You as a member get unlimited support. You see how that sounds different, unlimited support versus. All these courses and all these Canva templates, both are true, but I'm leaning into the benefit to you versus the, the list, the bullet point list of what's included.

Another example of this is, you know, I have, um, custom built chat bts right within in the [00:08:00] program. So, um, I think it's very cool. I can nerd out about it all the, all the dang time. Okay. But I found the best way to talk about it is to actually describe it as a shortcut. I have an AI shortcut for you, and I build them out for every single course that I have created this year, I've gone back retroactively and add them into products, and I'm gonna continue to add these shortcuts into your products so that yes, you understand the core essence of the framework, but then I give you the shortcut way of creating content and creating solutions in your business.

Very different benefit statements, very different outcomes, and of course, you wanna add in your flavor and your voice to all of this. Okay? Now don't feel like you have to write all this down and memorize it. Like I said, you can get this for free in the 2025 Mindful Marketers Holiday Handbook. Uh, I have a holiday calendar in there.

Um, how to build out these benefit statements and post prompts. Um, the works. All you have to do is is go to online drea.com/holiday and make a copy for yourself. [00:09:00] Alright, next thing I wanna talk about is reading the room a little bit as we head into the holiday season. Like I mentioned before, the holiday season can be very loud.

Okay, very loud. So before you start posting, I want you to do a quick scan of the headlines. Make sure you check out and see, you know, what are the topics of conversation happening. Uh, make sure we're leading with empathy, especially for the things that matter to us and our community. We can adjust our tone based on the conversation.

Now I wanna be clear here and say that we're not adjusting our value system. We're adjusting our tone. So for example, um, I'll use a, a past event as an example, black Lives Matter, because that's one that, um, I feel like a lot of businesses. Felt called to say something about it. The challenge is when a business feels called to say something about it, but they don't have that in their value system, they're not actually sure what to say.

Um, and so they end up trying [00:10:00] to create values as they go. You listening to this, I know you are gonna have really strong values. And so if something happens in the world, I don't want you to think that that's challenging your values. I just want you to be mindful of your tone as you're going into creating content.

So for example, another example, uh, a couple months ago, I mean, this is a pretty consistent problem out in California. There's these wildfires, right? Actually had wildfires here in Ontario recently. I would not do a post about something being on fire at that moment because that may seem insensitive. Okay, so we wanna make sure that we're reading the, the room and matching the tone.

To help you with this, what I recommend is having two kinda like evergreen posts ready to swap out in case you have to hit pause or just be okay with like not having anything to post that day, as long as you are showing up to be genuinely helpful and supportive for your community. I think that anything goes in this.

Um, sort of situation and for me, you'll notice with my content. I [00:11:00] usually don't speak up about a lot of these things, mostly because I have my values. I talk about them with my private community, with my clients and customers. I don't generally talk about a lot of my, um, things like political stance or social economic views or anything like that on social media.

Because of the trolls, I don't have time to be arguing with no trolls, so I tend to just keep my little thoughts to myself. To protect my own peace, but you better believe I have my own value system and you better believe I talk about it with my clients and customers and, uh, with the people that matter to me.

So you can decide what that looks like for you. All right, now let's go into the actual holidays that were coming up. We've got quite a few coming up, and I don't want you to feel like you have to say something for every single holiday. Or have a sale for every single holiday. I know the big box stores do this.

I know that. But you and I, we don't have to do this. We can design this however we wanna design it. So a few things to consider. And again, this isn't the Holiday Guide on [00:12:00] October 13th. That's Canadian Thanksgiving. We have Halloween, October 31st. We have us Thanksgiving, November 27th, then we go right into Black Friday on November 28th.

On November 29th is small business. Saturday that Monday, cyber Monday, December 2nd is giving Tuesday. And then we've got like the Christmas window, let's call that. So we've got like Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, boxing Day if you're in Canada, uk. And then we've got like the New Year's Eve, new Year's Day coming up.

So think about. Your community, your people, your audience, which days would be most significant to them and to you, and how can you create something or present something that aligns with that significance? So for me, I'm definitely doing Black Friday. I typically start the sale a couple days before Black Friday.

Um, so usually the Tuesday or Wednesday of that week. And then I have it extend through to Giving Tuesday to give people time to be able to make a buying [00:13:00] decision. Um, and then I do a different sale usually for the new year, something smaller. Um, usually it's very focused on jump starting new Year. I usually am leading into my LinkedIn challenge at that point anyways, and so that's how I choose my sales.

I am participating in a few different things this year as well around Halloween, so you'll see some of that coming in through my newsletter. I don't typically do anything for Canadian Thanksgiving because most of my. Most of y'all are in the US right? Most of my people were in the us. Um, so that's just for me, so you can see how I'm trying to pick and choose a certain holidays that align with my business, my intentions, and the, the things that my community, um, values.

All right, so now that you've got your holidays picked out, we wanna make our anchor content to reflect the things that we're gonna have for sale. And this is how you streamline your marketing during the holiday season. We don't have to create entirely new content every time. We need to have it [00:14:00] match the.

The internal workings of our business. So the way that I'm talking about this, this podcast episode feels very meta, honestly, because I'm talking about holiday sales. I'm releasing my holiday guide. This is the fourth year that I've released this guide. I'm teaching a class in the membership about launching, which will tie into the holidays.

All of this kind of flows together. So while it seems like I'm creating a lot of content, it kind of all echoes each other because topically it's all very similar. And so I want you to think about that. So, for example, if I were to title this podcast, which I haven't yet, 'cause I'm recording it, but it could be something like How to Plan Your Black Friday Sales Without Stressing.

Or if I were gonna create a Instagram reel, I may do, here are some holiday mistakes I see every year and how to fix them. Or if I were to write an email newsletter, I might write one on the Small Business Guide to Selling without being pushy during the holidays. Okay, so you can see how. I have my core piece of content, which is this [00:15:00] podcast.

That leads into my, um, freebie that I have for you, the holiday guide. All of that leads back to the membership. My content is echoing that. The membership content is echoing that, and so my anchor content is this podcast and the holiday guide. Everything else can be repurposed from there. So I want you to think about the, how that can work in your business.

How can you create the anchor content and have the rest of your distribution channels echo what that anchor content is? Ideally, you wanna get the most mileage possible out of your holiday sales, especially this time of year. For a lot of us, it is our biggest buying season. I know it is for my business, especially with the membership, this is where we see the most influx of new members, and so.

With this podcast episode being my anchor piece of content, you're gonna see echoes of this on my social media. You'll see echoes of this in my email. You'll see echoes of this in my stories, all leading to the Holy Day guide or this podcast episode, which all leads to the membership. Okay? So we're kind of [00:16:00] creating a storyline, starting with the sale.

Working our way backwards for the content, for the topics that you want to address. Okay? Another thing I want you to think about with this upcoming holiday season is that social media is not for closing. This is something that I've been talking about for a little while now that I wanna like dig my heels in, because you used to be able to like post something on social media and people buy it.

Sometimes that happens. But for the most part, social media is not for closing, it's for curiosity. To me, social media is for curiosity. It's for someone to go, huh, I never thought of that before. Or, huh, I didn't know this existed before, or, wow, that's interesting. Right? To me, social media is the spark and the email is what closes the loop.

And so for a lot of us in our marketing, we're. Our goal is to get people off social media and onto our email list, but we need social media in order to create that spark in order for people to discover us, right? It's a discoverability tool. [00:17:00] They may never have heard of you before, and now they saw your TikTok video or your Facebook reel, and they're curious and they sign up for something like my free holiday guide, and they're in your ecosystem now, and now they're seeing all of your offers.

Okay? So if you wanna think about. How this can flow. I would say think about October as your curiosity. Spark building month. Okay, this is a big one. October is your warmup leading into the Black Friday sales. So, for example, in my business, I have a few things leading up to it. I have this podcast episode, which is coming out September 9th.

On September 24th. I'm teaching a live workshop for local businesses. Um, it's really about how to train your team, but I'm collecting leads that lead into my holiday sales season. Um, in October, I'm hosting my Instagram bootcamp. This will be the fourth or fifth year that I'm hosting the Instagram bootcamp.

It is a free Instagram, uh, bootcamp. Yes, we have an offer to join the lab then, but also warming up my [00:18:00] list to lead into the holidays. Okay, so October, September, October for me are all warmup months. And then I go heavy in with the holiday, uh, prep. So at the beginning of November, I usually tell people what sale we have coming up.

So here's our. Friday sale, I be, as you know, this is the time to not be like a little whimsical, fancy, fanciful, silly goose about your wording. I just keep it straightforward. If you wanna know what our Black Friday sale is, here is it. Here it is, and here are the dates. Okay? Save this in your calendar. And then the weeks leading up to it, I'll tease out a little bit.

Um, and then the Big Friday, black Friday window, I will really lean into those benefit statements, the value and use a lot of client customer testimonials, answer a lot of questions. Um, I usually do some small business Saturday. Love. The Cyber Monday reminder and then usually close it out Giving Tuesday.

And a lot of times I also announce how much we're donating that year as well and giving Tuesday. [00:19:00] In the past we've done a number of things for Giving Tuesday, but usually that's when we do our, our big donation for the year, and so I'll probably share that on that day as well. Okay. So I want you to think about how this could look for your business.

There's so many different ways you can have a sale. I personally do the 50% off my membership because it's easy, it's juicy. It's like our biggest sale of the year. But you can do other things. Um, you could do, uh, bundling up. Two different offers or services, especially for, you're a service-based business owner, we don't wanna discount too much, but you can bundle in offers.

So when I had, um, my agency, for instance, if you signed up as a client, we would do, you know, we'll add on like an email audit or a month of email marketing management. Um, you could bundle up live classes. You could, um, give yourself, uh, uh, additional services. If someone, um, books one thing, you give them another.

You could do doorbuster sales. So like first 100 people to do this, get something [00:20:00] extra. Make sure though that all of this fits your energy budget. Um, we don't wanna over deliver. And that's a message to myself, which is why I do the 50% off. Uh, black Friday deal. As we wrap up this episode, a few things to keep in mind.

Um, your metrics may look very unusual during the Black Friday season. This is totally normal. I still want you to consistently post that content and share those emails because everyone schedules a wackadoodle right now. Okay? So while it's consistent, now you know US Thanksgiving leading all the way up to the Christmas holiday.

Everyone's kind of bouncing around a little bit, unusually. So they may not be checking their phone at their usual time. They may not be checking their email like they usually do. Sometimes that can mean less, okay, so they may miss something. So we wanna, you know, keep them on top of it. But sometimes it can mean more.

So for me, for instance, when I'm on holidays, I actually tend to spend a little bit more time on certain platforms like social media versus my email. [00:21:00] And so. If I were your client, I would wanna see more social posts during that time. And if you sent more emails, it wouldn't bother me because I kind of expect it during the holiday season, and I want you to still lean into what feels good, create your content ahead of time too, if you can.

Don't think too hard about, um, trying to post in the moment. You can still save some, like I said, save some, um, space for commentary on the state of the world and, and the things that are happening. But as much as you can create those. Content pieces ahead of time. Your your pillar content pieces and everything that you repurpose as well.

Also, trust that you're not going to check every box. You're not gonna dot every I, you're not going to cross every t it is okay? Give it your all. Do your best, and then you can do what I do and then do it again next year. And every time I read you my sales, every time I redo my challenges, my launches, like we're going into the seventh year of the LinkedIn.

Challenge a LinkedIn bootcamp every year. I improve it [00:22:00] somehow or change it somehow. Okay, so if you found this episode helpful, definitely check out the holiday guide online, dre.com/holiday To me. This is like the Costco sample of what's inside the Mindful Marketing Lab. I want you to like gobble this up and go, this was free, this was all really good and it was free.

Let me go see what the paid content is like 'cause it's even better. I'll be back at you soon with the new episode. That's all for today. Bye for now.