Every successful Thanksgiving marketing campaign needs some ingenuity. Fresh marketing ideas for Thanksgiving are not always easy to come up with, but it just takes one good idea to revolutionize your business this holiday season.
For your business, brand or event to flourish this Thanksgiving season, check out the ideas below for a surefire way to captivate your audience.
12 Thanksgiving Marketing Ideas for 2017
1. Present a competition, challenge, or contest.
Challenges are all the buzz nowadays. Creating your own branded competition is a great way to connect with your audience and get them excited about your brand. Remember to be creative in how you present it.
The holidays present the perfect time to create a competition of your own. Consumers are already energized for the upcoming holiday. If you introduce your challenge in an accessible and fun way, your followers will pounce on it and want to share it with others.
Check out these ideas for a successful Thanksgiving contest:
- Thanksgiving turkey cook-off
- Creative Thanksgiving recipe contest
- Digital scavenger hunt
- Random act of kindness challenge
2. Serve and volunteer.
Thanksgiving is the perfect opportunity to show your customers your tender side. Consider hosting your own Thanksgiving food drive, fundraiser, or meals collection for the homeless.
The best part about these events is that they are a two-for-one: you are helping people in need and simultaneously promoting and branding your company.
Service and volunteer work are always effective marketing tactics to promote throughout the year, but Thanksgiving is a particularly relevant time for such.
3. Host your own Thanksgiving event.
A local or regional Thanksgiving event is the perfect way to captivate your audience and give them a reason to acknowledge your brand. Think about hosting a fair, convention, discussion, contest, or other local Thanksgiving event.
If your company targets a national or global audience, you have a couple of options. First, you could still host an event in a populous area. Then, capture professional footage of the event and create a video to market your brand online:
You could also set up a digital event and encourage users from all over the world to attend. A digital event could include a live stream or webinar. Above all, define your focus for the upcoming event and deliver it.
4. Touch base with your target audience.
Movies? Football? Tech? Shopping? Every category has something to share this upcoming Thanksgiving. For example, the Google Home Mini will be available at Best Buy for only $30 on Black Friday.
If you are targeting tech consumers, creating a marketing campaign surrounding the Home Mini, such as a review video or a live unboxing, will help promote your brand for Thanksgiving. Focusing on an upcoming trend also boosts your SEO search rankings.
Whatever your niche’s scoop is for this Thanksgiving, use the news as a marketing tool. Piggybacking off a popular trend this season can work wonders to put your Thanksgiving marketing campaign before your competitors.
6. Share inventive Thanksgiving recipes.
Next to gratitude, food is the central element of Thanksgiving. If you want to get invested in your customers’ lives, offer them fun solutions for Thanksgiving dishes.
Come up with a few creative Thanksgiving recipes to share with your audience. Feel free to dig around on the internet to find inspiration as needed. You can share your inventive recipe idea or ideas in a video, infographic, podcast, blog post, or more.
7. Start a professional video marketing campaign.
Video is the perfect tool to capture the essence of your Thanksgiving marketing campaign. However, no business or event should be satisfied with mediocre video production quality.
Instead, set a professional standard of video production. You don’t have to go all out on your Thanksgiving video budget to produce a high-quality end product. This tactic for your Thanksgiving marketing campaign coincides with a lot of the other methods listed here.
For example, you can create a promotional video of your Thanksgiving service event. Only video can truly transport your viewers to your event and get them interested in your Thanksgiving promotional campaign.
However, as with any video marketing plan, be sure to avoid these mistakes:
8. Host a cultural Thanksgiving event.
Thanksgiving commemorates a feast held by the Pilgrims and Native Americans in the United States in 1621. It is a cultural holiday. Consider hosting a cultural event to share this experience with your diverse audience.
At your event, you can lead interesting presentations about how other cultures celebrate Thanksgiving. For example, history shows that the Spanish were actually the first to celebrate Thanksgiving in 1565. In the Spanish family, Thanksgiving is referred to as “el Dia de Las Gracias.”
All in all, hosting a cultural event can give your business a creative edge. It will help you weave together your audience and establish a positive, people-centered brand perception.
9. Promote a live stream or two.
Live streams add an effective boost to any Thanksgiving marketing campaign. However, you must make sure that your live stream stands out from the crowd, as apps like Periscope host thousands of live streams at a time across the globe.
Remember to promote your live stream through social media to build a substantial anticipative audience. Some creative Thanksgiving live stream ideas include:
- Thanksgiving-themed Q&A.
- Interview with Native Americans who celebrate Thanksgiving.
- Thanksgiving food-related challenge.
- Interactive Thanksgiving scavenger hunt.
10. Use comedy as your weapon.
Thanksgiving is a hearty time to lighten the mood with some comedy. Any Thanksgiving marketing campaign can become ingeniously hilarious with a little creativity.
Stove Top’s latest promotional campaign is the perfect example of using comedy as a strategic marketing weapon. Check out the commercial-parody above to see how Stove Top used the Thanksgiving holiday to boost their sales.
11. Host a video contest among your followers.
Video is the perfect tool to expand on your Thanksgiving competition, challenge, or contest. Thus, a video contest is the perfect opportunity to connect with your followers. All in all, Thanksgiving video contests give a modern, relevant skew on the traditional holiday.
Hosting your own contest gives you the perfect opportunity to familiarize yourself with your audience. You could host one on a variety of topics. Some ideas:
- “What’s your favorite Thanksgiving memory?”
- “What are your family’s traditions on Thanksgiving day?”
- “What are you thankful for in 2017?”
12. Don’t forget about Black Friday & Cyber Monday.
Right after Thanksgiving comes the most commercial “holiday” of the year. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are quintessentials for any holiday marketing plan.
If you have exclusive deals to offer to your customers, the day after Thanksgiving is the time to do so. So, plan a stock of exciting and unique marketable deals to promote on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Also, make sure your holiday marketing campaigns for these two days stand out, as your brand will be one among a sea of deals and campaigns.
Additionally, instead of offering general deals to all consumers, you can offer special deals to those who share a post from your Facebook page, follow you on Snapchat, subscribe on YouTube, or so on.
Wrap Up
Now that you have some ideas, get started with brainstorming the best approach for your Thanksgiving marketing campaign. Remember, the holiday season is all about branding for your business. Not only that, it’s also the perfect opportunity to promote deals and discounts to consumers.
If you need help in coming up with the perfect event marketing or video marketing plan for the upcoming holiday, contact Valoso. Our professional team is waiting to streamline your marketing campaign. Simply fill out the contact form below to get started!
