While the end of the year is often seen as a time to relax and unwind, it also presents a unique opportunity to connect with B2B buyers when competitors might be scaling back on their engagement efforts. For many businesses, Q4 is a critical period for finalizing deals, meeting year-end revenue targets, and setting the stage for a strong start to the new year. Positioning your solution or service as a valuable asset to meet current objectives and achieve future growth helps elevate your brand as a trusted partner for long-term success.
And yet, this busy season can be challenging for B2B marketers needing to cut through the holiday noise while ensuring their content and offers resonate with buyers. To help you more effectively navigate and make the most of your end-of-year marketing motions, we’ve created a comprehensive guide on how to reach and engage key decision-makers during the busy holiday season.
Step 1: Understand Shifting Buyer Mindsets
Flexibility should be a core component of your strategy, allowing you to adapt to any sudden changes that the holiday hustle and bustle might bring. The first step in engaging B2B buyers during the holiday season is understanding how their behavior changes at this time of the year.
Many businesses, especially in industries like technology, manufacturing, and professional services, still operate during the holidays but at a slower pace. Decision-makers may be in a more relaxed mindset, juggling end-of-year tasks and preparing for the new year. They may also have a more flexible schedule, allowing for strategic discussions and long-term planning versus a pressing need for problem-solving. Individuals often have more planned time off closer to the holidays or limited availability, making it harder to reach them.
At the same time, buyers still face internal deadlines, including budget reviews, closing out projects, and ensuring their teams are ready for the upcoming year. They’re balancing their own desires to wrap up the current year while setting goals for the next one. Just like you, they’re working hard to reach targets and quotas before the year wraps up. Understanding the push-and-pull between active buyers and the holiday season allows you to tailor your marketing efforts so that your engagement strategy can appeal to buyers’ needs and build urgency toward exploring your brand without overloading their inbox.
Step 2: Craft Tailored Content for End-of-Year Planning Needs
Content still reigns king during the holiday season, but it must be both timely and relevant to truly stand out. Instead of relying on generic holiday greetings or end-of-year recaps—which everyone else is doing—focus on content that speaks to the challenges and opportunities buyers will face in the coming year. This might include:
- Year-in-Review Content: Share insights into the trends, challenges, and innovations from the past year and provide actionable advice and opinions from your leadership team on how businesses can prepare for what’s coming in the next year. This type of content positions your brand as an industry expert and offers valuable insights for your buyers to consider as they complete their annual plans.
- Industry Predictions and Trends: Many buyers are looking to get ahead of the curve and plan their strategy for the year ahead. Provide your audience with predictions and emerging trends in your industry. Make sure to include strategic advice on how to implement predictions and trends into their planning process, which prepares buyers for future challenges.
- How-To Guides and Checklists: Offer practical, actionable advice that buyers can use to wrap up their year efficiently. This might include checklists for evaluating current processes or guides to help buyers wrap up their current plans and get next year’s budgets and projects in order.
Personalization is crucial for any buyer engagement during this time. Utilize data and insights from previous years to predict what buyers might be looking for. This information can help guide the development of end-of-year wrap-up reports and annual planning assets, ensuring they are both relevant and appealing. By understanding past trends and buyer behaviors, you can fine-tune your strategy to maximize impact.
Make sure to tailor your messages to address the specific interests and needs of your audience. Mentioning recent interactions with your campaigns or the buyer’s preferences can make your communications feel more personal and considerate. This level of customization shows that you value your relationship with the recipient, encouraging them to engage further.
Finally, think about the B2C content that is most effective during the busy holiday season. Content and ads aimed at making tasks simpler and easier are consumed at a higher rate. Adopting that same mindset (the holiday version being, of course, a Black Friday mindset) for your B2B content and messaging will help you stand out more against your competitors.
Step 3: Embrace Seasonally Themed Campaigns with Purpose
Let’s go ahead and debunk the biggest marketing myth once and for all: Holiday marketing isn’t just for B2C companies. We’re here to tell you that holiday-themed messaging can play a pivotal role in catching the eye and fostering a sense of connection among B2B buyers as well.
While we all joke about the official start of the holiday season moving closer and closer to summer, there’s a reason why department stores and big brands like Starbucks turn on the holiday cheer earlier and earlier: turns out people actually like the holidays and joy that it brings.
The question isn’t why should you embrace seasonally themed B2B campaigns, but why haven’t you done so sooner? Adapt your content and communication to mirror the holiday ambiance, using themes and visuals that resonate with your buyers. It’s important to ensure that your messages are warm, inviting, and reflective of the season. Avoid generic holiday greetings or promotions and focus on offering content that speaks to your buyers’ needs and challenges.
Here are a few ways to infuse the holiday spirit into your campaigns without coming across as overly commercial:
- Personalized Seasonal Offers: Use segmentation to send tailored holiday offers to different buyer personas. For example, offer early-bird promotions to buyers who typically purchase early in the year, or year-end discount codes for customers needing to make last-minute decisions.
- Holiday-Themed Landing Pages: Create dedicated landing pages that highlight year-end offers, seasonal discounts, or year-in-review content. Ensure that your calls to action (CTAs) are clear and lead buyers toward the next step in their purchasing journey.
- Social Media Storytelling: Flex your creative muscles on social media with holiday-themed content that appeals emotionally to buyers. Adding holiday cheer to social media banners, images, and posts is a simple and fun way to grab attention and engage audiences during the holiday months. Use it to promote the season of giving with seasonal causes and charities and show gratitude to clients you worked with over the past year.
- Experiment with Video Ads: Video ads are an engaging and powerful way to capture attention on social media platforms. During the holiday season, B2B marketers can use video ads to tell compelling stories about how their product or service helped other businesses succeed or how it can solve pressing problems as companies prepare for the new year.
Step 4: Leverage Retargeting Efforts to Maximize End-of-Year Visibility and Conversions
As the year reaches its end, buyers may not be ready to make a final purchase, but they’re still researching and evaluating options for the year ahead. Others may be looking to spend their marketing budget before the year ends or risk losing it in the next year. Your retargeting strategy helps keep your brand top of mind and create a greater sense of urgency during the busy holiday season.
Retargeting efforts help you reconnect with prospects who have shown interest in their products or services but have not yet converted and reach them with tailored messaging that encourages action. Retargeting can be a valuable tool to remind potential buyers of your brand and encourage them to follow through on their purchase. Here’s how:
- Create Custom Offers for Retargeted Visitors: This time of year, buyers are often looking for ways to maximize their budgets, so offering targeted, time-sensitive promotions is key. Use retargeting ads to provide personalized offers that are specifically relevant to the audience’s prior engagement. For example, you could offer a “last-minute holiday discount” or a “limited-time end-of-year deal” that motivates potential customers to act before the holidays.
- Use Dynamic Retargeting Ads: Dynamic ads allow you to show customized ads based on the exact products or services users have shown interest in. These ads are highly personalized and more likely to convert because they display content relevant to the user’s past behavior, offering a more tailored experience.
- Create a Sense of Urgency: Retargeting ads during the holiday season should include a clear, time-sensitive message to create urgency. Since many buyers are working against the clock to close deals before the end of the year, highlighting limited-time offers or bonuses can encourage faster decision-making.
Step 5: Plan Outreach Timing and Channel Use Strategically
Where and when you engage buyers during the holiday season is just as important as the content and message you promote. While out-of-office plans vary during the peak holiday break, there is still plenty of opportunity to engage buyers during this time, especially if you want to remain top-of-mind among decision-makers when budgets are refreshed in the new year. By balancing the frequency and timing of campaigns with the right message, you can effectively capture the attention of decision-makers and drive meaningful action, all while respecting the natural slowdowns and distractions that come with the holiday period.
When it comes to email, be mindful of frequency. Overloading inboxes can lead to unsubscribes or buyer fatigue. Space out your emails so that they arrive at the optimal time when buyers are more likely to engage, such as just before they take time off or right after their holiday break. Research shows a dramatic shift in out of office reply rates between the last week of December and the first week in January, indicating an optimal opportunity to engage buyers at a time when competitor marketing teams might be less active.
For the same reason as email, webinars and virtual events can also be tricky this time of year due to competing priorities and schedules, but they continue to be a highly effective way to engage B2B buyers. Scheduling webinars with topics that align with year-end evaluations or new year strategies can provide valuable content and generate leads. However, timing is key; webinars and virtual events should be scheduled early enough to capture interest before teams begin to slow down for the holidays. Additionally, consider offering incentives for attendance, such as free consultations or exclusive offers, to increase engagement during this period.
One channel decision-makers will most likely still actively engage with during the holidays is social media. Paid social campaigns on LinkedIn can be particularly effective during the holiday season when buying cycles may slow. Use targeting to narrow down your audience to decision-makers, such as senior executives, procurement managers, or department heads who are planning their budgets or making final decisions before the year ends. Create ads that are focused on year-end planning, new year initiatives, and time-sensitive offers.
Consider using this time to experiment with emerging channels such as connected TV and podcast advertising to engage buyers at a time when they’re technically “offline” but still at home consuming content while busy with other personal activities. Focusing on holiday-related topics like “preparing for next year’s budget” or “how to close the year strong” will capture their attention and help you provide value while subtly positioning your solution as the answer to their end-of-year or upcoming goals.
Timing is everything during the busy holiday season. While it’s important to stay in front of your audience during the holiday season, frequency is key. Oversaturating prospects with too frequent touchpoints can lead to disengagement. It’s essential to strike the right balance with a few well-timed, high-quality messages that provide value without being overwhelming. Avoid bombarding your contacts with daily emails or constant ads. A typical frequency could be 2-3 emails over the course of a month, with retargeting ads running throughout the holiday season. This consistent, but not excessive, cadence will ensure that you stay top of mind without overwhelming your audience.
Provide More Value to Buying Committee Members This Holiday Season
Engaging B2B buyers during the busy holiday season requires a thoughtful and strategic approach. Above all don’t forget the importance of nurturing relationships during the holiday season. This is a time to show your appreciation for your clients and prospects. Sending a simple thank-you note, a holiday card, or a personalized gift (e.g., a branded product or useful resource) can go a long way in building goodwill and reinforcing positive brand perception.
By understanding your audience’s needs, crafting tailored content, utilizing timely promotions, and leveraging the right channels, you can ensure that your brand stands out amid the holiday noise.
Looking to maximize your holiday season outreach strategies, learn how Madison Logic can help you turn this busy period into an opportunity for growth and success. Request a demo today!
