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As the leaves start to change and the air gets crisp, (and while we hope it doesn’t rain too much) I know for many businesses, the holiday season is already on the horizon. Believe it or not, nearly a quarter of consumers begin their holiday shopping as early as August!

While we're still enjoying our summer vacations, 23% of people are already filling their carts with festive goodies.

But what does this mean for B2B businesses?

How can we capitalize on the holiday spirit without selling snowflake-adorned jumpers or pumpkin spice-flavoured everything? And how does it apply to use when we don’t have traditional e-comm products to actually sell in the first place?

Here are some tips that will help you sleigh your Q4 marketing game, by getting your publishing calendar mapped out now so that your hard-crafted content strategy doesn’t suffer under the weight of snowmen and sleighbells in our feeds! (I use my Notion Content Calendar for this, but you could use your preferred online digital calendar too.)

So as a B2B business, what can you do?

Start with mapping out key days over Q4-Q1 that you need to cover in any of your content. Think fixed, immovable dates.

First things first, we need to get organised. It's time to break out that calendar and start marking those key dates. What industry events do you need to talk about? What events are you attending that you’ll have content for?

And also look at holidays, Q4 has a lot! While not all holidays will be relevant to your B2B audience, it's crucial to identify which ones matter most.

Knowing which ones you need to talk to your audience about, and getting those dates mapped out in your calendar now means you won’t miss them if they’re important to your audience.

Here's a quick (not exhaustive) checklist to get you started:

Black Friday,

Cyber Monday,

Halloween,

Bonfire Night,

Hanukkah,

Christmas,

New Year’s Eve,

Boxing Day,

Kwanzaa,

Lunar New Year,

Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead),

Thanks Giving

or Diwali.

💡 Don't forget about those early January dates too, planning now will save you from a post-holiday headache. Even if you don’t want to be working in that first week of January, your audience will be online, so having that planned now is well worth the time.

Campaign time.

Next, what social media or digital campaigns are you going to run? Think about what services you actually want to advertise in the last few months of the year?

For example, if you’re busy in December, you might only want to publicise 1:1 mentoring for January, and not in November.

Think about things you’ll need to advertise that will take more than one or two posts to share about?

Treating these like mini launches can help. Look at the gaps in the calendar, where do these campaigns fit?

Analysing past data.

If you’ve been in business for a few years, you might have some data to look at.

• What worked well last year?

• What could be improved?

• What were your client preferences?

• Did a digital product sell well this time last year?

• What were your top 5 posts of the season?

Use these insights to refine your strategy. Consider if any of these previous content pieces need to be re-used or re-purposed, and you can put those in the content calendar.

Plan your content calendar now.

Now that we've got our key dates, our campaigns at fixed points in the calendar, and our best-performing content, it's time to fill in the gaps. Ask yourself:

• What posts need to go out and when?

• Are there any office closures to share?

• What services or products do you want to highlight?

• Do your opening hours change during the holiday season?

• What information do I need to go out over the next 3 months?

• Am I covering all the content pillars that I want to talk about over the posts I’ve mapped out?

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Remember, the goal is to have a robust content calendar that carries you through the festive season and into the new year.

What content will help to keep your business-to-business relationships warm during the festive period?

The holiday season isn't just about sales - it's about strengthening relationships.

Yes, it doesn’t go in your publishing calendar in the same way, but that content is well worth looking at now so you know how much you will need to create.

Emails to strong supporters during the year, for example.

Or content that features other businesses for relationship building?

How about an engagement campaign for all the businesses that are on your target list for next year?

Or an engagement campaign on socials for your biggest supporters?

Collaborating with complimentary brands can be a great option for Q4 content.

Collaboration entails some work, but its an important content job for businesses who have thought leadership as a goal.

Getting in front of others audiences, even if you are having to create extra content, means that you have access to a ready made audience.

Who has a similar audience to you?

Who’s a complimentary business, that you could team up with?

Getting that nailed down in the calendar sooner rather than later is preferable. Perhaps you can rework an old Q4 blog post that would work for another brand to use on their Instagram feed would work?

This is valuable work that not only helps you, but also helps another brand, and your relationship.

While you’re planning out your content, are you leaving the space for you to be able to monitor all the content going out?

Tracking and analysing is important this time of year too, even though we’ll be getting our clients set up for the Christmas break. It feels like a laborious task, but one that needs to be done.

You can use analytics tools to track website traffic,

sales,

and social media engagement.

You can also look at client feedback, and also so some social listening to see what is being said about your brand.

And crucially, are you prepared and able to make real-time adjustments based on this data? measuring is great, but you need to be able to take action on that data.

Whatever your business, social media habits change in Q4, so it’s worth noting that your content might perform differently. Some campaigns will perform better, especially those that are sharable, while other posts won’t. People are using social media more for product discovery and searching, and even if you’re not selling products, it will impact your data, one way or another!

At the end of the day, the holiday season is a good opportunity for B2B businesses to strengthen relationships and boost sales. However, planning and executing effective content campaigns can be challenging, especially when juggling multiple holidays and industry events, not to mention just how busy life gets over the last few months of the year.

Key takeaways from this blog post:

• Early planning is essential: Begin planning your content calendar well in advance to ensure you have enough time to create and execute your campaigns.

• Identify key dates: Mark important holidays, industry events, and company-specific milestones on your calendar.

• Develop targeted campaigns: Create social media and digital campaigns that align with your business goals and resonate with your audience.

• Use past data: Analyse your previous year's performance to identify successful strategies and areas for improvement.

• Build relationships: Focus on strengthening relationships with clients and partners through personalized content and collaborations.

• Monitor and analyse performance: Track key metrics and make real-time adjustments to optimize your campaigns.

If this year isn’t going to plan, and you need some help with your content strategy to finish strong, please get in touch to see how we can help you.