Building Successful Advent Calendar Marketing Campaigns for the Beauty Industry

Advent calendars are one of the most loved Pre Christmas traditions: a creative way to count down the 24 days of December ending on Christmas Eve.

Since the 19th Century (when the tradition started), advent calendars have been produced in different forms and styles.

Today they can be quite innovative, especially in the beauty industry.

They are largely used by brands and corporations as a key tool to generate new business, promote products and grow sales as well as capturing key marketing insights and boost engagement on social media channels. A powerful way to unleash their creativity by creating their own advent calendars.

Beauty brands often add small-sized products behind each box, this allows people to enjoy a selection of items from a specific brand and brands can benefit from the hype that can be generated by the product’s release.

Creating Your Social Media Advent Calendar Marketing Campaign

From a digital perspective, you can publish an original piece of content to your social media followers.

It can be discounts or flash sales or you can work with influencers to provide never before seen before photos/videos or products.

A social media campaign can be rolled out to coincide with customers opening their calendars throughout the month. For example, 25 different highly engaging videos can be released on Instagram Stories each day before Christmas, or an advent calendar contest hosted across all social channels where end users can post their product won every single day under a specific hashtag would be the perfect way to collect user-generated content and make sure customers have a constant engagement with the brand.

Particularly, if you are going to use Instagram as a tool to create your very best Christmas marketing campaign, the first thing to think of is the style of contests you want to use. Take your time to think about your objectives: are you trying to capture leads, increase followers, or just showcase products? How large is your target audience?

Depending on those goals, you could have 3 options:

1. 5 days, 5 giveaways – choose one single week of the Advent month and roll out 5 posts, one for each day of the week. There are several tools that allow you to run unlimited Instagram giveaways.
2. 4 weeks, 4 giveaways with a final big award every week. You run 5 posts, again, each day of the week, asking people to comment on those to enter into a draw. The winner will be announced on the 6^th day and you will have to make sure your top product will be the final prize (or, even better, your very newest product).
3. 5 days, 5 giveaways and a final big prize – you still need to create 5 giveaways, one each day of the week. A new opportunity to win will be created then: draw a big and final prize on the 6th day from those who have joined the previous draws.

Of course, you will have to drive attention to this content by creating engaging content to be distributed via Instagram Stories.

Another great digital marketing trick to use could be to build and deliver an influencer marketing campaign and involve beauty influencers to post on their YouTube Channels information about the brands’ advent calendar offerings.

So, ready to start building your integrated Christmas marketing strategy? If the answer is yes, surely you can’t miss the opportunity to also give to your advent calendar the best media coverage.

Creating your Online Media Advent Calendar Campaign

To help you plan how to spend your media budget, here at My Market Insight, we built a report which has shown key data which can help you to make informed decisions regarding your media budget spend.

Please find below some of our key findings:

Online media dominates the Advent calendar category as it represents 99% of coverage in EMV and 90% in mentions. Mentions have shifted from Online Ezine and Online Blog to Online Publications which now has a 79% share of mentions.
Online Publications such as hellomagazine.com have contributed to the growth as they have doubled their advent calendar related articles compared with last year. Top coverage includes their article on the best advent calendars of 2019 which mentioned 24 products.

The Body Shop remains the number 1 advent calendar brand in EMV and Mentions. This year, The Body Shop have released 3 advent calendars which have reportedly now sold out on their eCommerce store.
Dream Big This Christmas Deluxe Advent Calendar proved to be the most popular as it has the most mentions of the 3 advent calendars. Top coverage for the brand came from womenshealthmag.com and cosmopolitan.com however a decline of -57% in mentions from standard.co.uk lead to the overall decline of -20% in mentions for The Body Shop.

The number 1 advent calendar in EMV goes to Elemis 25 Days Of Beauty Advent Calendar 2019. 40% of coverage in mentions came from features, 20% came from best buys and another 20% came from gift guide drivers.
The publication with the highest EMV came from refinery29.com which mentions the product in its The Best Beauty Advent Calendars For Christmas 2019.

Also, the most loved products by the media by mentions are…

About mmi Analytics

mmi is a specialist provider of media and eCommerce insights created with the beauty industry for the beauty industry.

Our media platform supports PR, Marketing and Communications teams with the planning and monitoring of both paid and earned media.

media allows you to optimise your media investments by measuring, analysing and reporting on your global product and brand performance across print, online and social media.

Schedule a demo now here.