7 Innovative Marketing Examples for Events and Catering this Holiday Season
It seems like “Christmas in July” is less ironic than it used to be – especially if you are responsible for marketing holiday events and catering! It’s never too early to be inspired by some marketing examples for events and to start thinking about your calendar for the remainder of the year! By the time the holidays are upon us, it’s way too late to get customers to book your venue or order catering unless they are a fan of scrambling at the last minute. No worries, we’ve compiled a list of some of the top ways to promote your venue for the holiday season, and we’re excited to share some inspiration from our customers who are doing just that!
Read on to get creative marketing examples for events for the holiday season. Discover what you can do with little to no budget to ensure your calendar is packed with events through year-end and beyond.
1. Consider Social and Corporate Catering Packages
Thanksgiving is the perfect time to test out catering options if you haven’t before. Despite seeming like a lot of effort, you can easily churn out hundreds of additional orders with a little setup and planning! Sweet Auburn BBQ out of Atlanta, Georgia, has thought of everything when it comes to its Thanksgiving packages. They offer family and corporate options for every unique gathering to make sure all prospective clients are addressed. With an eye-catching email blast, they offer direct links to pre-order for both your social and corporate Thanksgiving needs.
Catering Manager Shawn Davis explained that they use TripleseatDirect for Thanksgiving orders, which allowed them to streamline their catering operations and save time and labor. Davis went on to say, “Before we set up TripleseatDirect, customers would have to call the catering line and place their order over the phone (you can only imagine what that was like taking 300 orders via phone). We had to staff an extra person just to answer phones and place orders! With TripleseatDirect, we were able to send out the link with our marketing blast, and customers could order at their leisure. The phone rang less, which gave us (me) more time to focus on executing orders rather than placing orders.”
2. Offer a Gift Card or Discount
Everyone loves a good deal during the holidays, don’t they? Consider offering special promotions and discounts to attract more diners. For example, you could run a “12 Days of Christmas” promotion with daily discounts or offer a free dessert with every holiday meal.
We love this email promotion by Left Bank Brasserie, a group of authentic Parisian-style brasseries by Chef Rolan Passot in California. Left Bank Brasserie is offering gift cards between $50-100 for each $1,000 spent on food and beverage for events hosted late November through the end of December! This a great way to get customers to book ahead of time and secure new bookings with a fun incentive. Event managers booking the event get a gift card in their pocket for a Parisian dinner out.
3. Sweeten the Deal
Bottleneck Management, with locations all over the Chicago area, knows the way to our hearts is through our stomachs. In this marketing example for events, you’ll see that if you book an event with this venue this holiday season by November 11th and mention their exclusive “holiday promotion,” you can receive a free dessert platter of your choice. We love their marketing blast promoting the offer – desserts and events are truly a perfect pair, and what is a party without a dessert platter? We think this is a perfect opportunity to really sweeten the deal for anyone on the fence about booking your space for a private or semi-private event!
4. It’s Never Too Early to Start Planning
All right, so now you’re considering a discount or a potential complimentary item to entice clients to book your venue. You don’t want to delay setting up these offers, though. It’s good to get a jump on the planning so you have a better idea of how much of a push you’ll have to do as Q4 approaches. The Fifty/50 Group has gone one step further, and they are offering upgrades to their events, including a discount or a variety of complimentary items IF booked by October 1st. This is a fantastic way to lock in your events early and really drum up interest. Their marketing blast links out directly to the private events section of their website, where you can easily view all of their venues, and customers can easily reserve their events through the Tripleseat lead forms!
5. Think Outside the Box
Not everyone celebrates the same holidays, and clients are always looking for a unique experience for their guests. Ciel, the Bay Area’s premiere multi-studio venue, knows how to bring holiday cheer to all. Their incredibly unique space with ten unique studios is the perfect place for customers to start with a blank canvas and craft whatever the crowd desires! We love how they included a GIF in their marketing blast to showcase different types of events that can be hosted in their space. They link right out to their event lead form here for easy booking of holiday events and show a recap of past events that might inspire others!
6. Is January The New December For Events?
While you are determined to fill your venues throughout the end of the year, reconsider and think about January or February as the new trendy time to book. SAVOUR Hospitality Group recently shared their compelling list of “5 Reasons to Host Holiday Parties in January” with reasons ranging from better guest availability to cost savings. We love this quote from Malisse Sinito, President of SAVOUR Hospitality, “Avoid the stress and anxiety of trying to cram your holiday party into the first weeks of December before people have scheduled travel and offices are closed. Let’s face it, January in Cleveland can be depressing without something to look forward to.” So it’s definitely worth exploring options for January and February events as an alternative to the normally crazy November and December time period.
7. Share Your Lead Form Everywhere
We could go on and on, and you’ll probably hear from us again this holiday season to highlight more innovative holiday promotions we see. For now, we’ll leave you with one last thought that should be the FIRST thing you do when you create any promotional materials: share your lead form everywhere!
When it comes to holiday promotions, you’ll definitely want to make sure you’re creating a new holiday lead form so you can accurately track incoming leads and see which marketing efforts are working the best for you. Our favorite tip is to create a Linktree for your Instagram “Link in Bio” so you can link out to your website, private events page for each of your venues, and anything else you want to promote. Beatrix Restaurants does this perfectly in their recent Instagram holiday promotion with an eye-catching image and a fun caption, as shown below.
Book your Holiday Event Calendar with Tripleseat
So don’t delay – get to creating those holiday promotions, and feel free to share your marketing examples for events with us! We’re always interested to hear what is working for you. To learn more about how Tripleseat can do way more than manage your private events, set up a demo today!
