Looking at the lighter side of digital marketing we analyze what would happen if Santa hired a digital and social media marketing consultant. What if Santa Clause decided to use Web 2.0 strategies, internet marketing and social media?   How would he go about putting a plan in place?  As a jolly old soul he's probably open to some new ideas so let's help him out.

Starting with his main business of distributing toys and making kids happy we create a plan that is dialed in just for Saint Nicholas, his resources and his budget.  It's important that we keep his business goals front and center when creating a plan.  He likes those milk and cookies on Christmas Eve so we want to make sure those keep coming.

We set him up some monitoring tools to see what kids and parents are saying out there.  We do some manual searches too.  Maybe our research uncovers a tired elf wrote down the wrong present request or his flight plan is getting him to some regions a little too close to wake up time.

Then we look at Santa's branding power and messaging to see if he's meeting his customers' expectations.  If we find need for improvement in any areas we make a list and include specifics for those improvements in our planning.  While he has a powerful brand he has not used digital marketing in the past so we provide him and his staff with lots of education so the North Pole doesn't undergo a horrific culture shock.

We do some basic usability testing and find that some are confused with his website navigation.  We make some changes and test again.  We use some search engine monitoring tools and tweak some content.  We create landing pages for specific programs.

We notice that Santa has social sites in place but no strategies associated with them - his elves are too busy making toys.  We create a program to dial in his social sites, integrate them with his website, and provide educational material on best practices and goal creation always referring back to his original business objectives.  We set up some basic ad campaigns on StumbleUpon and Facebook.  We include some traditional print marketing and compelling banner ads for the proper channels.  We set up analytics and dashboards to measure our results.

Our research shows that Santa's communication strategy could use a lift, so we set up a blog and provide education on blogging strategies.  We even set up Mrs. Claus with her own cooking site which she loves.  To extend his reach we setup HTML newsletters and ideas for content.  We specifiy a multi-media center for the workshop and showed Santa how to conduct seminars and live streaming with Ustream.

We create a mobile marketing plan that includes a smart phone app for toy requests, sleigh tracking on December 24th using Santa's personal phone GPS, and text messaging to remind kids to be nice throughout the year - one of his business goals is behavior incentives with that naughty or nice thing.  We even incorporate some location-based marketing strategies using Foursquare and brightkite for kids that want to visit Santa's workshop throughout the year.

He communicates with people all over the world now and taps into the conversations.  Santa is so happy he even put a few kids back on the gift list that were border line this year!  He realized that an analysis of his current situation plus recommendations based on his objectives and resources was the best way to go.  He took out a woodshed in Canada while texting during a Christmas Eve practice run but other than that things have gone pretty smoothly.

A digital marketing program works for any size business.  If it can work for Santa it can work for you.  So get cracking and start planning for the New Year.  Don't be a Scrooge.  Join the conversation and Happy Holidays!