If it feels like the holiday season comes quicker each year and you’re unsure if holiday-specific marketing is feasible, you’re not alone. When you’re managing an always-on marketing approach year-round, layering seasonal promotions on top of your daily campaigns can be a lot of work. Work that’s well worth it, though, as the holiday season can be one of the best times of year to secure more leads or sales for your business—even if you’re not in an industry affected by seasonality.
Whether you’re looking to refresh a holiday marketing strategy you’ve been recycling for years or want the fast-track to a new strategy that brings results that last long after the season’s over, you’ve come to the right place. By the end of this post, you’ll have everything you need to create a holiday marketing strategy worth caroling about, including the steps to build one, along with ideas and a free template to help you get started.
Contents
- Why your holiday marketing strategy matters: Seasonal stats
- How to build a holiday marketing strategy for your business
- Holiday marketing ideas to kickstart your strategy
- Free holiday marketing strategy planning template
Why your holiday marketing strategy matters: Seasonal stats
Holiday marketing plays an important role in promoting your business both during and after the winter season. Consider these statistics:
- The amount consumers have spent on holiday shopping increased by 8% last year.
- 60% of marketers and business owners report feeling more pressure to deliver a higher ROI this holiday season.
- 41% of businesses plan to invest more into OTT (over-the-top) ads this holiday season, as it was the top-performing channel for holiday campaigns last year.
- 40% of consumers plan to do their holiday spending between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday.
- 73% of Millennials and 68% of Gen Zers are likely to treat themselves while shopping for others.
- 88% of consumers celebrate Christmas, 84% celebrate Thanksgiving, and 72% celebrate New Year’s Eve.
- 64% of consumers say sales and discounts are the most appealing holiday promotions.
Holiday marketing promotions like the example above encourage customer loyalty and referrals even after the season is over.
How to build a holiday marketing strategy for your business
Ready to create a festive holiday marketing strategy that works? Follow these steps.
1. Know your timeline and budget
Ideally, you want to start your holiday marketing as early as possible. We cover exactly when you should start your holiday marketing here, but the point of this first step is understanding what might be achievable for each target holiday in your plan, depending on how soon it is.
You’ll approach your holiday marketing budget with the same thought process. See what you might already be spending on marketing and how much you’d be able to allocate or add for your seasonal campaigns to stay competitive over the holidays.
2. Set your goals
Once you have your timeline and budget set, you can set benchmarks for what you want your holiday marketing strategy to achieve by the end of the season. For example, you could follow the SMART structure to brainstorm a few holiday marketing goals to keep your campaigns on track.
3. Determine which holidays you’ll target
It may make sense for your business to focus on certain holidays more heavily than others during the fall and winter seasons. For example, a family diner that has earlier operating hours might amp up its marketing on Thanksgiving rather than New Year’s Eve. Also, don’t forget there are other social media holidays outside of Christmas or Black Friday you can take advantage of.
Download this free marketing calendar here.
4. Identify your target audience
Knowing your target audience well can help inform your holiday marketing decisions, like which messaging might resonate best or which holidays to emphasize more than others. Check out some target market examples to identify exactly the type of user you’ll want your campaigns to be tailored to.
You could also evaluate any first-party data audience lists you might already be using for non-seasonal campaigns and recycle your current targeting strategy.
Regardless of how you approach this step, be thinking about what types of holiday promotions might be most attractive to these audience groups.
5. Brainstorm your holiday promotions
You can tailor your holiday promotions around the themes of all the holidays you choose to capitalize on. Come up with a quick list of deals, discounts, sales, specials, and more that will be at the core of your limited-time holiday campaigns.
If you’re short on ideas, there are plenty of AI tools that could help you ideate holiday promotions you might not have thought of off the bat.
Unwrap AI prompts that might help your business this holiday season here.
6. Choose your holiday campaign channels
Now that you know what to promote and to whom, it’s time to decide where you’ll want your holiday marketing to show. Consider all your marketing channel options, even ones you don’t always advertise on otherwise. The more channels you use to get your holiday marketing out there, the more effective this short-term strategy will be.
7. Create and publish your holiday campaigns
In this step, you’ll start taking action. You can use your own in-house resources, as well as third-party tools or marketing partners, to build your holiday campaigns and set them live.
8. Track and optimize your campaigns
Congratulations! By this step, you’ve already implemented a strong holiday marketing strategy. All that’s left to do from here is collect data to track your performance and optimize as needed.
💡Wondering how you can optimize your Google Ads campaigns for the holiday season? Start with an instant account report using our Free Google Ads Grader!
Holiday marketing ideas to kickstart your strategy
If you want your holiday marketing strategy to be the gift that keeps on giving, try these holiday marketing ideas:
- Switch up your current product positioning to be holiday-themed.
- Offer discounts for customers who make a purchase before a certain holiday.
- Create a downloadable holiday wish list or prep checklist to generate leads from your website or email campaigns.
- Partner with a complementary business to cross-promote your seasonal product or service offerings.
- Source content from employees on their own holiday traditions to give your social media followers a closer look at your company’s core values.
- Run a holiday-themed social media contest or giveaway.
- Update your local listings to include holiday-specific keywords and images.
- Update your branding on your website and social media to include festive colors, icons, and more.
- Swap out your Google or Meta Ads for holiday-themed assets.
Of course, there are a ton of holiday marketing ideas you could incorporate into your strategy; this list is just a quick preview of all the different directions you can take.
Free holiday marketing strategy template
Looking for a holiday marketing resource to jumpstart your strategy? Start by making a copy of this free, customizable holiday marketing template.
Give your business the gift of a good holiday marketing strategy
A solid holiday marketing strategy can work wonders for your business growth. Plus, with so many festive themes to frame your promotions around, creating holiday marketing campaigns can be fun, too. For more ways to transform your holiday marketing strategy this season, see how our solutions can help.
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