Once Halloween is over, you can expect to start hearing the sound of bells from marketers around the world as they prepare to launch their holiday marketing campaigns.

The holidays are a busy time for companies, who are all trying to take advantage of the holiday spending frenzy. You’ll see holiday emails, social media posts, and ads everywhere during this time of year!

It might seem like holiday marketing is outdated, but there are some brands who do it very well.

Some companies do holiday marketing very well. They are clever enough to know how to stand out in the midst of all the holiday marketing noise and chaos. Sometimes they achieve this by evoking emotions or by encouraging sharing. In some cases, they even bring people back together with loved ones or partnering with a nonprofit organization.

Our goal at Web Traffic Wizard is to help your business grow and be the best it can be. That’s why, as our holiday gift to you, we’ve put together some of the best holiday marketing tips and strategies.

What is holiday marketing?

Holiday marketing is the creation of advertising campaigns that focus on particular holidays and are distributed through various channels. These campaigns generally appear near the end of the year and during the Christmas season. By featuring seasonal promotions, businesses hope to increase sales during these festive periods.

. The key to holiday marketing is creating campaigns aimed at customers who want to make seasonal purchases.

Holiday marketing has the potential to boost sales for a variety of reasons:

• Demand and purchase intent are higher than usual: More clients are actively searching to buy throughout the holiday season, making your work as a marketer easier.
• Holiday marketing campaigns are time limited: Holidays are focused on a certain time period, generating a sense of urgency that encourages people to purchase.
• The joy of the holidays is contagious: Using emotion-driven holiday marketing initiatives to capitalize on your consumers’ joyful mood is a great sales approach.

But with the spotlight on seasonal sales, it’s easy to overlook the fact that this isn’t the sole advantage of holiday marketing. There are other opportunities for your business over the holidays, some of which include:

• Gaining new customers: In addition to generating sales, holiday marketing can improve brand awareness and attract consumers to your business who might not be so interested in your business outside of the holiday spirit.
• Building customer relationships: The end-of-year holiday season is perfect for relationship marketing. With the holiday spirit in tow, you can thank your loyal clients for their support over the last year by giving them a free gift or an exclusive discount.
• Making your brand more relatable, more human: By spreading holiday happiness to your clients, you can make your marketing feel more personal, which helps to establish the trust that is necessary for retaining loyal customers.

Why is holiday marketing important?

There are many reasons why holiday marketing is important: Starbucks brings back pumpkin spiced lattes, everyone is frustrated about which gifts to give, and it benefits businesses a lot!

Other reasons can be:

Shopping trips have become a tradition

Though it may seem humorous, the marketing of holidays is a huge cultural phenomena. In the past, people would celebrate holidays by building fires, singing songs, dancing, and sacrificing animals. However, modern people are too busy to celebrate in this way. This has led to people substituting traditional holiday activities with shopping trips.

Customers expect more as marketing standards are heightened

Customers are used to seeing different brands competing with each other for their attention in many areas, such as search results, email inbox, and social media. Holiday marketing has taught people that they deserve to be treated with a great personalized buying experience during the holidays. This also sets a higher standard for what brands should be aiming for.

Customers and brands gain from each other

Holiday marketing is beneficial to businesses as it results in increased income and improved reputation. Additionally, customers appreciate receiving excellent discounts and presents.

The ability of the company to expand and adapt is put to the test

The Black Friday and Cyber Monday frenzy puts businesses to the test. Participating in these holidays is unavoidable, and the holidays will only test brands to see if they can handle the volume of seasonal marketing. It also reveals whether or not particular businesses are adaptable and flexible enough to sort things out.

Encourages you to think beyond the box

Marketers trying to win over customers during the busy Holiday season should create content that is emotionally relevant to capture people’s attention.

Holidays can be a difficult time for marketers if they don’t have a plan.

How to create your holiday marketing strategy

1. Personalize your website for holiday marketing campaign

The holiday season can represent almost 30% of annual sales for businesses, so preparing your website for holiday shoppers can be a great way to increase revenue.

You can make your website more engaging by revamping the home page design and adding Christmas holiday themes. Adding fresh elements around the holidays is a great way to enhance the user experience.

Tips to personalize your website for holiday marketing campaigns

• Highlight festive CTAs – Holiday-inspired calls to action are a great way to get your online customers in the shopping spirit. Be sure to take the time to optimize your CTAs to gain the highest transactions during the festive season by using the right copy and color.
• Keep your messaging clear – Make sure that your website messaging is crystal clear. It should convey the benefits the customers would avail by purchasing your products or services.
• Add personalized greetings for holidays – Use personalized greetings messages and eye-catchers on the live chat widget to grab the attention of the website visitors and encourage them to browse through the holiday deals.
• Create banners or pop-ups – Design banners and pop-ups that include information about a major site-wide sale or a significant sale on an entire product category.
• Improve website loading speed – A single second delay could trigger a 7% drop in conversions. Page loading speed affects the experience of the website visitors, especially during the holiday rush.

2. Give early access to VIP customers

Open the door to early access holiday deals for your subscribers—it’ll help bring shoppers in before the mad holiday rush. Plus, your subscribers will feel VIP knowing they can snag a great deal before everyone else.

You can also make your loyal customers happy by sending them email campaigns with a good discount only for them. You can also give exclusive deals to customers that get involved by sharing their stories, photos, reviews, and early-bird discounts on social media to create a buzz before the holiday season officially starts.

• Provide early access – Give your premium customers the benefit of early access as it helps to retain your best customers with exclusive holiday deals and offers.
• Delight your customers – A sense of exclusivity and special treatment will make VIP customers happy and keep them buying for a long time to come.
• Start sales early – It benefits you from making sales early on, before the holiday frenzy. It makes it easier to manage and fulfill orders before the holiday chaos.

3. Run holiday giveaways on social media

ORDER NOW Giveaways are an effective way to engage with your followers, acquire new followers, and generate excitement for an upcoming event. Asking followers to comment, share, like, or take other actions are great ways to get even more engagement on your giveaway.

Brands often use giveaways in an attempt to increase interest and sales for their products or services. Offering promotional contests and giveaways can help get your target audience excited about your brand and the upcoming holidays.

Depending on the size of your team and budget, you can do anything from a Twitter hashtag contest, a photo caption contest on your Facebook page, a festive quiz, or a make a wish contest.

4. Partner with your influencers as marketing ideas

Many brands’ number one holiday marketing strategy is partnering with influencers. Seventeen percent of companies spend over half their marketing budget on influencers.

This creates excitement and anticipation for your brand as influencers promote your upcoming holiday shopping events on their social media channels.

Working with influencers can help your holiday marketing strategy by giving you access to a larger audience and helping you to create content that is more likely to be shared.

• Influencer based holiday marketing campaigns help you to increase exposure by reaching niche audiences that could be expected to convert at a high rate.
• These campaigns also increase ad opportunities and space for brands during the holidays.
• Following this marketing strategy, help you to reach new audiences and increase brand awareness.
• With influencers, you can increase website traffic, drive sales, and boost your holiday marketing RoI.

5. Offer holiday combos to increase average order value (AOV)

Product bundles are a great idea for holiday sales because they offer customers greater value at a discounted price.

Certainly, every customer looks for it.

You’ll sell more products and increase your average order value if you offer bundled products at a discount. This is especially important for businesses that sell online.

Follow the holiday marketing tips to create appealing bundles are as follows:

• Promote across social channels – You can bundle similar products and promote them across your website and social media channels.
• Pair combos wisely – Pair your best selling products with complementary products to create a better deal.
• Use hashtags & names – Make it more compelling by naming the combos or by giving a hashtag to attract people across social channels.

6. Extend your holiday campaign deals for late shoppers

Some shoppers may not be able to take advantage of holiday deals because they don’t have enough money. To reach these shoppers, many brands extend their holiday marketing campaign offers.

The biggest concern for shoppers who wait until the last minute is whether the gifts they order will arrive on time. You can win them over by offering expedited shipping that is guaranteed to deliver on time.

Mahabis’ email campaign is a great example of how to extend the holiday feeling to those who may have missed out on holiday sales. By using comforting words, Mahabis shows that they understand what it’s like to not get what you want for the holidays. This is a great example of how holiday marketing strategy can be used to bring people together.

Extending holiday campaign deals can help brands indirectly by:

• Build brand loyalty – Providing time to the customers to build trust towards your brand in case they are new to you.
• Strengthen customer relationships – Targeting the late shoppers who miss out on the holiday deals and build deeper relationships.
• Acquire new customers – Develop a connection with new shoppers by providing some exciting last minute offers.

7. Create user-generated content to turn buyers into loyal customers

Designing messaging content that resonates with your target customer base is critical for a successful campaign. Focusing your content on the customers who enjoy your products or services, and who want to share their positive experiences with others, is the best holiday marketing strategy.

The majority of consumers believe that content created by other consumers is more authentic than content created by brands. Therefore, if you want to increase your brand credibility and drive more sales, you should create content that is preferred by shoppers.

Key tips for using user-generated content for your holiday marketing campaign:

• Create holiday-specific hashtags and encourage customers to share their pictures, videos, or success stories.
• Build your content around your chosen channels, and adapt messaging to customer segments and the different stages of your campaign.
• Design content like promotional emails, ads, and social media posts, create a central landing page for all the information related to your seasonal offers.

8. Use offline channels for holiday marketing campaigns

Businesses that focus their advertising on offline channels during the holidays are more likely to capture the attention of customers. Some offline channels businesses should consider are TV and radio ads.

How does an offline marketing campaign benefit your business?

• Reach out to the potential customers – You can connect with potential customers via the offline channels who might have missed the holiday deals through the online channels.
• Communicate with a bigger audience –  Effective eye-catching campaigns and TV ads help to reach out to a larger group of people, thus making your holiday marketing campaign successful.
• Improve brand recognition – With the help of TV and radio ads, you can stick to your audience, which eventually enhances brand recognition.

Be merry and bright!

As more people turn to online shopping and competition stiffens, it becomes harder for companies to succeed during the holiday season. However, there are steps you can take in advance to make your brand stand out from the competition and attract loyal customers.

The main point to take away from this guide is that you need to plan ahead if you want your holiday marketing campaign to be successful. Allocate your time, energy and resources to make the most of the holiday shopping season.

It’s never too early to start thinking about how you can improve your content strategy. Keep your customers’ needs at the forefront of your mind, and work on creating content with long-term value for your brand.

May your holiday season be warm and cozy.

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