The beginning of the holiday season is just around the corner, so it’s time to get your Christmas marketing ready! People are prepared (and excited) to buy, so make sure that you grab this chance to boost your sales numbers and brand awareness. But to succeed in this endeavor, what do you need to know about Christmas marketing? This is what we’ll cover in this article. What we’ll present to you here is a complete guide to generating a huge payday — we’ll look at the current trends, effective strategies, best practices and so much more!
Key Christmas Marketing Trends
From what we have seen, current trends in marketing will extend to holiday-specific strategies as well. So, if you have been running campaigns all year round, then your Christmas marketing will probably be on point, too! So, as you create a strategy to reach a wider audience this holiday season, remember that there are things that are already working for you. With this knowledge, you can better align your Christmas marketing strategy with existing norms, opportunities and customer behavior. Keep reading to learn more about them.
Growth of E-Commerce and Mobile Shopping
Gone are the days when shopping had to be done in-store or over the telephone. For Christmas marketing (and all marketing in general), mobile devices really have come into their own. However, this change didn’t happen overnight. With internet connections getting faster and mobile devices becoming cheaper, Christmas marketing on mobile became a practical and convenient option. Today, e-commerce giants have apps that users can download onto their devices, which further proves the growing prevalence of mobile shopping.
Personalization & Data-Driven Ads
Christmas marketing has a higher chance of generating healthy revenue, thanks to the higher level of personalization that can be achieved in delivering the campaign. Most advertising platforms that you can use for Christmas marketing allow you to laser target your ads so that your message reaches those who are most likely to take action. For e-commerce sites, even the browsing activity becomes an opportunity to achieve better results for Christmas marketing efforts. The ads shown can be modified based on browsing behavior and other relevant information that you know about the customer.
Video Ads and Social Commerce
Today, it’s not enough to tell people how awesome your offer is. Because the season is about giving and happiness, Christmas marketing tends to evoke emotion. Your advertising should transport your target audience to experience real holiday sentiments and scenarios. From there, you might weave your brand’s offers into a Christmas marketing video. This is not to say that a more direct approach is not required. After all, social commerce is becoming a big thing, too. Through shoppable posts, users can now start the buying process from a social media platform.
Effective Christmas Marketing Strategies
Now that you know what the trends are, how do you transform them into actual strategies? In the following subsections, we’ll walk you through the various ways that you can get great returns on your budget for Christmas marketing. We’ll cover techniques that are applicable across many industries. However, don’t limit yourself to just these strategies. With so many advertisers on the prowl for a high-intent audience, something fresh like social media Christmas interactive posts may just be what’s needed to break through the noise.
Starting Early and Building Momentum
No, you’re not supposed to start your marketing efforts a week before the big day. We recommend having loads of October and November marketing ideas to build momentum. A few things that you can do here include:
- Building excitement and anticipation for the holidays;
- Telling users what you have in store for them;
- Offering discounts or sales.
For this series of IKEA ads, their Christmas marketing started in October! Here, they announced their early Christmas sale. It’s simple, it offers value and it gets you excited for what else IKEA may have.
Multichannel Marketing Approach
Using multiple channels for your Christmas marketing ensures that you reach as much of your target market as possible. Today, practically every campaign uses at least two channels to promote its brand, products and/or services. For your Christmas marketing efforts, be intentional about the channels you use. They need to be where your target market is hanging out. However, multichannel marketing can also be a great way to connect two parts of your Christmas marketing efforts. An example here is Cadbury’s Secret Santa campaign. Here, they created a 30-second video showing how people could send Cadbury’s chocolate to someone else. It also used the postal service to send more than 120,000 bars of chocolate all before Christmas.
Promotions, Discounts and Limited-Time Offers
Everyone loves discounts! So, as part of your Christmas marketing, why not offer one to your target market? From months before up to the final days leading up to the holidays, more than likely, your target market is in the process of buying gifts. A good Christmas marketing ad can help you generate revenue from them. If they’re comparing your offer with that of a competitor, then providing a discount may just win you the sale. It’s also effective if there’s a price objection. Amazon implemented this Christmas marketing strategy by simply slashing prices on various products.
Content Marketing and Storytelling
It doesn’t always have to be about closing a sale. This holiday season can also be a great opportunity for you to improve brand awareness through content campaigns. When you provide content that is helpful for your target market, they’ll be more likely to trust you. This means that your Christmas marketing advertisements may see better engagement rates in the future. A great example of content marketing for the holidays is Rent-a-Christmas. In this article, they listed ways that you could make the workplace more inclusive. And in the end, they encouraged you to get in touch to get their services.
Optimizing Christmas Marketing Campaigns for Online Shoppers
There really is no way around it: optimization is imperative to your Christmas marketing success. Optimizing ensures users can have a great experience interacting with your campaign materials. But how you do it will look different depending on what platform you’re using. For example, if you’re going to run ads on Facebook for your holiday campaign, your Christmas marketing efforts don’t need to focus too much on deciding on the image size. However, the world of advertising and promotions is big! If online shoppers are the focus of your Christmas sale ideas, then the information in the following subsections will be very useful. Keep reading to gather insights into how you can make the holiday shopping experience better for your target market.
E-commerce Optimization
With Christmas marketing online, you can lose potential customers as quickly as you get them. So, make sure that you’re giving them a five-star experience when they use your e-commerce platform. As you prepare your Christmas marketing campaign, make sure to check these things off your list.
- Fast-loading times: Make sure that the site is light enough to load quickly, even using mobile data.
- Mobile-friendly design: This is necessary because your target users are using both desktop and mobile devices for their holiday shopping experience.
- Intuitive checkout process: Your checkout process should increase your Christmas marketing conversions, not impede it. And if you offer free shipping or fast deliveries, make sure to highlight that as well.
Mobile-Friendly Design
Younger generations (those that grew up with the internet) are starting to have increased purchasing power. So, your Christmas marketing ideas should take this into account. Overall, more consumers are shopping using their phones. Here are a few ideas on how you can optimize these ads, landing pages and checkout processes for your Christmas marketing campaign:
- Make the forms as short as possible;
- Regularly test everything on different devices;
- Employ designs for your Christmas marketing that are responsive to various screen sizes;
- Use large CTA buttons.
Apart from how the pages will look, consider how accessible the elements of your Christmas marketing materials will be if the viewer is just using one hand.
Personalization & Retargeting
Creating a truly unique customer experience can go a long way. By showing Christmas marketing offers that the user is more likely to be interested in, your conversion rates can improve. But what if they’re not fully decided on the purchase? That’s where retargeting comes in. There can still be money from potential customers who abandon their carts or browse and don’t convert. Relevant Christmas marketing recommendations can help re-engage consumers based on browsing behavior or past purchases. If they’re not completely sold on a certain type of shoe, then perhaps a different design will make more of an impact.
Best Practices for Your Christmas Marketing Campaign
Since the holiday season begins long before Christmas, you’ll have many opportunities to do things right. Like at any time of the year, your Christmas marketing ideas may have to go through some trial and error based on the data coming in. However, from what we have seen, certain practices tend to have a higher chance of success. Are you in the process of coming up with Christmas campaign title ideas or putting the finishing touches on your campaign? Either way, make sure that your efforts have incorporated or are aligned with these tips.
Focus on Mobile-First Design
Mobile-first means that you’re designing FOR mobile devices, not just adapting the design to a smaller screen. So, when you create your Christmas marketing campaign, your first priority should be how it will look for mobile users. As it is, internet users tend to reach for their phones when browsing or completing tasks that require an internet connection. With Christmas marketing, this instinct is further amplified. Therefore, a mobile-first design should be your priority when you’re working out how your ads and other materials will look. For other parts of your campaign, like the Christmas social media posts, going with the conventions for that specific platform is a good start.
Personalization & Dynamic Ads
The higher the level of personalization, the better. This ensures that your Christmas marketing ideas will resonate with the user. Apart from market segmentation, you can introduce personalization to product recommendations as well. Base the offers that you’re going to introduce to the user. This is exactly what Lego did for its Holiday page in 2022. Even though a specific Lego set has been introduced, the other promotional Christmas gifts are also based on your activities within the site. Lego hasn’t released an official number on how successful this campaign was; however, what we know for sure is that this Christmas marketing was so effective that this part of the site is still up two years later.
A/B Testing and Real-Time Optimization
No matter the time of the year, split testing and real-time optimization are still incredibly valuable. Using them in your Christmas social promotions and other campaigns means that the decisions you’re making are always data-backed. So, how do you do this? Make sure to regularly test your Christmas marketing data. This way, you can benefit from the latest insights. Then, adjust your strategies accordingly. For example, it’s established that 57% of people want to finish their holiday shopping before December. You can use real-time optimization and AI to adjust creative and messaging based on timing and user intent.
Encourage Last-Minute Shoppers
Your target audience may be extremely busy or have been a little bit forgetful. And with all the buzz around the holiday season, this is understandable. For your Christmas marketing efforts, you can capitalize on the end-of-season holiday rush and target last-minute shoppers. Show how even though they’re doing everything at the last minute, they can still have things ready for the holidays. Your December marketing ideas will consist of a lot of materials for this market segment. To get their attention, you can offer fast shipping or in-store pickup options. Since you want your Christmas marketing campaign to encourage them to take action now, you can use countdown timers and urgent messaging in native ads to motivate quick action.
Create Christmas Slogans for Advertising
Remember how we said that marketing to your target audience can last for at least a month? This means you likely need a lot of creatives and text to use for the duration of your campaign. An easy way to get your brand (and, therefore, your products) remembered is by using a slogan. It’s punchy and relatable, so the brand will be at the top of your mind even with all the holiday promotions. Ideally, it should be something that would be related to all your Christmas market ideas. This way, the slogan works independently in improving the impact of your advertisement as well as the overall effectiveness of the campaign.
Using Native Advertising as Part of Your Christmas Promotion Ideas
If this is not your first holiday rodeo, you’ve probably already tried the more usual options for your campaign. Display ads and Christmas social media posts have become staples every year. However, given the tighter competition for grabbing the biggest market share during this season of giving, you should consider more Christmas marketing options. Native advertising is a type of promotion where the goal is to blend in to stand out. Here, you are creating advertising materials that match the surrounding Christmas posts. If you’ve never tried it before, we’re sure you have qualms about experimenting during one of the most profitable seasons of the year. But keep reading, and let us change your mind!
Why Native Advertising is Effective for Christmas Marketing
Even if the methods that you’ve been using so far are working well, it’s still worth trying native advertising because:
- Advertisers are investing more in Christmas marketing: Therefore, it may be harder for your campaign content to stand out unless it’s already blended into the platform content.
- People are ready to buy during the Christmas season: There’s a huge incentive to do well, so your Christmas sales ideas should be spread across diverse marketing efforts.
- Banner blindness is real: Native advertising is seen to be the cure for banner blindness. And when Christmas marketing efforts are in full swing, people may be more likely to ignore ads because there will be even more of them.
Best Practices for Christmas Native Ads
Are you convinced about the boost that native advertising can bring to your Christmas marketing idea? Here are a few tips that can help make it a huge success.
- Introduce interactive elements: Of course, the prerequisite is that they’re relevant to the existing platform content. However, Christmas interactive posts can still do well in getting the user engaged in your ad.
- Incorporate Christmas-relevant keywords: These are what users are searching for right now, too. “Gift ideas for Xmas” and other relevant keywords will surely see a rise!
- Don’t go with cliche messaging: Everyone’s already doing that, so be more creative with your ad. Your Christmas social promotions are more likely to get noticed this way.
Christmas Native Ads Examples
Native advertising can look very different because it’s created to adapt to the platform you’re using. Check out these Christmas marketing examples.
Here, the second product is a sponsored recommendation. However, it still seamlessly fits into the other Christmas gift ideas. Pretty neat, right?
Apart from being a heartwarming story, this Christmas marketing advert neatly incorporates various Disney characters.
Here, you’re presented with a normal-looking article about the Christmas experience. But as you read on, you’ll find product insertions.
Boost Your Brand and Sales by Implementing Your Christmas Marketing Ideas Perfectly
Christmas comes once a year, and you have one shot at raking in a huge payday from this holiday season. So, make sure that your Christmas advertising ideas are on point! More importantly, your execution must be flawless! A lot of companies and advertisers are going to invest heavily in targeting their audience, so your Christmas marketing should really stand out. Use all the tools in your arsenal to reach and resonate with your target market. And now that you’ve seen the value native advertising can bring to your Christmas promotion efforts, make sure to include it in your holiday marketing playbook as well! Then, create an account on MGID to get access to our advanced tools, a personal manager and a department of creative specialists. To your Christmas advertising success!
