12 Tips for a Successful Holiday Marketing Campaign in 2024

The holiday season can often be seen as a time to slow down and relax. However, for many companies, this is the busiest time of the year. Take advantage of this popular holiday shopping season and ride the way of increased branding. Plan out your holiday marketing campaigns early, so you and your team have enough time to implement your strategy.

We have compiled 12 tips to help you start creating the best holiday marketing campaigns for your brand.

12 holiday marketing campaign ideas

Here are some ways you can spark joy in your target audience during this festive holiday season.

1 - Holiday themed giveaways

Start your holiday marketing campaign off strong with a fun and interactive holiday-themed giveaway. This can increase engagement on your social media posts and with your brand overall.

For a reward, consider offering discounts on future purchases. Similarly, you can provide gift cards for them to use on a future purchase as well. These rewards and gifts are fun to receive, but provide an opportunity for a returning customer. 

2 - Give back with holiday charities and volunteering

This type of holiday marketing campaign is great to do for a branding campaign vs. a sales campaign. Demonstrate how your company gives back during the holiday season. This works well when showing the personal side of your business. Make it a team event and have everyone volunteer their time with you.

This will earn you bonus points with your customers and clients. More importantly though, it is a privilege to give back to others. The joy and sense of pride can do a lot for team morale and employee engagement.

3 - Include free gift with purchase

For commerce companies, use this time to give out free gifts with purchase. This will get your buyers interested in shopping at your store. A small token of gratitude is also great when people are deciding where to purchase their holiday gifts.

Create brand advocates through this method. Not to mention, you can spark customer loyalty for future purchases in the process.

4 - Create a holiday gift guide

Holiday gift guides are a great way for customers to see exactly what you have to offer without looking far. Whether or not they actually purchase, your customers will be able to browse and be inspired by what you offer. Save everyone time and effort by providing a list of your favorite, popular, or best selling products all in one place.

Gift guides can create a richer experience for users. This delight can be carried over into future purchases and increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

5 - Free shipping or other shipping features

Encourage customers to choose you over the competition. This means offering incentives, like free shipping. Not only will people be happy they are saving money, but in many cases this can even save them some time. Customers are looking to simplify their shopping this season, so why not be part of the reason for that?

6 - Focus on your brand, not products

Unless you are a seasonal themed business, now is the time to make sure you focus on your brand, not any specific products or services you offer. Take this opportunity to showcase your personality as a brand. Let people in behind the scenes to get a sense of your work ethic and values outside buying or selling products.

This is also a great opportunity to highlight some of the past work by your employees and staff. Champion their successes so their hard work is rewarded.

7 - Prep for new year marketing campaigns

Keep the momentum flowing into the new year. You might have some Black Friday campaigns running, so keep the momentum going. Keeping a steady flow of interest in your products will help start you off right to kickstart your new year marketing campaigns.

8 - Partner with other brands

Run a holiday themed collaboration with another brand. By doing this, you can focus on peaking the interest of another customer loyalty base. Plus, the seasonality of it gives the impression of a limited time offer. The fear of missing out (FOMO) takes over some people, giving both brands a nice boost during the season.

9 - Send handwritten cards

Get personal with your audience, this is the right season to do so. By taking the time to sit down and think about each person individually, you are showing how much you care. Focus on writing a message that highlights the recipients qualities and what makes them a great person to work or do business with.

In the digital age, this type of great holiday marketing campaign can help you stand out from the crowd.

10 - Use corporate gifting to your advantage

Show your appreciation by sending out some promotional gifts to your customers, clients, and employees this year. Giving a corporate gift is always nice, but sending it out to various audiences can have a different meaning and effect.

1. Employees - Show your staff how much you appreciate them this year by sending out employee gifts. This is a great time to reflect on all the hard work the company has done to make it a successful year. These personal touches strengthen employees’ connections and confidence in an employer.
2. Clients - A small client gift showing them you are thinking about them during this time is great. Even if the gift is small, this gesture can have a positive impact on if they will be a returning customer or not.
3. Partners - Consider sending out high-end corporate gifts to your partners to thank them for your support over the year. Acknowledge these relationships is important, especially if you plan to move forward with the partnership.

Here are some gift ideas you can consider handing out to your valued stakeholders. Choose from some of our most popular and best-selling gifts.

11 - Celebrate local businesses

Whether you run an online only business or a brick and mortar store, a great way to get involved is to get local. Consider partnering up with some local businesses in the area. This gets the residents excited about something. Plus, you can build trust within your community while giving back too.

12 - Start a holiday hashtag campaign

A great way to get personal is to see what your customers, clients, and partners are up to during the holiday season. Create a unique and fun holiday hashtag. Encourage your audience to share their content with this tag. User generated content like this gives your brand a personality and it helps connect with a wider audience.

How to convert through various marketing channels

Now that you have these 12 holiday marketing campaign ideas, you need to consider how to implement them. Different marketing channels will result in various outcomes. Make sure you optimize your campaigns to match the specific channel you will use to boost brand awareness.

Which of these channels will be most effective for your holiday marketing campaign?

SEM & SEO

These are classic examples of online marketing channels that work well in almost every scenario. Search engine marketing (SEM) consists of two branches - one dealing with paid advertising, pay-per-click (PPC), and the other focusing on the organic side of searches, search engine optimization (SEO).

When doing your research about which marketing campaign you should run, you might notice the increased search volumes for various keywords and topics. People are searching more during this holiday period, specifically in the end of Q3 and beginning of Q4. Take advantage of these searches with PPC and SEO to increase your brand awareness.

Tips for SEM campaigns

• Timing - Start preparing content now, that way, when customers are searching, your content will have had enough time to rank, making it more visible to customers.
• Budget planning - Be sure to consider your costs in advance, to avoid any hiccups while the actual campaign is running.

Social media marketing

Take advantage of social media to show another side of your business. Since many customers will already be using social media on their own time, this is a great way to stay relevant. Make sure the social media post is seasonally relevant, to give even more boost to your holiday marketing campaign.

Tips for social media campaigns

• Posts and stories - Posting pictures and videos during this time is still important. The only thing that might change is the actual content. Make sure to make it holiday themed or adjacent to help spread holiday cheer.
• Paid ads - Focus on traditional holiday themes for your paid ads, since this is what most consumers will be focusing on at this time. Topics that do well are generally gift guides and discounts or savings customers can expect to save.
• Influencers - Take advantage of influences during this holiday season. Influences are great for when you want to reach a new audience, generate overall buzz, and build credibility within your niche.

Email marketing

Holiday email marketing can have a high conversion potential. Since the holidays are a time for sharing, people closely watch their emails. This is when a perfectly timed email campaign can have the biggest impact.

On the other hand, inboxes might be extra full around this time. This is what you should consider to break through the noise of everyone else.

Tips for email marketing campaigns

• Create catchy subject lines - Recipients need to open your email in order for it to be effective. Therefore, you should focus on eye-catching subject lines to get people’s attention right away. Come up with something creative and bold to stand out from the generic and bland subject lines.
• Timing - Focus on when it is the best time to send out these emails to get the most attention from your audience. This small adjustment can help you reach everyone at their peak interest level and purchase intent.
• Segmentation and targeting - Create specific emails for your various audiences. What works for one group, might not work for another. The more tailored an email is to someone, the more likely they will engage with it.

Text message marketing

Much like with the other channels, if not more so, texting will be a popular method during this season. While texting campaigns generally have a high conversion rate all year round, you can use this to your advantage during the holiday season. Your audience will be texting with family and friends, giving you a great option for highly engaged users.

Conclusion

Whichever one of these holiday marketing campaigns you choose to do, you cannot go wrong. These gestures, no matter the size, can have such a large impact on your audience. Since it is the end of the year, it allows you to get a head start on your new year marketing campaign ideas without any issues.

➥ Read more on the topic of top 10 do’s and don’ts of corporate gifting for other examples of how you can make a lasting impact this year. Read our interview with customer relationship management experts to get insider tips on building customer loyalty.