8 Best Holiday Marketing Ideas to Delight Customers and Sell More
The holiday marketing season is the busiest time for all businesses. Most companies generate 50% of their yearly revenue in the last quarter.
Americans spend between $943 and $960 billion in November and December each year!
Isn’t it interesting how this season helps businesses grow sales and get more customers?
How can you improve your marketing game and get ahead of the competition?
You can start by drafting a holiday season marketing plan considering your targeted audience and location! Combine offline advertising channels like direct mail and TV ads with online platforms like Instagram and Pinterest. This marketing mix helps you expand your reach and onboard more customers.
Read on to explore more holiday marketing strategies that are memorable, profitable, and creative!
Let us get started!
What Can You Expect From Your Marketing This Holiday Season?
Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, and other holidays pose an excellent opportunity for B2B and B2C companies to boost their revenue!
A study shows that sales increased by 50% during the holiday advertising season in 2021 and 78% in 2022. This trend will likely continue this year as more customers wait for the year-end to make large purchases. They expect companies to put up sale prices, helping them save significantly.
Another trend to consider when planning your holiday marketing plan is mobile shopping. Since 77% of all website traffic comes via phones, making your sites mobile-friendly is critical!
Things to Consider When Marketing During the Holidays
Before rolling out your offers, consider a few things to ensure their success. Here are some pointers to leverage to enhance your marketing campaigns:
Audit Last Year’s Campaign
Analyze last year’s holiday marketing strategies to note what worked best for your brand. Listing your successes and shortcomings can help you curate a better plan this year with higher responses and engagement levels!
The performance reports and analytics allow you to set an adequate budget and define a better framework for your campaign series! Also, look at your customer data to learn their shopping habits and preferences.
This valuable information helps you create and launch data-driven holiday marketing campaigns to increase publicity.
Draft a Holiday Advertising Schedule
It is best to start your marketing efforts earlier than other companies! This step gives you the upper hand because people can learn about your products and services before diving into the shopping season. It gives them enough time to make purchase decisions, helping your brand get more genuine leads.
Develop a unified experience for your customers across several channels on all holidays. For example, you can launch your initial holiday marketing offer a few weeks before Halloween. Entice your audience to purchase from you and commence their holiday shopping!
Then, add other significant events to your schedule to create relevant campaigns. It helps you work smart and surpass your competitors painlessly!
Know Your Buyer Personas
Understand your buyer personas before working on your holiday marketing strategies or offers.
A tailored advertising plan that suits your target audience’s requirements and choices helps make the best use of your budget and time!
Create Urgency
Adding a deadline with specific offers creates urgency among people, motivating them to buy from you faster. Most people receive special holiday season marketing coupons and discounts. But they might act too late, impacting your campaign performance.
You can take a different route and make your offers time-critical to generate high responses within a specific time frame.
However, ensure your holiday marketing offers to match the urgency level you create. Give buyers a reason to select your business over others. It helps you create a valuable network of repeat customers you can rely on for the upcoming months and years!
Consider Your Existing Customers
Though getting new leads using your holiday marketing strategies is tempting, focus on your existing buyers. Leverage their demographic data and purchase patterns to deliver better products and services to them and grow brand loyalty!
Be Prepared to Adapt and Respond Quickly
The best way to ensure your holiday marketing campaign’s success is to develop Whetherm. You require a system to manage all incoming leads and push them ahead of the sales funnel.
- Prepare a remedy team: Your company needs a fast-reacting team to handle things if they go south. Please be prepared for all unforeseen situations and have backup plans ready.
- Amend your operations team: Managing an enormous customer influx when marketing during the holidays can be overwhelming. Hire more people if needed to handle extra orders or in-store visitors.
- Upgrade customer service: The holiday marketing season demands companies update their shipping, pricing, customer services, and other elements. Focusing on these details helps you get more leads for your pipeline and retain shoppers.
Holiday Marketing Ideas and Channels to Improve Your Campaign Performance in 2023
Businesses have many marketing channels and opportunities while marketing during the holidays, like social media, in-store banners, and direct mail gifts. Here are the most commonly-used strategies that work well:
1. Devise a Unique Offer for Your Audience
Instead of introducing several discounts and cashback offers for a single campaign, keep your programs simple!
Please pay attention to only one offer, allowing your customers to remember your brand and react to your messages. For example, you can design a coupon for a 25% flat discount in-store and online. Promote it on channels where your buyers are most active, creating buzz for your company and skyrocketing sales!
Use PostGrid’s direct mail services to ship an eye-catching holiday marketing coupon to your existing and potential customers. It gives your audience a tangible item to hold onto and share with their family and friends.
2. Run a Memorable Contest
People love contests because these events help them engage with their favorite brands in a fun way!
Contests also give them an exciting chance to win something big, like a family trip to a luxury destination.
You can leverage holiday advertising contests to divert your audience’s attention from other brands and connect with your business. Come up with something fresh yet straightforward to hook them and take them ahead of their buying journeys.
For instance, ask them to collect holiday-themed cards by buying products from your latest range. The shoppers that get the most cards with your limited-time logo get a prize.
Of course, all companies and industries can run different contests based on their products or audiences. The idea is to accelerate your holiday season marketing goals and make the experience interactive and memorable for everyone!
Use PostGrid’s print and mail API to draft pretty postcards and letters explaining the contest terms to your customers. Our automated solutions also help you send your items in attention-grabbing, custom envelopes to help make your holiday marketing strategies successful.
3. Host an Online or In-Person Event
An in-store event lets you thank your customers face-to-face and form personal connections. You may send emails, postcards, and social media messages to your current customer base, inviting them to a store. Leverage this holiday marketing event to launch a new product, introduce a referral program, or promote an offer!
You can also host an online holiday advertising event, like webinars, live sessions, and more! It allows you to gather more people and boost brand publicity.
4. Send Free Gifts and Samples
The holiday marketing season is the perfect time to send free samples to prospects! You can also throw in some SWAG items to give your audience something valuable they can use for a long time and remember you. These items could include products like customized Canvas Prints that add a personal touch.
PostGrid works with several commercial printers nationwide, enabling you to plan your corporate gifting campaigns at discounted rates. Contact us to learn more!
5. Launch Flash Deals
Customers wait for flash deals for the best prices on their wishlist items. Thus, running these deals for marketing during the holidays allows you to convert more prospects and boost income!
Ensure your prospects and existing shoppers know about an upcoming flash deal, helping them stay prepared to benefit from it. You may run these offers for anywhere between a few minutes or hours.
6. Combine Your Products and Services
Increase your holiday marketing sales by offering combos to your buyers. It is the best way to get them to purchase more items and spend more than planned.
For example, you can combine two best sellers for 10% off. Or you may provide customers with add-on services, helping them choose your brand without hesitation.
7. Share User-Generated Content
Promoting user-generated content on your offline and online platforms is one of the best holiday marketing strategies for all businesses! Instead of compiling branding messages, they can use their buyer reviews, case studies, and real-life stories to build brand credibility.
Most customers depend on this data to make buying decisions. And your holiday marketing campaigns are an apt opportunity to share customer reviews with prospects and increase conversions.
8. Turn Your Holiday Promotions Into Videos
41% of customers agree that videos are their primary preference to learn about products and services during holiday shopping.
Hence, embracing video marketing when marketing during the holidays lets you appeal to your intended audiences, grab attention, and convince them to buy from you!
You may add your YouTube and social media video links to your holiday marketing mailers using PostGrid! Our services let you link your offline and online advertising effort with API integrations, custom QR codes, variable data printing, and more features!
Also Read: What is an FSBO Campaign
2 Holiday Advertising Campaign Examples
You can refer to several campaigns from famous brands globally for inspiration. Here are some of the best ones:
1. Coca-Cola: Give Something Only You Can
Coca-Cola always attracts its audience’s attention with motivational commercials. While marketing during the holidays, it combines heartfelt emotions with its products to deliver an impactful message.
In one of its recent holiday commercials, Coca-Cola displays how a father does everything possible to deliver his daughter’s letter to Santa Claus. He rides across the desert, hikes, swims, climbs, and performs various activities to get to Santa. And finally, he accomplishes the mission and makes his daughter happy.
These holiday marketing campaign ideas show how people take care of their families. The occurrence of the Coca-Cola bottle throughout the commercial signified how they need a break to think and fulfill their goals.
2. Microsoft: Find Your Joy
In one of Microsoft’s holiday advertising campaigns, the company highlights its products with a valuable message. It asks us to cherish our loved ones during happy and sad times.
Microsoft shows how a small pup tries to approach its owner to play with him. But the owner keeps ignoring the pup.
Thus, the pup finds the neighboring dog to play with and goes on an imaginary adventure.
This holiday marketing campaign helps us understand the depth of human emotions. Microsoft does an excellent job of showcasing its products aesthetically!
Also Read: Credit Union Marketing IdeasIncorporate PostGrid’s Direct Mail API to Send Your Holiday Marketing Mailers Online
PostGrid enables you to draft, print, and ship your holiday advertising mail pieces to your potential and existing customers. You can use our services using any deployment options:
- API integration: Integrate our direct mail API into your HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, Salesforce, Magento, or Zapier account to initiate campaigns directly from your system. It helps you fetch customer data, link your advertising efforts, and personalize your items.
- Automation software: You may install our direct mail automation software to launch your holiday season marketing campaigns from your computer device.
- Dashboard: Our print and mail dashboard helps you to set up your account and place orders within minutes. You can avail of all the features and benefits via the web.
Most clients send custom postcards and letters with appealing messages using PostGrid. Postcards allow them to evoke nostalgia and establish emotional bonds. Letters offer more scope for personalization, adding value to your holiday marketing strategies or campaigns.
One of our clients wanted to launch a bulk mailing campaign to re-engage customers and acquire new leads. Their holiday marketing plan was to get their message across to everyone with compelling CTAs to increase in-store traffic.
What they needed:
The client required an automated solution to design and prepare their letters within a few days. They initiated the campaign two weeks before Thanksgiving to entice buyers with holiday discounts.
Their primary challenge was dealing with the bulk volume of 5,000 letters! Also, they wanted to create eye-catching items with elegant-looking envelopes that help people recognize their company.
How PostGrid helped:
- Design: Our direct mail API enabled the company to design its holiday marketing mailers from scratch with our pre-built templates. They customized the templates according to their requirements and completed the task in minutes.
- List compilation: PostGrid assisted the client in building targeted mailing lists to make the most out of their holiday marketing strategies and improve ROI.
- Address verification: Our solutions standardize, autocomplete, and validate mailing lists to help the client prevent mail returns.
- Print and mail fulfillment: PostGrid helped the client automate everything from printing, labeling, sorting, and affixing stamps to distribution. It also added Intelligent Mail Barcodes (IMBs) to all items to enable them to get maximum discounts.
- Tracking and reporting: The company could track their letters and download the campaign analytics. It helped them stay updated and launch their online programs accordingly.
Also Read: Best Corporate Gifting CompaniesConclusion
With loads of holiday marketing campaigns around the corner, customers need help choosing a brand. Hence, simplify the process for your buyers with unique ideas and strategies.
We hope this blog helps you with creative plans to tap into new markets and reach your intended audiences.
You may employ PostGrid’s direct mail services to streamline your mailing activities and improve your holiday advertising campaigns. We help clients send on-demand and bulk mailing at low rates and no hidden fees.
Sign up to unlock all our features and learn more about automating your holiday marketing campaigns with PostGrid!
