The Complete Guide to a Christmas Marketing Campaign

Depending on your business, Christmas can either be the most wonderful or the most worrisome time of the year. Sales targets to hit, increased orders, bigger footfalls and Christmas parties to cater to, it can seem like there’s a lot to stress about while everyone else is getting into the Crimbo spirit.

But with all of that activity, there’s no shortage of opportunities to turn your marketing into a real cracker too. Below, we’ll look at some top-notch ways of increasing your success during the festive season, including some ace Christmas marketing ideas to get you started, best practices to maximise their effectiveness, and some examples from Christmas marketing’s past as well!

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Christmas Peak: What industries are affected?

The festive season can affect different industries for all sorts of different reasons. Here’s why…

• Retail

Unsurprisingly, physical stores – big and small – fill up more than usual during this time of year, with people flocking to them for Christmas present shopping.

• Ecommerce

The same is true of online stores. Black Friday, something that’s become more and more of an event with every year, often results in larger amounts to traffic as shoppers look to bag a bargain. Physical stores can expect a larger footfall for the same reasons too.

• Hospitality

The run up to Christmas is always a busy time for bars and restaurants, as revellers celebrate the season and businesses book up venues for their Christmas parties.

• Service businesses

People hosting big get togethers – whether it’s with family or friends – will want their homes looking their best for the occasion. It’s common for plumbers and handymen to see an uptick in their business in the run up to the big day.

How to carry out Christmas campaign ideation

Like any other campaign, you’ll have to get the idea machine up and running. Here’s what you can do to give your campaign a more festive angle that’ll get your audience into the spirit of the season…

Look over your customer personas again

Before you do anything else, it’s worth familiarising yourself with the customer personas you’ll have created for your previous campaigns. Which of their problems or needs come to the fore more during the festive season? What can you do to solve them? Identifying these first gives you plenty of insights that’ll help to form the basis of your campaign ideas.

Identify your most popular channels

As well as understanding their pain points, looking over your customer personas again will familiarise yourself with which channels they prefer using the most. Once you know where they like to learn about your products and services from, you can then start to formulate ideas on how to target them through these channels.

If they flock to Instagram, you might go for a festive competition that involves your audience creating user-generated content – complete with a catchy hashtag – to be in with a chance to win free products. If your email marketing is a hit with them, then target them with unique offerings available only to subscribers – and be sure to add personalised Christmas greetings to them for some added festive flair.

Highlight your generosity

Christmas is a time for giving, so why not take advantage of your generous side and pair your products with discounts, coupons and sales to base your campaign around? Theming it around the holidays always proves popular too.

For instance, you might decide to go with an advent calendar angle, where you offer 24 days of discounts or 24 different ways to market your products online. This kind of campaign is great because it practically ensures return visits since your customers know there’ll be another offer waiting for them the day after.

Appeal to their emotions

Don’t be afraid to pull on your audience’s heart strings – if it makes sense to. As has been said many, many times before, Christmas is the season of goodwill. If you can tell a story with your products – by showing how it can spread those good feelings, and help you or your loved ones out during the holiday season – then it’s well worth trying.

Look to paid advertising for inspiration

‘Tis the season for paid advertising. Why? Because when customers are all spend, spend, spend, you’ll want to make sure your business is who they see first. Think about a product, service or some messaging that you want to put spend behind, develop a campaign and put it live on the right channels. If you don’t usually have a budget for your paid advertising, Christmas might be the time to try it out.

Tips for Christmas marketing campaigns

Use these best practices to get the most out of your campaign ideas…

• December’s going to be a busy month. Start on your campaigns as soon as possible to take the pressure off you and your team when things kick up a gear in the final month of the year.
  
  
• Whether you’re a physical store or an eCommerce site, make sure that the key seasonal information is clear to see: let them know your opening hours over the season, or detail the cut-off point for Christmas shipping. The more they know, the more likely they’ll become conversions.
  
  
• Show your customers you’re in the Christmas spirit by decorating your site, social assets and other relevant imagery with a festive theme. You don’t want to look like a bit of a Scrooge when all the other brands are having fun with their appearance, right?
  
  
• Make sure you measure. A Christmas campaign is a pretty brief one, but you should still be in the habit of tracking and measuring how successful it’s been – this way you’ll what you want to replicate – and avoid – when it’s time to plan for next year’s campaigns.

Inspirational Christmas campaign examples

There’s no shortage of great Christmas campaigns. We’ve delved into what’s a pretty sizable stocking to bring you our favourite festive ad spots below…

• Sainsbury’s ‘Christmas 1914’ (2014)
• Google’s Home Alone Again (2018)
• Marks and Spencer’s This Is Not Just Food… This Is M&S Christmas Food (2019)
• John Lewis’ The Beginner (2022)
• Disney’s The Gift (2022)

Download your Marketing Campaign Planner

So, there you have it, your complete guide to Christmas marketing. Still stuck for campaign ideas throughout the rest of the calendar? Let us create powerful marketing campaigns that sync up to specific times of the year for maximum impact – head here for more info or give us a call on 0345 459 0558.