Take advantage of the biggest shopping season of the year with 33 Christmas marketing ideas to help you make the most of this Christmas season.
1. Create Christmas Packaging
It’s officially the Christmas season when you drink your coffee out of a Christmas cup from Starbucks. Christmas packaging creates new demand for an existing product by reminding the customer that it is only available for a limited time.
Recommended: Holiday Marketing Idea Generator
2. Launch A Themed Website Or Landing Page
Spread holiday cheer by welcoming people to your page with a Christmas theme. Themed websites make the gift shopping experience easier on the customer by feeding them exactly what they want, like this one from J Crew.
3. Have Fun With Christmas Decorations
Decorating your store or restaurant for Christmas creates a cozy servicescape designed to incline customers to buy. Unglued adds their usual over-the-top style to their Christmas window display, making customers more drawn to their store.
4. Send Printed Or Digital Holiday Cards
Holiday cards are a simple way to increase customer loyalty. Thank them for being loyal customers, provide them with a special deal, or share an update on the company.
You could create a simple thank you card on Canva to virtually appreciate your customers. Canva has lots of templates to help you accomplish this without a designer.
5. Produce A Seasonal Menu
Would you drink a Pumpkin Spice Latte in the summer? Ice-cold lemonade in the winter? My guess is probably not. Some flavors and textures are designed for specific seasons. Caribou Coffee created a seasonal menu to provide customers with fitting flavors for ultimate customer satisfaction.
6. Implement Loyalty Member Rewards
Gift your loyalty members at Christmas to develop the relationship between customer and brand. A small gift, or a special discount, along with a holiday card can make a huge difference when it comes to choosing you or a different company.
Sephora offers a $25 gift card to its reward members with a purchase of over $50 to make a bigger purchase order and reward loyal customers.
7. Add A Gift Price Filter
Shoppers like to stick to a budget. Include a gift price filter on your site so customers can find products within their budget. This tool helps to directly segment your market, so customers are successful and satisfied.
Urban Outfitters added a gift price filter to their website to promote easier Christmas shopping and eliminate the headache of sorting through a bunch of items you can’t afford.
8. Bundle Similar Items
Bundling items is perfect for customers who don’t know what to give people. This is another marketing tool that makes Christmas shopping easier for customers. Lush creates cute gift bundles that are already assembled and wrapped.
9. Create A Gift Guide
Christmas shopping can be stressful. Create a gift guide to make shopping that much easier by providing inspiration and ideas while highlighting deals and best-selling products. Amazon used this tool to promote specific products and show customers the perfect gift for their intended audience.
10. Promote Gift Cards
Gift cards are easy and valuable gifts for customers to purchase. Gift cards are great for profit as they are cost-effective to make and sometimes go unused, resulting in direct profit. The Jasper Hotel utilizes gift cards, which are great around the holiday season.
11. Organize Your Store For Impulse Buys
Ever been in a long line at Marshall’s and find yourself surrounded by products you don’t need but could convince yourself to buy? These are impulse buys. And they are placed there conveniently, right as you check out, encouraging split-second purchases.
12. Have Stocking Stuffers For Purchase
Stocking stuffers are small items that boost sales. They are a reasonable purchase for customers on a budget and provide a small, inexpensive option as gifts for friends. Ulta promotes mini items during the Christmas season for less than the normal prices as stocking stuffers.
13. Partner With A Local Charity
Emotions run high around Christmas, and many people find themselves in a giving spirit. Partner with a charity through donation matching programs to show community support. Nonprofits Source claims that 90% indicated that partnering with reputable nonprofit organizations enhances their brand, and 89% believe partnering leverages their ability to improve the community.
Wells Fargo supports their community during the Christmas season by opening a popup food bank where people can donate items and those in need can pick them up.
14. Integrate An Interact Gift Quiz
Integrate a quiz for your customers to help learn more about your customer leads through the responses. You can make the results available by requiring an email as a way to generate an email list.
Use Interact to create a gift quiz that fits your business and products that will help you build your email list and help customers find exactly what they need off your page.
15. Launch A Christmas Email Campaign
Align your email campaign with your store’s Christmas theme to send a strong, consistent message to your customers. ASOS used this email campaign to produce a high ROI. One tip- you have a higher click rate if you have fun with the subject line.
16. Implement A Christmas Marketing Strategy
A key to successful marketing is to have a strategy in place for how you want to tackle the Christmas season. A strategy helps you organize all outgoing marketing and sends a clear message across all platforms. Put a strategy in place to set objectives and measure ROI, so your marketing is targeted and successful.
Macy’s launched their Christmas marketing campaign called “Believe.” Their public relations marketing strategy included press release distribution to promote the campaign.
17. Share Christmas Advertisements
18. Share Holiday-Themed Video Content
Holiday-themed videos create a new way for you to interact with your customers and give them more content to keep your business relevant. There are many incoming messages from businesses during the Christmas season. A different type of content video will make your business memorable among all the messages.
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19. Utilize Emotional Messages
Christmas causes a lot of people to reflect. An emotional advertisement might be what they need to push them towards buying your product, service, or donation.
20. Partner With Influencers
Influencers are the key to success in your Christmas marketing strategy. They promote products on social media to their large follower base. Influencers can demonstrate a desirable quality about your business or a specific product and encourage their followers to make a purchase. They represent the ideal and can be great ambassadors for your brand.
@dixiedamelio living in my cute custom red tracksuit and sipping my favorite red velvet latte from @originaldonutshop❤️ #DSHPPartner ♬ Christmas City 30 – Auracle
Looking for everyday marketing ideas? Use this CoSchedule microsite for marketing ideas to grow your business.
21. Host A Social Media Contest
A social media contest prompts positive interactions between businesses and customers. This strategy especially generates engagement with your social media accounts.
22. Try A Countdown Clock On Online Promotions
A countdown clock tracking your online sales is a feature used to create urgency in buyers. It provides an obvious indicator of the limited offer and pushes customers towards the sale. Zaful used this countdown clock with the promo code as a banner on their website to make customers aware of the sale.
23. Host A Christmas Shopping Event
Host a Christmas shopping event and offer special sales to get people in your store and create hype. It’s a Wonderful Night at West Acres Mall has limited offers, entertainment, and food & drink for customers.
Event marketing is hard to navigate, read this guide to learn strategies for marketing events.
24. Promote On Black Friday
Black Friday officially kicks off the Christmas shopping season. Black Friday shoppers spend $430 on average. Having special promotions and savings for Black Friday will show major results in sales.
Target promoted their Black Friday sales on their website by changing their usually all-red theme to black and offering major sales on hot Christmas items.
25. Promote On Cyber Monday
Like Black Friday, Cyber Monday is an online shopping day full of deals. Your strategy to tackle Black Friday and Cyber Monday could work together to promote your sales and offerings. Participation in Cyber Monday is important with the growing presence of online shopping.
Bed Bath & Beyond participated in Cyber Monday with deals on a variety of products, but they highlighted their Christmas decor to get customers thinking of Christmas shopping.
26. Host A “12 Days Of Christmas” Promotion
On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me… 20% off of my favorite skincare products. This is an example of how fun it is to play with the classic Christmas tune. Longer-themed promotions create a build-up to Christmas with different deals every day to keep customers returning and purchasing more and more.
Goodwill hosted 12 days of deals promotion to promote specific items and clear out old items to start the new year fresh.
27. Free Gift With Purchase
This is a free item that is gifted with a purchase of a certain amount or higher. This can include a free blanket, bag, or free shipping. If customers are a few dollars from getting the gift, this reward will push them to spend the extra money.
Lancome used this strategy to close bigger sales and reward their customers for shopping with them and spending the extra dollars.
28. Allow Free Shipping And Returns
Give the gift of free shipping. Christmas shopping is already expensive, so that few extra dollars make a difference to customers. Add free returns to ensure that they can take a risk on buying a gift for someone without worrying they will be stuck with it.
29. Create Limited Time Christmas Product Lines
Dr. Michael Lynn found that limited items appear more valuable and exclusive and allow the consumer to feel more powerful. Implementing a limited-time product line increases demand as the products become more desirable. Bath and Body Works accomplishes this through their holiday scents which are only available during the holiday season.
30. Host A Giveaway
A giveaway puts the product in the customer’s hands and provides an opportunity to boost social media followers. Many giveaways have requirements to be eligible, such as liking the post, sharing it on your story, and tagging all your friends. Slip pillowcases used a giveaway on Instagram to gain tons of visibility to your social media and brand.
31. Get Yourself On Search Engine Result Pages
Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) are a great way to bring more clicks to your website and end in more sales. Use SEO tactics to help your website rank on the first page when someone searches for gifts related to what you offer.
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32. Participate In Small Business Saturday
Small Business Saturday is an event between Black Friday and Cyber Monday where small businesses partner with deals to uplift the local business community. Participation in days like this will give your business visibility and show community involvement.
33. Host A Christmas Event
A Christmas event reminds keeps your business at the top of their list for Christmas shopping. Fargo’s Christkindlmarkt is a free event with entertainment, shopping, and food & beverage tents. Events like these get people outside of their houses during the long bleak winter and into the Christmas spirit.
