The holiday season is the most wonderful time of the year. But for businesses, it’s also the busiest. If retail sales were evenly divided throughout the year, the Christmas quarter, from October to December, would account for 25% of overall sales.
Hobby, toy, and game stores, for instance, generated 34.5% of their annual sales between October and December in 2022. This is not surprising since these supplies make for popular Christmas gifts.
Americans are expected to spend $960 billion during the holiday season in 2024. To get your slice of the consumer spending pie, plan your holiday marketing campaign early. Don’t wait until July; the holiday season will be here before you even know it.
Here, we’ll share some marketing strategies that will help you sleigh the competition in 2024.
#1 Offer Exclusive Holiday Discounts and Limited Editions
Data shows that 80% of shoppers plan to spend more than $100 on the Holiday season in 2024. For more than half of the U.S. consumers—about 65%—price is the major factor that influences their purchasing decisions.
Attract people to your business by offering holiday deals and promotions. You can discount your whole store, but you’ll lose way more than you would gain if you do this. Instead, what you can do is offer your best-selling products at discounts.
Want to reward your loyal customers? Roll out early access to sales. Take Cocokind, a conscious skincare brand. Last year, it offered Club Kind members early access to 30% discounts, free gifts, and exclusive bundles on its Black Friday Cyber Monday sale.
You can take things a notch above by creating limited editions of products that your customers love. The most obvious example of this is Starbucks’ pumpkin spice latte. Its release coincides with the holiday season, and people look forward to it year-round.
Make sure you post the exclusive holiday discounts and limited editions you intend to run a few weeks before the holiday season on your website. Running ads on Google and Facebook will also help spread the word.
#2 Tap into the Power of Cookieless Targeting
Cookies might be Santa’s favorite, but they certainly aren’t consumers’ favorite. Internet users don’t like being tracked, and this has resulted in Google scraping out third-party cookies.
Intent IQ explains that Google’s current cookie replacement strategy renders targeting based on sites visited by people virtually impossible. The categories are too broad, and the data is only taken from sites that have opted in.
You’re not out of luck, for cookieless targeting can help you track your users’ online behavior. A cookieless advertising solution involves much more than using first-party data. It also entails contextual advertising and using AI and machine learning.
Place your ads on the websites or social media channels your target audience will likely visit.
Look for patterns in user behavior within your website or app and create audience segments based on these behaviors. For instance, if users frequently visit your holiday gift guide page, you can target them with related offers or content.
Geo-targeting is another way to reach audiences in specific regions or areas where your holiday promotions are most relevant. Make use of that.
Interest-based targeting can also help. Conducting social media surveys and analyzing your customers’ past purchase behavior can further help you tailor your holiday marketing messages to resonate with your audience’s interests.
Another solution that has been put forth to replace cookies is unified cookies or unified ID 2.0 (UID2). UID2 is helping many advertisers and publishers collect and use data in unique ways, allowing them to run personalized ads without using cookies.
Adopting it will allow you to reach your audiences across platforms and devices. You can collect your website visitors’ data and offer them product recommendations, content suggestions, and promotional offers to match individual preferences and past interactions. This will make your holiday marketing efforts more relevant and effective.
#3 Appeal to Emotions
The holidays are the time of the year when people spend most of their time with their families. You can market your offerings by appealing to their emotions. One study shows that appealing to emotions can influence irrational or impulsive buying behaviors.
Consider creating advertising campaigns through which you can build emotional connections with your target audience. This approach often involves using vivid language, storytelling, imagery, or anecdotes to evoke empathetic or sympathetic responses.
Telling a compelling story is one way you can connect with your audience on a deeper level. Macy’s 2023 holiday ad “Hey Santa” shared the story of a young child who was generous enough to gift Santa a pair of slippers.
Sephora’s 2023 ad called “The Gift That Says Everything” isn’t an ad for makeup; instead, it features different people giving products that the brand sells as presents. The reaction of the giftees emphasizes the creation of a deep emotional relationship between individuals.
To wrap things up, there is more to holiday marketing than putting up a few posts on Instagram showcasing your Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions. Use these strategies to stand out amidst the holiday noise and capture the attention of consumers.
Besides, you can offer free shipping and an early bird discount. You can even run an email marketing campaign to give your loyal customers 10% to 20% off throughout the cyber weekend. All these tactics will help you sleigh the competition and make the most of the festive season in 2024.
