Boost Your Business with These 20 Christmas Online Marketing Ideas
Author
Ines Maione
Ines Maione brings a wealth of experience from over 25 years as a Marketing Manager Communications in various industries. The best thing about the job is that it is both business management and creative. And it never gets boring, because with the rapid evolution of the media used and the development of marketing tools, you always have to stay up to date.
The pre-Christmas period is an ideal time for small and medium-sized businesses in particular to boost online businesses. This is equally true for B2C and for B2B. We have compiled a list of 20 ideas that can be realized quickly and at very low cost.
The big brands do it with their lavishly programmed Christmas calendars, copy them. No special software or similar is required. All you have to do is become active yourself. How?
Get twenty-four gifts that match your business.
Wrap the gifts so that they look really special.
Photograph the gifts individually.
Starting on December 1, post a photo of a gift on your Facebook or Instagram page every morning. (The best gift should obviously be posted on December 24.)
Ask your followers to guess what’s in the package. They must leave their tip in the comments.
In the evening, post a short video showing this gift being unwrapped.
The person who correctly guessed the contents wins the gift. If there were no or several correct answers, you can raffle the gift among all those who took part.
Important: Be sure to provide information about your campaign on all channels (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and newsletter) before starting your Christmas calendar campaign. In addition, you can also put a flyer with the information on display in your shop.
2. Daily or Weekly Newsletter with Advent Offers
An alternative to the Advent calendar mentioned above, is a newsletter that you send out every day from the 1st to the 24th. It should contain a special offer exclusively for this day. Service providers can also use it to present their offers in an interesting way and thus secure one or the other order for the new year.
If you do not want to send a mail daily, then you can send an offer punctually to each Advent weekend.
3. Address Last-minute Shoppers
If you run a retail shop, then you should target last-minute shoppers with an email campaign. Invite them to visit your shop for last-minute shopping. But keep in mind that in Germany, stores must close by 2 pm on Christmas Eve.
If you only ship your goods, then carefully calculate the last-minute shopper campaign with your delivery service. You must be able to guarantee that your shipment will arrive on time. If your products are available for download, you can even lure last-minute shoppers during the holidays.
4. Last-minute Vouchers for Download
Since we’re already addressed the last-minute buyers, why not help them out by offering vouchers for download. This gives buyers the possibility to print out and give an attractive gift voucher even if the ordered goods do not arrive before Christmas Eve. The same applies to services, of course.
Tip:
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Optimize the key texts of your website before the holiday season begins, preferably as early as November, to increase the chance of being found. Use the words Christmas, holidays, Advent, New Year’s Eve, Santa Claus etc., for example. Google’s Keyword Planner will help you find the right Christmas keywords.
Be careful not to ruin the character of your texts with the new words. This should work quite well, because even companies that we hardly associate with Christmas can refer to it.
Examples:
Roofers – Thanks to our carefully laid shingles, Santa Claus will have a great grip on your roof.
Car Rental – Santa comes to us when his reindeer get tired.
Shoe shop – Even Saint Nicholas is enthusiastic about our shoes.
IT – Especially in the Advent season you don’t want to have to deal with defective PCs.
Tax consultant – Don’t wait for the next New Year’s Eve to file your tax return.
Good advice: Secure your original texts beforehand, then you can quickly put them back online after the holidays.
6. Adapt the Design of the Website
The design of your website can also have a seasonal touch. If you use a CMS, you can do this with just a few clicks. Vary the accent color or the background. Even a small chain of lights on the logo or similar, conveys a holiday mood.
As always, less is more. Don’t change your homepage to such an extreme that your customers no longer recognize it.
7. Videos, Photos or Slideshows
A small Christmas greeting from your team as a video to your followers is guaranteed to go down well. Alternatively it can be a virtual greeting card by mail or a slideshow on Facebook. In any case, it should reveal the actual people behind the company. This helps your customers build a real bond with your company, because people usually feel connected with other people and not with AGs or GmbHs.
8. Holiday-themed Contest on Facebook or Instagram
Organize a small holiday-themed contest that matches your brand or company. For example, you can ask your followers to catch the holiday spirit by giving one of your products a festive look, and filming or photographing the result. It can then be posted under a predefined hash tag on Instagram or on your Facebook page. The best idea will of course win a prize.
9. Holiday Posts on Your blog
If you run a blog, then the context should definitely be related to Christmas and the turn of the year. There are thousands of points of reference here. You can also show your “human side” at this time of the year. Let your followers take a look behind the scenes or tell them about a holiday experience that particularly moves you, your family, your team or your company. Or let your employees tell stories about their most beautiful Christmas or turn of the year celebrations.
10. Send Holiday Greetings in Good Time
If you work in the B2B sector, don’t forget that most offices are closed over the holidays. Be sure to send your Christmas or New Year greetings in good time. This year they should be there by December 20 at the latest: December 23rd is a Monday, and many people will take the day off.
11. Review of the Year’s Events
Post a year-end review on your blog or Facebook page at the end of the year. Tell your followers about the highs and lows of the year. You can also give an outlook of the new year ahead.
Depending on the sector, videos, slideshows, texts or even a podcast are suitable for the review.
12. Help Others
You care about the environment, are committed to fighting poverty or improving animal welfare? Many things that are not the way they ought to be in our world. Why not donate to projects dear to your heart and ask your customers or followers to do the same for you.
If you work as a regional company, you should definitely have a specific local project you want to support.
13. Buy and Help
As an alternative to the donation campaign described above, you can link your donation to your customers’ purchases. This ad campaign was launched by breweries years ago: They donated 10 cents to the rainforest for every case of beer crate bought. Something similar can also be organized in your online shop. For example, donate 5 percent of the purchase value to a project.
Don’t forget to inform people about it via newsletter and social media before the campaign starts.
14. Create a Gift Guide
Another effective way to take advantage of the Christmas holidays to market your business in an efficient manner is to create and post a gift guide on all the media outlets you have an online presence.
This is primarily because of the fact that a gift guide is one of the best ways to showcase your products in an organic manner. Furthermore, this is an effective motivator for people to invest in your products because these ideas will have an influence on the readers as well.
There may be people who may come across the perfect gift for their loved ones while reading a gift guide, making it more likely for them to invest in your products.
However, there are a couple of factors that you must take into consideration when making the guide to further optimize the guide and illicit a positive response in the form of profits.
Although there is no set list of criteria needed to be considered when creating the gift guide, there are some elements you can implement in your guide to make it more personalized and effective.
One such factor you can add is that you can add a budgeting element to the title, highlighting only those products which fall under a specific amount. This is because if they had knowledge of the range that these items fall under, it would make it more likely for them to invest in the listed products.
In addition to that, you could further specify the guide and make different sections relating to different aspects such as gender or age as well. Christmas is all about family, and the likelihood for people to search for gifts for their relatives or parents is very high.
Due to this, not only would the addition result in an increased chance of someone investing in your products, but it would also result in higher web traffic due to the fact that it would be more likely for the guide to pop on the search engine.
15. Make the Content Engaging
User engagement is very important when it comes to content marketing because the more inducing and interactive your marketing content is, the more likelihood for the creation of a segmented community would be.
Depending on the impact the discussions cause in the online landscape, this may result in different communities and forums being made, which is the best source for free publicity.
A great way to make your content much more engaging is to introduce topics and open-ended questions which promote discussion between people. However, there must be several factors that must be taken into consideration when doing so.
When making content more engaging, topic relevancy also matters. No matter how much potential of being engaging your topic may be, it will not generate any buzz if it is not relevant to the product and the current trends.
16. Introduce Interactive Mini Games
When marketing your products, interaction is the name of the game. This means that you have to make sure that the content you produce is interactive so that it catches the attention of the readers, causing them to turn their attention toward your products.
Although there are a number of different ways, you can make your website and catalog interactive, one of the best ways to do so is to introduce Christmas-themed mini-games to honor the holiday and introduce rewards for clearing them in the form of discount vouchers or free shipping.
17. Christmas Bundles
Everyone likes discounts and free items, and what better way to celebrate the spirit of Christmas than to introduce specific bundles relevant to the Christmas holidays.
During the Christmas holidays, everyone is out shopping, looking for the best item to present to their loved ones. Many companies understand the increased demand during this time, so they implement special discounts and the availability of vouchers.
However, introducing special bundles with a number of different products is sure to give your organization an edge over the competition, making it more likely for interested shoppers to invest in your product.
Furthermore, you can also introduce special services if someone manages to buy these bundles that you offer. An example of this is that there are companies that reward customers who buy their Christmas bundles with a free gift-wrapping service.
18. Reintroduce Previous Productive Campaigns
There is a very famous saying which goes something like “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.” What this means is that if something has not proven to be ineffective, then it is likely that it will still prove to be useful even if it is used again, and this works for marketing as well.
There are plenty of limited-time marketing strategies which may have been a big hit when introduced, but they would have been discontinued because of the time factor.
In this case, another great marketing strategy one can adopt for their company is that they can reintroduce that same campaign concept but under a different theme, a Christmas theme in this situation.
However, it is not advised to copy the exact marketing strategy to the tee when rehashing that strategy because it can prove to be repetitive for them, and some of the regular veteran customers of your company may recognize it.
This will negatively impact the company and generate a view in the court of public opinion that this was probably a lazy move made by the company, which will result in your customer base not favoring your products.
19. Christmas Themed Product Names
There is nothing more that customers love than unique product names when for presents to gift to their loved ones.
Therefore, it is oftentimes considered to be a beneficial move when leveraging the holidays by either introducing newer products which catchy names relevant to the holidays or changing the name of existing products so that they are relevant to the entire Christmas theme.
Not only will adopting this marketing strategy catch the viewer’s attention and make it more for them to view and possibly invest in your product, but this will have the added bonus of making your products more apparent when initiating a search.
Considering adopting concepts such as Search Engine Optimization when planning then product names so that your online selling platform can appear at the top of the list.
Funny Video: Jeff Dunham’s Very Special Christmas Special
20. Share Holiday Themed Video Content
It is a well-known fact that due to the famous social media has received throughout the years, it has become one of the most productive channels for advertising and promoting content throughout the years.
Therefore, having a strong online presence is key to effectively marketing your product in order to attract a wider range of audience without having to invest too much of your capital.
When doing this, you can post Christmas-themed videos and short snippets of the products to come in order to generate positive buzz for your company and maintain an active presence on the internet.
In addition to that, generating holiday-themed content also helps to keep your business relevant and allows you to interact with your customer base well.
Furthermore, producing unique content will make it more likely for them to register your company in their memory, resulting in an increased possibility of them investing in your products.
Summary: The pre-holiday season offers many sales opportunities for online marketing
Advent calendars, newsletters, fundraisers or contests – there are many ways to attract new customers, reactivate old ones and strengthen customer ties during the Advent season.
FAQs on Christmas Online Marketing Ideas
How to plan a Christmas marketing campaign best?
The best way to plan a Christmas marketing campaign is to start early. This will give you time to come up with creative ideas, test them out, and make sure they're ready to go before the holiday rush. You'll also want to make sure you're targeting the right audience and using the most effective channels for your campaign.
How do I promote my Christmas campaign?
There are many ways to promote a Christmas campaign. You can use social media, email marketing, blog posts, and even paid advertising to reach your target audience. The most important thing is to be creative and come up with a campaign that will resonate with your audience.
When is the best time to launch Christmas campaigns?
The best time to launch Christmas campaigns is in November, when people are beginning their holiday shopping. This will give your campaign the most time to be seen and generate interest.
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