Christmas Marketing: Clever Ideas and Strategies for the Holiday Season

The festive season is truly magical. Food, festivity, and family all come together to provide ample marketing opportunities for savvy marketers. During the holiday season, consumers go into a frenzy of spending, with many saving and putting money away throughout the year to spend in November and December.

For some businesses, Christmas sales make up a large part of their yearly profit. With this in mind, small businesses should build their Christmas marketing campaign to maximise holiday sales and make it a very merry Christmas for their business. The holiday season can be stressful for businesses and consumers alike, but with careful planning, your Christmas campaign can bring some real holiday cheer with gift cards and boost retail sales.

In this blog, we'll be exploring Christmas marketing in detail. We'll be giving you useful tips for building your Christmas marketing campaign in-person and on social media, and we'll also share our compilation of the best Christmas marketing ideas.

Building a Christmas marketing campaign

Building a coherent Christmas marketing strategy require careful planning. As with all holiday marketing campaigns, Christmas marketing campaigns need to walk a fine line between promoting seasonal sales and being respectful of the holiday. Your Christmas marketing ideas both on social media and in-person should always be fun and festive (a free gift-wrapping service won't hurt either).

With usual hospitality or retail marketing, you would simply identify your offers and advertise them. This marketing method can be seen in Black Friday marketing campaigns, where the entire focus is on the deals. 

You should ensure your Christmas marketing strategy has a little holiday magic in it. Invoking the festive spirit will show your customers that you care about the Christmas season and aren't just using it to boost your sales.

Christmas marketing ideas

It can be difficult to come up with a great Christmas marketing idea. To help you add Christmas flair to your marketing, we've compiled a list of Christmas marketing ideas you can use in your own business. The majority of these Christmas marketing ideas can work for both hospitality and retail marketing campaigns.

Send out Christmas updates

Digital marketing for retail and hospitality businesses via a website landing page and social media has become increasingly important over the last few years. Many customers will use social media and online stores to do their Christmas shopping. 

If you can reach these customers on their social media feeds and encourage them to visit your brick-and-mortar shop and your online store, you'll open up a new revenue stream.

As you prepare your business for the Christmas period, start sending out Christmas updates to your mailing list and social media. These updates don't need to be long but they should be planned. 

If you're setting up an in-store Christmas tree or putting up Christmas decorations, snap a few pictures and send them out. Authenticity is important on social media, so make sure your posts aren't too staged. However, it won't hurt to have a potential Christmas gift in the shot.

You can also update your customers if you're changing your opening times over the holiday season or offering special Christmas deals. Social media and retail email marketing and hospitality businesses lend themselves to this advent calendar update format.

Host a Christmas competition

Holiday shopping can be stressful, so adding a bit of fun into the process with a seasonally-themed competition is one of the best Christmas marketing ideas for engaging customers. You can run competitions online via your social media or take this as an opportunity for in store retail marketing and hold the competition in person at your business.

These competitions don't have to be complicated. If you're hosting the competition on your social media, you can make it as simple as getting your customers to send a picture of their Christmas decorations. This particular example could be a great synergy for home decor stores. In-person competitions are a little more work, but you can keep them simple. A carol-singing competition or even a Christmas pudding-eating competition could work for a hospitality business.

A simple Christmas giveaway could be a good substitute if you don't have the time to run a full competition. Christmas giveaways can be as simple as asking your customers to leave a comment on one of your social media posts. After you randomly pick a name, send them some gift cards as part of your email marketing.

If you plan to host a competition or giveaway, check if there are any local laws you need to be conscious of. If there's an element of randomness in your competition, some places will define it as gambling.

Publish a Christmas catalogue

Many of us have treasured memories of circling what we wanted in a catalogue and handing it to our parents so that they could send it on to Santa. While physical catalogues are usually only published by bigger chain stores nowadays, nothing is stopping small businesses from releasing an online catalogue full of gift ideas.

If you already operate an online store, setting up a digital catalogue with some Christmas flair in your ecommerce store couldn't be easier. All you have to do is create a more curated version of your existing online store landing page focused on products that would make good Christmas gifts. After that, you just need to promote your online catalogue in your email marketing and on your social media.

Create a Christmas gift guide

Creating a gift guide is one of the best Christmas marketing ideas as you are literally telling your customers what to buy. For some potential customers, gift ideas can be a godsend, as not everyone is a good shopper. With a gift guide, you take the stress out of shopping for your customers and give them the confidence to shop online and in person.

As with a catalogue, you'll have to spend time curating a proper Christmas gift guide. It may also be worth researching other online guides to see what your competitors offer. It's then just a matter of promoting your guide via email marketing and social media. Your customer will certainly appreciate these Christmas marketing ideas and the extra work when they find the perfect gift.

Send a Christmas card to your customers

Christmas cards are one the mainstays of the festive season. As part of your Christmas marketing campaign, you should consider sending out digital or physical cards to your mailing list. 

Sending out cards builds a more personal relationship between your customers and your store. Not only will this spread holiday cheer, but it will also keep your business at the forefront of Christmas shoppers' minds.

While there are services that can create and send out a digital card for you, make sure you include a personal touch. Writing a short message about how grateful you've been for your customers' support over the last year goes a long way for your Christmas marketing efforts. You could even go a step further and include discount codes for your online stores and offer free shipping. A single discount code sent out like this can give your online sales a huge boost.

Launch a Christmas menu

If you're a hospitality business, you should consider launching a seasonal menu as part of your Christmas marketing campaign. For many families, a big family meal is an integral part of their Christmas season. If you start taking bookings earlier, you can build an entire Christmas campaign around your special holiday-themed meal.

Start by consulting your chefs and get them to create a mouth-watering Christmas menu. After that, it's just a case of promoting the menu locally and online via email marketing and social media platforms. You could even buy Google ads that take holiday consumers straight to a reservation landing page when they click it.

Support local initiatives

Christmas is a busy time for a variety of organizations and small businesses as they get into the holiday spirit. Local groups and charities often ramp up their operations and run events as part of their Christmas marketing, as the general public is often very generous. Local government also gets in on the fun with events like carol singing and turning on the Christmas lights.

Getting involved with local events can be a huge boon to your Christmas marketing. For retail businesses, it can be as simple as sponsoring the event. If your customers bring in flyers for the event, you could offer them physical gift cards and discounts. Hospitality businesses could provide catering and Christmas-themed products.

Taking part in local events can be a big boost to your Christmas sales in the holiday season. Customers in your area will be more inclined to do their Christmas shopping at your small business if they know you care about your community and building relationships. Appearing at the event will also give you a chance to get some great photo opportunities to post on your social media.

Get your store in the Christmas spirit

As part of your holiday marketing, you should decorate your business. Decorations are an important part of Christmas time and small businesses should always make an effort to get in the holiday spirit.

Your decorations can be a part of your Christmas campaigns. Once you're finished setting them up and have the store looking Christmassy, you can include pictures in your email marketing and entice customers to see the decorations in person.

Boost Christmas sales with perfect POS

The holiday season is full of Christmas marketing ideas that you can use to advertise your business both in person and on social media. In addition to the above Christmas marketing ideas, you should invest in your business with a powerful point of sales (POS) system.

The Epos Now Complete solution is perfect for building your Christmas marketing campaigns and is full of functions to help a small business increase Christmas sales. This holiday season give your business the tools you need to bring your Christmas marketing ideas to life.

At Epos Now, we offer retail POS systems and hospitality POS systems. These systems include payment processing services, a suite of award-winning apps, and innovative software. These functions can help you issue Christmas gift cards, offer free shipping, and help small businesses get ready for the final Christmas Eve rush

Give yourself a Christmas gift by getting in touch with our expert team.