Our Favorite Holiday Marketing Campaigns Are Creative and Authentic
While the holiday marketing campaigns are coming to a close, we love using this time to reflect on what seemed to resonate with our customers and what was a flop. There are certain concepts that are recyclable with a little refresh and ones we think should not be revived. We hope this helps you start to brainstorm for your 2025 marketing campaigns, holidays or otherwise.
Holiday Campaign Concepts That Work
Advent Calendars: It’s so easy to infuse creativity into this idea. Encouraging your customers to build routine with your brand each day can be a powerful way to deepen your relationship into the new year. This can be dice, work out moves, wine pairings, craft supplies and so much more. Here are a few we love:
Consider Holidays Beyond Christmas: While it’s true that 85 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas, there are still lots of opportunities to connect with the folks who don’t or to elevate other holidays that most everyone celebrates like New Years. Can you have a Noon Years Eve for kids in your board game bar? Or highlight your sparkling wine customers can take to parties? Or create a vision board for the next year in your craft store?
Focus On Joy Instead of Consumerism: It’s easy to focus on the sales and gift giving in the fourth quarter of the year, but that’s likely not resonating in a meaningful and positive way with your customers. We recommend tweaking your marketing campaigns to center quality time with friends and family, or even taking time for yourself in a busy social season. Demonstrate how they can use your products and services to achieve peace and fun instead of stressing them out with “order in the next four days to guarantee shipping before Christmas.”
Marketing Campaign Concepts That Need Tweaked
Celebrity Cameos: It’s always a risk doing months of planning and potentially millions of dollars spent collaborating with a celebrity only to have a scandal break the week before your campaign launch. We much prefer to connect with local or more niche celebrities who might not be household names but certainly pack a punch in your community. You could also consider smaller influencers as well.
Generic Gift Guides: We all love consuming gift guide content, but sometimes the ideas are stale or generic and not actually that helpful. Consider niching way down when developing gift guides and explaining why you chose to include each idea. For example, think beyond board games for people who like board games because your gift givers may not know what their gift receivers already have or enjoy. But things related to board games make great gifts, like dice towers, expansions or upgrades to games they already have and love, a piece of merch related to a game they talk about all the time, or even a gift card to a board game bar so they can play new games together. No more generic beard oil or whiskey glasses for men, and no more candles and dish towels for women. We can do better.
Customer Engagement Campaigns That Should Be Left In The Past
Holiday Sales Parties: We’re all for events to bring in customers, but a one night sale that doesn’t offer much incentive is a lot of work for limited return. You would have to offer extreme discounts, door prizes, and a lot to get folks to come just to buy more stuff. Plus, you may be moving customers who would have shopped Friday night or Saturday morning customers to Saturday evening when you have your party, so the net new customers are minimal. There are lots of other ways to get folks into your shop beyond a simple holiday party inviting them to spend money.
We live for the creative and authentic marketing campaigns year-round, particularly when it’s for fun businesses like yours. Let us know if we can help you plan for 2025 and beyond!