Christmas Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses

It’s no secret that businesses can be most profitable in the weeks leading up to Christmas. That’s why it’s crucial to get everything in place to make the most of it!

Is your business prepared for the 2022 holiday season? Regardless of the answer, we’ve got plenty of Christmas marketing ideas for you below.

Table of contents:

• Defining and planning your Christmas marketing goals
• Christmas marketing ideas for small businesses
• Christmas marketing tips for December

You can maximise your Christmas efforts in various ways, but before you start making plans for what you’ll do, it is crucial that you have specific objectives in mind. Let’s have a quick recap!

Defining and planning your Christmas marketing goals

Goals help us move forward; they are what drive continual development. Your business won’t see any kind of increase over the holiday season if your goals aren’t clear. Developing specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely (SMART) goals will help you keep focused so that your marketing is targeted and successful. Here are a few examples:

Your goal: Increase your brand awareness.

Your SMART goal: Rank on page one for 10 new keywords this month.

Your goal: Rank higher in search results.

Your SMART goal: Earn three featured snippets this month.

Your goal: Generate qualified leads.

Your SMART goal: Gain 50 new email subscribers this month.

Having outlined your SMART goals now is the time to figure out how to achieve them and what methods will help you reach your goals. But if you’re unsure of which Christmas marketing strategies are the most successful, keep reading because we’ve got some great suggestions below!

Christmas marketing ideas for small businesses

1. Hold a Christmas giveaway on your website

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Giveaways are a great way to generate excitement at any time of the year, but because they relate to the holiday of giving, they’re likely to be even more well-received around Christmas! Additionally, giveaways and competitions have the potential to:

• Increase the volume of traffic to your website.
• Gain more followers on social media.
• Grow your mailing list.
• Market seasonal products.
• And a lot more.

So, holding a giveaway with a Christmas theme on your website is one of the finest ways to start the holiday season.

2. Embed Christmas social media feeds on your website

A great Christmas social media marketing concept is to incorporate social feeds into your website. By doing this, you can generate some festive excitement. Adding social feeds to your website home page reduces the need to publish new, original content frequently. These feeds will update themselves in real-time providing your posting and re-posting content on your social channels.

3. Create a digital catalogue with Christmas marketing ideas

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Traditional catalogues are gradually disappearing as more businesses open online stores and as more customers browse on mobile devices. So why not convert your holiday catalogue to digital format? People can peruse gift suggestions online even while they are out and about. To keep customers interested and make their purchases, you can also employ clever design elements, such as:

• Call to action (CTA) buttons
• Reviews from customers
• Trust badges

By making a product catalogue that is interactive and includes links to the relevant product pages for each product image, you can keep an eye on how visitors move across your website.

4. Use countdown timers to create urgency

It is a must to begin incorporating scarcity into your Christmas marketing ideas. The concept of scarcity marketing argues that items are more valuable when they are scarce. And as a result, customers are more inclined to take advantage of a deal with a limited-time offer or limited stock. A countdown timer that indicates how long is remaining in the offer period, for instance, makes presenting a discount code for purchasing an item much more effective. As a result, another excellent Christmas marketing concept is to use countdown timers to generate a sense of urgency.

5. Make use of in-browser push notifications

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Christmas is the ideal time to start implementing push notifications on your website if you don’t already. Push notifications that appear in visitors’ browsers even after they leave your site are called in-browser push notifications. Additionally, push notifications open a direct line of contact for you to communicate with subscribers about anything you please. You can send alerts regarding, for instance:

• New gifts added to your digital catalogue
• Christmas sales

Don’t overuse them or you run the risk of sending too much messaging to your subscribers.

6. Host a webinar with a holiday theme

These days, webinars are a common method of reaching your target audience. However, few businesses use this interesting marketing strategy during the Christmas season. Running a Christmas webinar is a great way to add a festive twist to a regular webinar invitation. By conducting a contest or providing them with a discount, you can encourage your audience to attend a webinar rather than simply informing them.

7. Christmas-themed social media content

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You’ll need a Christmas marketing plan that stands out and captures attention straight away because social media erupts during the holiday season. Here are a few approaches you may take to combat that:

• Photo contest: On social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, photo contests gain a lot of traction. Additionally, they’re a great approach to raising brand awareness within your target market.
• Video content: With the help of holiday-themed videos you can engage with your audience in new ways and provide them with additional information to keep your business relevant. During the Christmas season, a lot of business messages come in. Among all these communications, a unique sort of content video will help people remember your business.

8. Start a campaign to count down to Christmas

Over the years, you’ve certainly seen a lot of marketers capitalise on the “12 Days of Christmas” craze. And the reason for that is that it is effective. This Christmas marketing campaign’s concept is to promote sales-priced goods one day at a time over the course of 12 days. Consequently, a different product gets discounted every day.

Christmas countdowns not only surprise your audience but also make your marketing more exclusive. Each item has a 24-hour discount, so buyers must move quickly to take advantage of the offer.

Among the top suggestions for the 12 Days of Christmas promotions are:

• Advent calendars on the web
• Flash promotions
• Gift packages

9. Run remarketing campaigns

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Even if you’ve never heard of remarketing, you’ve probably seen it before. An online advertisement for a product you’ve looked up is a strong example of this. Having previous product research follow you online could feel ominous. However, using remarketing to get visitors back to your website after they leave is a successful strategy.

Brands are essentially telling you to think again by displaying adverts that are relevant to your most recent search. To entice customers, they might even offer an incentive like a discount. Why not use that strategy for your holiday campaign? You can use Google Ads and comparable websites to perform remarketing advertisements.

10. Launch an email marketing campaign

Utilising your current subscribers is another Christmas marketing idea for small businesses. Your email list is a great source of untapped potential that is in a prime position to boost sales throughout the Christmas season. Users are more likely to open your emails and pay attention to your offers because they’ve actively signed up for the news and updates from your business!

The moment has come to start sending emails over the holiday season if you haven’t already. Check out these ideas on holiday email marketing if you need help getting started:

• Send gifts: Send gifts to your most devoted customers as a way to show them you appreciate them. This may be early access to a sale, an invitation to a special event, or an additional discount.
• Send greetings: Thank your clients for their business and share some of the year’s highlights in a Christmas email greeting.
• Get into the Christmas spirit: Share team members’ seasonal reflections, advice, recipes, or images with your customers.
• Spread the word: By providing a free gift or discount for each referral, you may entice your customers to tell their friends and family about the discounts you provide them.
• Make it simple: Send an email outlining your website’s most popular gifts, along with a link to your website, where they can make their purchase.

11. Maximise your SEO efforts

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In the coming weeks, a lot of people will search for items linked to holiday shopping; you want your website to show up higher in the search results. By improving the SEO of your website, you can increase your search ranking.

• Use keywords: If you have an e-commerce site include keywords like “seasonal,” “holiday discounts,” “Black Friday,” etc, in your website content, along with particular holiday keywords connected to your business.
• Optimise for local search: Make the most of local searches by optimising your Google Business Profile listing, adding your business to local directories, keeping an eye on online reputation and reviews, and increasing the visibility of your business to local customers.
• Post accurate business information: Check any listings for your business to ensure that the address, contact information, and operating hours, including any special holiday hours, are accurate.
• Advertise online: To take advantage of searches connected to Christmas, think about creating a holiday pay-per-click (PPC) digital advertising campaign.

12. Keep in mind post-Christmas marketing

The time between Christmas and when people return to work in the new year is hazy. This is an excellent opportunity to keep up the sales pace. During this time, people are typically content and spending time with their families while also using their phones to kill time. Offer a flash sale and drastically reduce the price of any products you need to move quickly!

For more effective new year marketing campaign ideas, don’t forget to read our recent blog.

Before you start implementing these Christmas marketing ideas, let us give you a few tips on December marketing!

Christmas marketing tips for December

The holiday season is almost over in December. Take advantage of the opportunity to wind down as the holiday shopping season comes to an end, even if you’ll want to keep promoting to your audience and encouraging them to purchase through the new year. December presents a wonderful opportunity to reflect on your accomplishments in 2022, consider the upcoming year, and begin planning how you’re going to have an even more successful year in 2023.

Here are our top tips to get you thinking ahead:

1. Evaluate the outcome of your Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales

Look at what worked and, more importantly, what didn’t if you want to keep improving your Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales each year. Examine your sales statistics and note which sales and promotions performed best and which had the worst results. Utilise these revelations to guide your holiday season approach for the following year.

2. Think about refreshing

The new year brings with it fresh chances, so now is a fantastic opportunity to revamp your branding (whether that means revamping your logo or changing your website).

3. Consider what you can do better the following year

No matter how prosperous you are, there is always room for development. Did you run out of essential items, such as branded bags and packing, in the middle of the holiday rush? The moment has come to assess your areas of weakness, draw lessons from them, and create a strategy to improve in 2023.

4. Get ready to get started straight away in January

By taking the required actions to position yourself for success in the new year, you can start 2023 off on the right foot. Getting everything in line now will help guarantee that you are prepared to roll when the holiday season is gone and 2023 becomes a reality, whether it’s stocking up on inventory or preparing a calendar with crucial dates (such as seasonal promotions).

That’s all there is to it! We hope this blog post has helped you identify the best Christmas marketing ideas for your small business. We wish you great success in anything you choose to do for your business this holiday season!

To learn more about how LOCALiQ can help you with your marketing, contact one of our experts. Meanwhile, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter to stay on top of our upcoming content.