1. Make a list and check it twice
The best way to ensure that you stand out is to have a seasonal strategy from the off. Whilst it’s important to understand how your customers make decisions at all times, it’s especially important during the festive season, when sales are at an all-time high. Think about what kind of marketing messages or promotions you can create in advance so that you’re ready to start rolling them out as soon as possible.

2. Create anticipation
Focus on the excitement this season brings by building up anticipation in your festive marketing/ festive campaigns. During December, a daily advent calendar is a great way to reach out to customers without being pushy. You could offer discounts, free gifts or competitions for a fun way to build excitement and engagement with your brand. For shorter festive marketing campaigns, you could run a promotion for the 12 days of Christmas.

3. Appeal to festive feelings
People generally feel more uplifted and excited during the festive season. Your customers will expect you to adapt to the theme – capitalising on sentiment or humour and using striking festive visuals will ensure you get the most out of your promotions. The holidays are a time for sharing – not just gifts and cards, but content too. You can help develop a stronger emotional connection with your customers by personalising products and messages. Simply personalising an email campaign or letting your customers send a customised product or message to a loved one could help build brand loyalty.

4. Take advantage of urgency
Everyone gets caught up in the hysteria and countdown to Christmas, knowing that they only have a limited time to get things booked or purchased in time for the big day. People never want to feel as though they’re missing out on something special – for this reason, Black Friday (23rd November this year) is the perfect opportunity to create urgency for your promotions and offers. The days between Black Friday and Christmas day are known to generate 50 to 100 percent more revenue than other shopping days in the year.

5. Make your customers feel special
For people from all backgrounds, the festive period is a time of wonder and excitement. In marketing and business, this presents the perfect opportunity to surprise and delight your customers and make them feel special, so there’s no better time to engage your customers with free gifts and promotional discounts. Many of the best festive marketing campaigns offer customers gifts in the form of discounts or free products (eg. 2 for 1), which often builds brand loyalty leading to repeated custom.

6. Consider your channels
Review which channels will promote your Christmas campaign most effectively based on your target audience – from pop ups or banners on your website, printed collateral and events to promotional emails and social media. If each channel has a different owner, it is essential that you align your thinking from the beginning to avoid a disjointed and confusing campaign. With 75% of companies agreeing that promotional emails offer good or excellent ROI, a strategic email campaign could be a cost effective and particularly lucrative channel this season.

7. Use seasonal PPC words
If you use pay per click advertising, you’ll get left behind during the festive period if you don’t adjust your AdWords campaigns for seasonal keywords. Christmas related keywords peak in the last week of November. You may see a more successful PPC campaign if you change the keywords that you bid for in the lead up to Christmas. A successful PPC campaign relies heavily on solid research and testing and looking at the value your product or service brings to consumers.

8. Get everything aligned
If you’re going to invest in festive marketing campaigns, you can’t just make your social media page festive and neglect your other consumer touch points. Think about all the different ways that you can interact with people regularly and how you can establish harmony across your platforms, to build a seamless customer experience. The key is to keep your campaign visuals and messaging consistent, whilst subtly adapting to suit each platform  – keeping it relevant but avoiding being too repetitive across channels.