How to Get Your Retail Marketing Strategy Holiday-Ready

No matter the holiday, retail marketing campaigns require serious time and effort.

Ultimate understatement, right?

Timing. Messaging. Retail trends. Not to mention all of the other holidays on your calendar.

There's a lot to factor in. Given how make-or-break the holiday season is for brands, it's understandable why stress levels among marketers seem to peak during the holidays.

Relax! We've got you covered with these tips to get your retail marketing strategy ready for the holidays without going into meltdown mode!

When In Doubt, Start Planning Ahead 

For major gift-giving holidays, consumers start shopping earlier than you might expect.

In fact, a new survey shows that 48% of all shoppers start purchasing their Christmas gifts before November rolls around.

That means your marketing strategy needs to be ready to go well before the actual holidays.

What does being "ready" actually mean, though? In our experience, this includes:

• Setting the official release date or drop date of your holiday product(s) or gift sets
• Taking a hard look at your customer analytics, including website traffic and on-site behavior 
• Auditing your best-selling products, average order value and customer lifecycle
• Confirming that your website is optimized for cross-channel traffic (social, mobile, etc)
• Building out a potential promotional calendar for social media and paid ads
• Touching base with your influencer partners for holiday promotions

Some of these tasks should be done and set in stone months in advance. Others (such as customer behavior and trending products) will be more time-sensitive as the holidays approach.

Either way, you need to be ready. The best time to start planning was yesterday and the second-best time is now. Starting too late is a tough lesson today but one you won't forget next year!

Revisit Your Social Media Presence for the Holidays 

Any holiday you’re running campaigns around is a special occasion.

And so you need to make sure your social presence looks the part.

This doesn't mean you need to overhaul your Instagram or TikTok accounts every winter. However, this is a great opportunity to switch up your aesthetic, promote fresh pinned posts or launch a time-sensitive holiday sale. Note how Ulta's Instagram grid looks during the Christmas shopping season:

Creating promotional content for your social accounts obviously takes time.  Again, you’ll want to nail down your retail marketing strategy at least a couple of months before you plan to post.

The earlier you have your promotional assets ready, the earlier you can catch new customers before they wrap up their holiday shopping.

Amp Up In-Store Activities During the Holiday Season

Even as you put extra focus on online sales, don’t forget about in-store retail marketing.

Brainstorm ways to beef up your presence in time for whichever holiday you’re celebrating, like:

• Revamping or adding onto your end cap displays to capture more eyes in-store (see below)
• Setting up an Instagrammable photo op or interactive display where consumers can test your product and you can collect user-generated content in the process
• Hosting events in-store, from launch parties to sample days at your physical locations 

Consider how you can also use social media to drive online audiences to your storefronts via in-store influencer activations.

For example, you might run a giveaway that includes an in-store purchase to enter or offer customers a discount if they show the cashier that they’re following you on TikTok and Instagram. You can go as far as having influencers create content at the point of sale so their followers know exactly where to go to find your products. 

Create a Sense of Urgency to Drive Action from Shoppers

Whether due to a lack of free time or pure forgetfulness, last-minute shoppers will always exist.

Consider just that the majority of shoppers under 50 do most (or all) of their holiday shopping in the weeks prior to Christmas.

Creating a sense of urgency can work in your brand’s favor to reach these shoppers among others. Here are a few ways to harness the power of FOMO:

• Crank up your retargeting ads to remind website visitors about abandoned shopping carts
• In promotional content, remind shoppers of the encroaching timeline  (“Only 3 days left to buy a special gift...")
• Release eleventh-hour promotions to snatch up those last-minute shoppers in a quick and easy gift purchase. For example, you might remind your followers about a rapidly approaching Mother’s Day in an Instagram grid post that also includes a discount code. 
• Create a last-minute shopper gift guide, suggesting gifts for different types of shoppers
• Offer "buy online, pick up in-store" deals so customers can skip lines

All of these tactics are totally fair game to drive action among otherwise would-be lost shoppers.

Push Product Recommendations to Support Holiday Sales

Rather than expecting consumers to browse your entire social feed or website to find suitable gifts for their loved ones, push product recommendations to them directly.

This can be tailored to their preferences, such as an email blast with suggestions based on their previous purchases. On the flip side, you can go more general with an Instagram gifting post detailing your best-sellers for the season. The choice is yours!

Nordstrom pioneered this approach in-store many years ago by integrating social media experiences with their in-store shopping experiences. They did this by creating a physical display that promoted their “Most Pinned on Pinterest” items. This highlights how brands can get creative to combine social marketing with in-store marketing efforts.

Add Influencers to Your Holiday Marketing Mix

When holiday content planning gets overwhelming, bringing on influencers can lighten the load.

With professional content creators, you’ll reduce some of your own marketing stress while getting a creative spin on your message. This is one of the biggest benefits of UGC for brands.

In addition, influencers can help increase your retail sales both in-store and online. Consider how more and more brands are promoting products via creators on TikTok Shop for Black Friday to drive serious affiliate revenue. 

If you’re collaborating with influencers with followers that align with your target audience, you’ll also extend your reach to new potential customers. As a result, you can score some great user-generated content to repurpose across your own channels (granted you get permission).

And if nothing else, product recommendations from content creators can carry a lot of weight and are trusted far more than traditional branded content or in-house promotions.

How to Find Influencers for Your Holiday Retail Marketing Campaigns

Maximizing UGC and word-of-mouth is one of the best ways to support your holiday retail campaigns. Especially when you're able to partner with 100s of influencers and get content at scale.

Of course, conducting outreach and finding influencer partners DIY is a huge time-sink.

Especially if you're already on a tight schedule heading into the holidays.

If you need a faster way to get influencer content for the holiday season, Statusphere's software can help.

Our micro-influencer marketing software matches brands with influencers from our vetted network using 250+ first-party data points. This includes geotargeting for brands that want to promote products at retail locations. 

Statusphere also eliminates the most time-consuming pieces of working with influencers in-house thanks to our advanced matchmaking and fulfillment technology. That's how our platform helped Lifetime earn 400+ pieces of content for a single holiday campaign.

Want to see how our platform works? Get in touch with one of our experts to learn how we can support your brand's holiday campaigns with influencer content at scale.

This article was first published in August 2021. It was last updated September 5, 2024.