Just settling into cozy Fall temperatures? Does it feel a little early to be thinking about the Christmas season? Now is the time to solidify how you’re going to promote your brand for the holiday season.

Holiday shopping is expected to start earlier than ever this year. In fact, 31% of consumers report that they plan on doing their holiday shopping before Halloween. Not only that, but spending is expected to increase as 24% of consumers report that they’ll spend more this year than last year.

The bottom line? You need to start promoting your brand for the holidays now. And if you do, you can expect higher sales than last year.

To position your brand as a great option for buying gifts from this year, think outside-the-box and get creative with your digital strategy in order to stand out from the competition.

Get Listed in Gift Guides

Influencers are powerful for your digital marketing strategy, especially during the high volume of purchasing that occurs during the holidays. 

MANY influencers create gift guides for the holidays. They list the brands they support and add images and links so that their followers can buy the products as gifts. Typical categories are:

• Gifts for him
• Gifts for her
• Gifts for pets
• Gifts for kids
• Gifts for hostess
• Gifts for parents
• And more!

Since the gift guides include multiple brands, they are affordable to get placement in. In fact, many of the influencers require only product. Also, the conversion rates tend to be quite high. Our theory is that consumers read a gift guide with the intent to purchase so a lot of sales come from this type of campaign.

Want to place your brand in influencer gift guides? One of our colleagues, Kristen Matthews is running a promotion and you can reach her at kmatthewswords@gmail.com to learn more!

Offer Incentives to Get More Sales

Consumers have many options when it comes to where they buy their holiday gifts. Offer something more than just great product and reward consumers for choosing your brand. A little goes a long way and just a few incentives to consider are:

• Donate a percentage of sales to a charity
• Offer gift cards to consumers buying gifts so that they can also get something for themselves
• Run flash sales
• Exclusive sales to all current consumers
• Offer gift cards or coupons when consumers share on social what they purchased for holiday gifts

Be sure to blast the incentives that you’re offering all over your social channels to entice consumers to purchase their gifts from your brand. And don’t forget to tailor your messaging to each social platform which you can read all about here.

Scale Email Marketing

Email is one of the best ways to communicate with your consumers and target consumers during the holiday shopping season. You can promote certain products, sales, coupons, gift ideas, etc. The goal is to keep your email super engaging.

You may also want to consider purchasing an email blast. This will allow you to get your brand and your messaging to new audiences just in time for holiday shopping. Offer a sense of urgency like a coupon that expires soon so that you don’t slip off their radar.

Create a Resource and Gate it With a Lead Capture Form

Brainstorm a thought leadership resource that aligns with your brand and goals of increasing sales this holiday season. Be sure to gate your resource with a lead capture form so that you can grow your email list. Here are a few ideas to start your brainstorming process:

• Create an eBook with a topic that makes sense with your brand
• Compile a holiday shopping guide complete with gift categories that everyone needs to buy gifts for
• Host a webinar on the best gifts to buy this year
• Create a printable checklist for consumers to keep their shopping organized

Those are just a few ideas to get your wheels turning and I'm sure you’ll think of the perfect gated resource to grow your list of contacts just in time for the biggest purchasing time of the year!

Run a Giveaway

Giveaways are a great way to foster engagement, grow social following, grow email lists, and have fun.

You can host a giveaway on your website or team up with influencers to run the giveaway on their sites. Decide on a gift, it can be something from your brand or a gift card and then design your giveaway. An entry to win can be brand-building actions like:

• Liking your brand on social
• Following your brand on social
• Resharing the giveaway
• Inviting friends to enter the giveaway
• Etc.

Giveaways are time consuming to run manually so we highly advise you use a tool like Rafflecopter to run the giveaway for you.

What successful digital marketing strategies have you implemented in the past to promote your brand for the holidays? We’d love to hear all about it in the comments below!