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So, you've planned out your Christmas marketing strategy and are considering promotional activities to engage and convert your audience into important leads and purchases. Have you come up with a strong strategy yet? Don't worry — our guide to Christmas marketing strategy delves into the winning strategies for boosting sales and engaging customers.

What are the 12 days of the Christmas marketing campaign?

To put it another way, think of it as an advent calendar. Every day over the next 12 days, a new, intriguing deal or piece of content will be unveiled. Every year, retailers, eCommerce companies, and B2B companies alike use a '12 Days of Christmas' advent calendar-style campaign to connect their target audience, give promotions, and roll out incentives in order to drive sales. You've probably seen lots of instances of similar 12 days of Christmas promotional ads yourself from previous Christmases!

When should I run my 12 days of Christmas marketing campaign?

The 12 days of Christmas traditionally begin on Christmas Day, December 25th, and end on January 5th. In the lead-up to Christmas, many businesses opt to conduct a '12 Days of Christmas' promotion, giving out daily deals and prizes to encourage sales. Many marketing campaigns take place in the four weeks leading up to Christmas, which begin four Sundays before Christmas and finish on December 24th. Your goals, delivery deadlines, and other considerations important to your business will determine whether your 12 days of Christmas marketing campaign will take place before or after Christmas, so plan beforehand!

How to make the most of the 12 days of the Christmas marketing campaign?

We've discussed what a 12 Days of Christmas campaign are and when you would want to start one, but what about how to accomplish it? The classic advent calendar is a notion that can be applied to both online and offline marketing methods to keep people engaged with brands on a daily basis. Consider your chocolate calendar at home, and the persuasive incentives to return every day! Consumers have grown to anticipate these sorts of rewards, which is why everyday promotions succeed. According to a Deloitte consumer survey, 81 percent of people anticipate being influenced by holiday marketing. And what type of promotions are we talking about? According to a recent survey, customers consider discounts to be the most important buying incentive, followed by coupons and special offers on popular items. With that in mind, we've compiled a list of our top 10 suggestions for ensuring that your promotional campaign goes smoothly and achieves the greatest potential outcomes.

1. Discounts and promotions

Consumers anticipate discounts and promos, so don't miss out on prospective business by failing to provide one. Make sure you reward customers for their purchases — according to consumer studies, 74% of customers favor price reductions, followed by free delivery (72%), BOGO deals (39%), and cashback (29%). When it comes to completing purchases, use strategies that customers like, such as free shipping and returns. Combine your incentives with a sense of urgency, such as first-come-first-served or limited-time offers, for an added boost.

2. SEO housekeeping

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, things may look a bit different on the high street this year. With so much uncertainty and consumer skepticism about visiting physical stores, it's more crucial than ever to provide the finest online customer experience possible. It is critical to ensure that your site is in good working order in order to achieve success. While it's probably too late to publish content that will rank high enough to generate organic traffic in time for Christmas, you should double-check that your present ranking pages are up to par. Examine your page's information to see if it's engaging enough to get people to click through. Is your website mobile-friendly? What are the website loading times like? All of these factors have the power to create or destroy those key Christmas sales.

3. Don’t overlook PPC

Whether it's social media, display advertising, or search, you'll almost certainly use paid marketing. Paid advertising is always competitive, but it's much more so over the holidays, raising your average CPC. This is why it's critical to make sure you're getting the most bang for your buck. Examine the competition once your advertisements have gone live to see if yours are cutting through the clutter. Analyze results on a regular basis, modify bids (including negative keywords if you're launching a search campaign), and use A/B testing to tweak your messaging based on what converts – you'll be sure to discover a great mix. PPC is a wonderful method to reach individuals in your target demographic who aren't currently customers or familiar with your brand – a whopping 79 percent of shoppers say they are inclined to buy from a new retailer over the holidays – so doing it properly is critical.

4. Increase engagement by using creative content

Don't always go for the hard sell while executing your 12 days of Christmas marketing campaign. Creative content boosts consumer engagement and allows you to use subtle hints to direct visitors to certain product pages or regions of your website. Writing blog posts on themes related to your products or services also give you great content to share on social media and via email. However, you could wish to publish a lengthy white paper, checklist, or guide, or even develop an infographic or video content as part of your creative content strategy. Use interactive content like quizzes, branded games, calculators, exams, or even digital advent calendars to take your creativity to the next level and increase engagement even further.

5. Digital advent calendars

Printed calendars have been available since the early 1900s, but it was Cadbury in 1958 who created the first chocolate-filled Advent Calendar that we all enjoy at Christmas (thank you, Cadbury). Since then, marketers have followed suit, using branded advent calendars to raise brand recognition and enjoy holiday success. Digital advent calendars allow you to connect with your audience on a daily basis, incentivizing participation with daily prize drawings, discounts, and freebies to help improve holiday sales and leads. You might also include more interactive elements, such as quizzes or games, to promote brand engagement and keep customers coming back for more.

6. Gamification

Gamification is a great way to get your audience involved and even inspire your employees. People enjoy competing and winning, and gaming caters to this natural human need. Loyalty cards and point systems are common gamification techniques, but you can take your gamification to the next level by creating your own branded game. Branded marketing games take advantage of the power of gameplay to help brands engage with their customers and achieve their marketing objectives. With over 2.5 billion active gamers on the planet, there's a good chance your target audience is one of them. A branded game for marketing is a tremendous engagement strategy, especially during busy seasons like Christmas, because games help cut through the digital noise, capture attention, and engage customers – with over 20 minutes of engagement time per player on average.

7. Social Media

Reading product reviews (60 percent of customers), viewing product listings (53 percent), and looking for promotions (52 percent) are the 3 most popular uses of social media for Christmas shopping, according to a study. This makes social media a perfect platform for showcasing your products and services alongside reviews – you may even want to collaborate with influencers to have them post product reviews if your budget allows. You may also utilize social media to advertise last-minute gifts and emphasize details like your assured delivery deadline. In case you're rolling out a game or an advent calendar, using social media to host a simultaneous Christmas countdown to drive heavy traffic to your game or campaign is a terrific idea.

8. Roll out an email campaign

You may take advantage of the natural build-up of enthusiasm in the run-up to Christmas by sending a well-timed email campaign to your audience with daily offers tailored to this channel. To entice visitors to join up for your mailing list, you might also mention on your website that you're offering subscriber-only deals. If you've chosen a digital advent calendar, 12 days of email campaign to accompany it is a terrific approach to increase engagement by reminding your audience to open the doors every day. You may also use gamification by burying a coupon code or immediate reward somewhere on your site or inside your emails, requiring your audience to keep their eyes open, explore your site, and re-engage with your emails in order to uncover the prize.

9. Make plans for last-minute shoppers

Last-minute consumers account for over 30% of online holiday purchases, so you'll need a strategy in place to attract them to buy from your brand. Use re-targeting to target those who have already visited your site, or use email or social media to make last-minute offers to your audience.

10. 25^th December is here – Time to relax?

You may believe that once Christmas Day arrives, everything is done, and you can relax and put your holiday campaign to rest – but you risk missing out on more Christmas selling possibilities! Use a post-Christmas challenge to re-engage your pre-Christmas customers. To ensure you get the most out of your promotion, run a conventional 12 days of Christmas marketing campaign from December 25th to January 5th, such as a calendar or competition. After all, just because Christmas Day has passed does not imply that the spirit of the season has died! By providing more attractive content to dig their teeth into, you may appeal to your customers’ desire to keep the good times rolling.

Conclusion

We hope this blog has sparked enough interest in you to begin planning a successful 12 Days of Christmas marketing campaign! Do let us know which among this list of 12 days of Christmas promotion ideas you found the most exciting.