20+ Holiday Marketing Ideas for Ecommerce Businesses to Increase Sales!

Geared up for the upcoming holiday season to make killer sales? Well, you’re in luck here.

Shopaholics eagerly wait for the holiday season to avail of various discounts and promotions on their favorite products. This leaves you with an audience that’s ready to spend money.

There are many tried and tested holiday marketing ideas that you can put in place right away. Many of them are exclusively designed to boost ecommerce sales during the holiday season.

Your only task is to convince them to purchase from you. Don’t know how to do that? This blog will help you out.

Below, I’ve got 25+ holiday marketing ideas you can implement to scale your online business during the 2023 holiday season.

Let’s get to it right away to help you overachieve your sales targets this holiday season.

Holiday Season Marketing Ideas 2023

Whether you own an online business, a local retail store, or even a B2B company, you may use the following holiday marketing tips to increase your profits.

The holiday shopping season is the ultimate jackpot for online businesses. You can market your products in so many different ways. Also, there is no need for you to dedicate a fancy budget for it. You can execute your marketing campaigns without going broke. Here’s how:

Seize the Cloudways BFCM Deal Now!

Enjoy a 40% discount for 4 months and benefit from 40 FREE migrations. Don’t miss out!

Get 40% Off!

1. Sell Solutions, Not Products.

You must focus on selling a solution, not a product. Show how your product addresses your potential customer’s pain points to roll in new customers and make sales.

Encash this method by creating tutorials and utility videos for your audiences to compel them to buy from you.

2. Provide Freebies

Everyone loves free stuff. And it helps you increase your sales and have a customer base that returns to you.

Marketing expert Dennis Yu says that sometimes you need to throw away valuable stuff so customers can see that you are a worthy business. Eventually, you’ll recover everything back.

Freebies help you build value when selling online. Mention on your site that your customers will get surprise freebies with their purchases. And then add some complementary products to the actual product people purchase. But remember not to go off budget while offering free stuff.

3. Encourage Engagement

Try to engage with your audience, as just getting them to your online store isn’t enough.

Publish interactive posts on your social media and promptly respond to queries and DMs. You can even automate your interaction and farm engagement.

The point is to connect with your audience and do that quickly. This practice will help you throughout the year, especially during the holiday season.

4. Communicate the Value of Your Products

Many times your visitors fail to perceive your products’ actual value. As a result, they don’t feel compelled to shop from your store; it’s time to change that.

Ensure you have enough content curated to help people understand how they can benefit from your products. Also, use data to show how you stand out from your competitors.

And if you sell generic products, then use your storytelling to differentiate from other brands in your league. Ultimately, your buyers should know that they are getting value for their money.

5. Make Your Websites Navigable

Nothing kills sales more than a confusing and non-intuitive website. A hard-to-navigate website will scare your visitors away, forcing them to buy from your competitors. Stop that from happening by making your visitor’s journey easy via an intuitive website that easily lets them find whatever they want.

Got a new offer for the holiday season? Flash it via a side popup. Want people to find out about your business plans? Make an easily visible tab.

Changed your product’s ingredients? Communicate that on the home page. The easier people get what they want from your side, the longer they’ll stay and probably convert.

6. Launch Customer Loyalty Offers

Reward your shoppers to grow your customer base. Many marketers believe that serving existing customers is often more profitable than acquiring new ones.

So, while you focus on acquiring new customers, you must work on serving the existing customers better. And offering loyalty programs is among the simplest ways to convince your customers to continue buying from you.

Many businesses have loyalty programs and clubs where customers enjoy massive discounts and cashback. This is definitely something to consider when formulating your holiday season strategy for 2023.

 

7. Theme-Based Festive Promotions

With the holiday season come lots of trendy themes. Be quick to adopt those in your marketing strategy.

Explore trends your target audiences love and build your promotional strategies around them. People are ready to make relentless purchases during the holiday season, and you must leverage that.

Your theme-based strategies can make you stand out from the competitors, improving your sales. For instance, Halloween is all about costumes, ghosts, tricks, or treats. Then why not optimize your online store with spooky visuals?

And when Christmas comes, you can change your visuals from spooky to snowy.

Restaurants can share holiday season based recipes. Salons can offer New Year New Me hairstyles. Gyms can educate customers on how to jump-start 2020. The possibilities of holiday marketing ideas are endless!

 

8. Build Partnerships & Collaborations

Collaborations are powerful. Look for businesses where a mutual partnership is possible. Offer them a certain benefit and take something in return. That way, both businesses grow.

Brand collaborations during the holiday season allow entrepreneurs to reach out and connect with a larger audience. Many businesses depend on the holiday season to increase their annual revenue; therefore are ready to offer collaboration opportunities.

By joining forces, you can cash in on all the social media buzz to your advantage and increase your profit margins significantly.

9. Analyze Past Campaigns

You don’t always need to have a NEW big idea to succeed. Feel free to reimplement the past ideas that gave you success as long as they are valid.

So, this holiday season, work on new ideas but don’t forget to scrape out past campaigns that gave positive results. And if you find something worthy, be sure to implement it this year as well.

Using past data is also a cheap way to market, as you have concrete results to prove it’ll work. Plus, you won’t need to invest many resources to implement the idea.

10. Host Contests and Giveaways

You can host a number of festive contests and giveaways during the holiday season.

For instance, create a Thanksgiving contest where your customers can participate by submitting user-generated content. You can convert winning submissions into community spotlights, but make sure that your idea enforces the spirit of the festive season.

It will also allow your customers to enjoy a unique experience. Plus, giveaways and festive contests are great for your social media engagement numbers as well.

11. Bundle Offers

One of the best holiday marketing ideas is to sell multiple products as bundle offers. Many online stores have products that complement each other, and bundling them with discounted prices raises the chances of more sales.

Combo promotions work like a charm during the holiday season. You can also launch surprises for the customers; for instance, a “Mystery Box” is a solid example of a bundle offer.

12. Create a Sense of Urgency

Customers are sometimes indecisive. Take advantage of that by creating a sense of urgency by incorporating a timer into your holiday promotions.

Limited-time offers or limited stock indication encourages customers to hit that buy button before time runs out. However, ensure your timer is clearly visible, whether it’s on a promotional email or your products’ landing pages.

13. Leverage Novelty Dates

Pay close attention and leverage the novelty dates throughout October, November, and December. These are low-effort, high-return dates when people are ready to spend online.

Build your campaigns and reserve your discount and promotional offers around these dates. You can easily engage niche-specific followers and convert them into your business’ loyal customers.

14. Content Marketing

Content marketing is considered king these days. And your brand’s visibility is highly questionable without the right content.

Ensure your content is relevant and resonates with your audience. For example, if you run a gift shop, even a simple, relevant post like ‘gift-wrapping techniques’ can bring in additional traffic and, consequently, more sales.

For instance, you can edit the lyrics of any famous song that your customers can relate to. If you’ve heard the song “Save the Tears” by The Weeknd, you must know that it became a hit in the blink of an eye.

If you own a restaurant, you can change the lyrics of that song to leverage Thanksgiving promotions like, “Yeah you order our steak that’s made so fine. And you’ll come running the second time. Girl, you’ll come back cuz you want that steak. Don’t postpone your orders for another day! ”

Also, be consistent with your content. Don’t just post loads of stuff initially and then forget about publishing for weeks or months.

Formulate a strategy and follow it ardently to get great results.

15. Email Marketing

An effective email marketing campaign can do wonders and is among the best holiday marketing strategies for ecommerce businesses.

Push your promotional emails two weeks before Halloween but do not flood your customers’ inboxes. Email marketing is a time-tested strategy to expand both sales and customer base.

Email marketing statistics based on an analysis of 92,000+ email campaigns executed by 9,500+ brands tell us that:

• Weekly emails lead to a good click rate and high average orders per campaign.
• Customers open emails more actively on Wednesdays but will click more on Sundays. The first part of the month performs better for open rates, and the end of the month is the worst for click rates.
• An email series on cart recovery gets 69% more orders.
• An email series on customer reactivation gets 90% more orders.
• An email series on welcoming new subscribers gets 93% more orders.

There are many different types of email marketing campaigns that you can curate and win customers. Some of them are:

• Cart abandonment emails: Many people come to your online shop, build a cart, but leave without purchasing anything. These are highly convertible people. Cart abandonment emails are produced to motivate potential customers to return and finish the purchase. We also have an article on ways to reduce cart abandonment, do check it out.
• Welcome Series: Make your website visitors feel special by curating an email list and sending them exclusive welcome offers. People love such stuff, and it increases their conversion chances.
• Email blasts: Send generic emails to your email list with lucrative offers to help them make a purchase decision and buy from you.

A word of caution, though: don’t spam. No one likes their email inbox bombarded with promotional emails. Keep it classy; keep it under control!

16. Promotional Newsletters

Once again, leverage email marketing to send festive promotional newsletters to your customers. Show off your holiday spirit with visuals that highlight the essence of the holiday season.

Come up with creative holiday season newsletters from ‘spook-tacular’ Halloween promotions to making the New Year’s toast.

17. Social Media Marketing Strategy

Using social media to boost ecommerce sales during the holiday season is among the most powerful holiday-season marketing ideas.

Social media is the key to grabbing your potential customer’s attention despite increased competition.

Start planning it right away. Scoop out your competitors’ previous campaigns for ideas. Determine how many posts you need to post during the holiday season.

Ensure that your campaign’s concept is crystal clear.

Sell on Instagram, retarget potential customers on Facebook, and create seasonal Google Ad campaigns. Leverage social media marketing to the best of your potential to ensure a higher probability during the holiday season.

18. Use the Magic of Push Notifications

Give your visitors update notifications.

Although push-through notifications with web apps are limited compared to phone applications, they are good for increasing sales. These notifications pop up on your visitor’s devices and persuade them to buy your product.

Firebase Cloud Messaging, One Signal, Push Engage, and Aimtell are among the many services you can use to send push-through notifications.

19. Offer FREE SHIPPING!

9 out of 10 people consider free shipping the #1 reason to shop online. You can either join the free shipping bandwagon or risk losing potential customers to your competitors.

Regardless of your product type, customers prefer buying products with free shipping. You can always adjust your price to absorb the shipping costs, as customers often overlook the higher price when they see the “free shipping” tag.

20. Branded Hashtags

Raise your brand’s awareness amongst your potential customers with seasonal hashtags. Also, encourage people to use your seasonal hashtags on social media for additional perks.

It will help you get more organic reach and track your holiday marketing progress without hassle. Create a variation of 1 to 5 hashtags for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Black Friday/Cyber Monday, Christmas, and New Year.

Loyal customers love to use branded hashtags, and they increase your brand’s reputation and seasonal promotions.

21. Creative Product Names

Leverage the holiday season’s essence and come up with creative product names.

For instance, you can spice things up with spooky product names during Halloween. Let’s say your product is red in color; you can temporarily change its name to “blood red” for the day.

Your conversion chances increase if your customers like your creativity and how you portray your brand during the holiday season.

22. Leverage Community Events

Involve yourself in local community events during the last quarter.

Volunteering for events like Thanksgiving dinners for the underprivileged or Halloween-themed parties can help create a positive brand image.

When potential customers see you doing something for the local community, they’ll be eager to buy from you.

23. Flash Sales

Black Friday and Cyber Monday festivities have become an integral part of the holiday shopping extravaganza. With the number of holiday sales growth year after year, it remains the favorite season of ecommerce store owners. Hence businesses come up with several flash sales. To ensure you’re fully prepared for this peak sales period, don’t miss out on the insights and strategies offered at the Black Friday & Cyber Monday prepathon. It’s a must-attend event to gear up for the holiday sales frenzy!

You can also create great seasonal hype through personalized flash sales.

Even though flash sales are time-sensitive and can last a few hours, running them for two to three days is a good practice during the holiday season.

24. Custom Packaging

Holiday-theme-based packaging enhances the connection customers share with your brand. It also increases your brand’s reputation as your customers realize you care for them.

Themed packaging is an amazing holiday marketing idea and is also good for making your customers’ holidays memorable.

Try customizing your product’s packaging for the holiday season this year, and you may garner loyal customers for life.

25. New Year; New Product Strategy

Many people reboot their lives with the new year, and the most common New Year’s resolution is weight loss, period!

The New Year; New Product strategy is quite effective. Brands can come up with a variety of similar strategies.

All you need to do is use this tagline, “New Year, New (name of your product or service).” For instance, an online store that sells health/fitness products can come up with a ‘New Year; New Body” or “New Year; New Me” strategy.

You can leverage this strategy and create a promotion in which your products or services empower customers to meet their new year’s goals.

26. Post-New Year Promotions

Even after the year ends, feel free to continue promoting your brand with post-new-year promotions.

It is a fact that sales tend to reduce after Christmas, but it shouldn’t stop you from giving all that you’ve got.

Regardless, keep things simple.

You can persist with the same promotions if you want or come up with new ones. On average, brands continue to promote their new year deals until February.

You can also create a fresh post-new year promotion to attract the masses.

So are you excited?

The holiday sales season is the favorite quarter for online businesses. Apply the above-mentioned holiday marketing ideas to get positive results.

Abstain from relying on a single strategy, as success often results from the mix and match of several strategies.

es. Keeping that in focus, implement the aforementioned strategies in your holiday marketing campaigns and get ready to harvest the rewards.  The above-mentioned strategies have gotten results for many online stores. And it can do the same for you!