‍Holiday Marketing Ideas for 2024

1. Consider a Multi-Channel Strategy 

Multi-channel advertising allows you to reach your ideal customer across a variety of platforms and channels. Savvy marketers know how to target their audience most effectively and adjust the message and format to the platform used, while keeping the brand voice consistent. This strategy offers the greatest potential reach, and allows you to capture a users attention regardless of where they are, or what they’re doing.  

Tailor your message and formats to the channels you’re using, with the understanding that users engage with different platforms differently; for example, YouTube and Instagram are great for video, but long-format content like blogs would be best suited to your website or LinkedIn. 

Multi-channel campaigns tend to see better overall performance and spend budgets more efficiently than campaigns run through only one channel. Display and Social media campaigns can be quite effective at capturing a users attention and creating awareness or retargeting, but when layered with a paid search campaign, they work together to create product/brand awareness, and interest, and drive that user through the path to purchase. 

Having analytics set up on your website will help you understand how each channel contributed to your customer’s path to purchase. Measurement will help you understand where to best allocate advertising budgets, and what message resonated most with your audience. 

2. Personalize Your Digital Holiday Campaigns

Consider personalization as part of your holiday digital campaign. Instead of one ad message, think about running a variety of ads, each speaking to the slightly different needs of your customers. For example, a furniture or retail store may want to run variations of “Holiday entertaining” ads: One with a large family bursting at the seams, one featuring a “friends-giving” party, and another just a small family at home. All ads would still drive visitors to the store website, but each ad relates to the needs of that particular viewer. 

Companies that understand their customer needs, and personalize their messages tend to see faster rates of revenue growth (as much as a 10-15% lift in some cases) as 70% of consumers expect to find a more personalized online experience. 

To do this effectively, you need to understand your customer’s demographic and behavioural profiles. Look for insights in your analytics, where do your customers come from, what are they buying? What problems does your product or service help solve? Create customer profiles, and develop assets that best target those profiles. 

Personalization helps improve connection, engagement, and loyalty to your brand, and is definitely worth considering as part of your Holiday 2024 marketing plan.

3. Leverage New or Emerging Channels for Your Holiday Ads

The holidays are the busiest retail season in North America. Advertisers can expect to compete with their local, national, and international competitors in a very noisy marketplace. It may be a good time to explore trying new and emerging channels to stand out. The most popular “new” (well, not totally new) channels this year are Connected TV (CTV), and Digital Out Of Home (DOOH).

Connected TV 

CTV is a great channel to reach your audience while they are highly engaged with their chosen content. Users streaming content on CTV are making an active choice to consume their program, and in most cases don’t have the option to skip, or fast-forward through ad placements. 

Consider CTV as an extension to a TV commercial or online pre-roll campaign you may already be running. It allows you access to a wide variety of inventory, and audiences you might not be able to reach otherwise like Gen Z or cord cutters (people who don’t have traditional TV or cable).

Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH)

DOOH ads are digital ads found outside the home in public spaces. Most people immediately think of large-format outdoor billboards like the ones in Times Square, but they can be almost any size or format - depending on the audience you’re trying to reach. Screens can be in restaurants, washrooms, elevators, gyms, bus stations, schools, airports, retail stores & malls… basically anywhere people are. 

Consider the lifestyle of your ideal customer, where do they spend their time outside the home? During the holiday season, your customers will likely be out of home, shopping for gifts, food, or attending parties. Place your ads in areas with high foot traffic to build awareness over the holiday shopping season. DOOH ads are a natural complement to other awareness tactics like radio, digital display, and social advertising, consumers will encounter a LOT of ads this holiday season, and a multi-channel approach including DOOH will help keep you top of mind.  

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