5 Creative Examples of Holiday Marketing Campaigns

The holiday season is the best time of the year to engage with your audience and convert leads. This is the time when people go shopping for a number of gifts, including clothes, home decorations, beauty products, and even groceries. People are more willing to make a purchase during this time as they approach the festive mood.

According to EMARKETER, overall holiday retail revenue in the United States will increase by 2.7 percent to $1.093 trillion in 2021, with e-commerce sales increasing by 11.3 percent to $206.88 billion. Ecommerce is expected to account for an all-time high of 18.9% of overall holiday retail revenue.

A good holiday campaign requires great creativity, perfect timing, and attractive marketing materials. A single script cannot be used in multiple places When it comes to holiday marketing campaigns. It will take some brainstorming and hard work. The outcome of the strategy always depends on what kind of business you have.

If you're looking for some inspiration to get your creative juices flowing; or even if you're just a fan of innovative holiday marketing and advertising campaigns, here are 5 examples of creative holiday marketing campaigns:

Amazon

Amazon has sufficient cash to go all out on their holiday promotions. In 2017, their YouTube videos of singing boxes melted hearts, and they returned even bigger in 2018. People all over the world give and receive Christmas gifts as Amazon's easily familiar boxes sing along to the Jackson Five's "Do You Feel It?" in the video.

The idea and implementation are simple: people are looking forward to the Christmas feeling, and nothing announces the holiday season like Amazon boxes full of gifts being delivered all over the world.

You might ask, why is it effective? The answer is simple, Amazon manages to create a holiday spirit with their signature boxes as more people purchase gifts online. 

Starbucks

Everyone looks forward to the holiday season, and Starbucks managed to give a holiday spirit to coffee lovers with festive red cups. The appearance of these cups signifies Starbucks holiday drinks such as peppermint mocha, gingerbread latte, chestnut praline latte and the caramel brulée latte. This year, a limited-edition green cup was introduced. Many people thought the business would change colors for the holidays, but don't worry, the iconic red cups will always arrive in November as usual.

It's hard to talk about Starbucks holiday marketing without referencing the company's signature Pumpkin Spice Latte. This pumpkin pie spice-flavored drink has a cult-like following and has become a fall classic. The beverage also has its own Twitter account!

The takeaway here is that a well-designed and consistent brand name can be a very effective weapon. This campaign also demonstrates how you can build new brand rituals and then inspire the audience to look forward to them every year.

Etsy Gift Guides

The holiday season is slowly approaching. With it, comes the Etsy gift guides lists! For those of you who are unfamiliar with Etsy, it's an online marketplace for handmade goods. Etsy has more than 54 million active buyers who come back again and again, trust and are inspired by Etsy's creative community. Naturally, Etsy has a list of gift guides by different categories where great sellers have submitted their ideas for gifts. Etsy gift guides are a great source of inspiration for handmade and creative gifts.

Why are gift guides successful? Gift Guides are a great way to direct visitors to your site and engage them in a functional way within your site. Visitors generally enjoy the lists of ideas, knowing that they couldn't necessarily find these items on their own. Gift guides also give you an easy option for a content generation if you are ever in a pinch or need additional ideas for content to promote. There are two main types of gift guides, the aggregator and the affiliate kind. Both types still have value to your visitors, but each type has its own potential to convert highly valuable traffic. When you compare them side by side, what's best for you really becomes clear.

L.L. Bean

The easiest way to connect with your clients is to demonstrate that you care about the things they care about most — in this case, their pets. L.L.Bean hosts an annual holiday Instagram contest called #12DaysofPuppies, in which fans are invited to post adorable pictures of their dogs in exchange for a chance to be featured and receive a gift card. Since most dog owners enjoy posting photos of their pets, this challenge is an ideal way to capture a large amount of user-generated content while still spreading a brand’s hashtag.

Coca-Cola

Each holiday season, marketing departments at large companies spend millions trying to connect with their customers. Some work and others fail miserably. It’s no secret that Coca-Cola’s marketing department does a lot of things right. Every year, they come up with new and exciting ways to help us all celebrate the holidays. 

Coca-Cola has been famously, some say infamously, good at advertising. They proved it again this year with their ‘Holidays are Coming’ ad campaign. Holidays are Coming has really grasped the spirit of the season, and really captures the mood of a lot of people who like to celebrate Christmas. It's a great ad that pulls on many heartstrings. The ad is recognizable by the holiday caravan that delivers holiday spirit across the cities. A holiday truck decorated with festive lights, strong looking truck rims and holiday branding has become iconic in Coca-Cola’s holiday marketing campaigns.

The importance of holiday marketing

Holiday marketing and the significance of it cannot be emphasized enough. It can help determine whether or not you will achieve your marketing goals and objectives set for the year or even just the end of the quarter. Holiday marketing is essential in helping companies reach new heights, either by increasing sales, expanding companies' business to different demographics, boosting company recognition, increasing brand awareness, growing social media engagement, and even maintaining relationships with current customers. This holiday season is expected to perform well for businesses since holiday shopping remains a priority for shoppers.