Marketing Campaigns for Black Friday & Christmas 2024

Marketing is a key element in maximising profits from peak shopping seasons, such as  Christmas and Black Friday. While product development, customer service, and logistics are all crucial business functions, marketing is the factor that will attract the most customers to your business over the holiday season.

In this article, we’ll look at some tactics and techniques that your business can leverage to ensure success during the end-of-year peak shopping season. We’ll discuss seasonal marketing trends in general, and examine specific strategies for Black Friday and Christmas campaigns. Keep reading to discover the path to peak season success. 

Seasonal Marketing Trends in 2024

One of the overarching themes in modern marketing is the idea of the customer perspective. By offering value to customers, and also making a genuine attempt to empathise with their problems and offer a solution, companies can create stronger, more convincing marketing campaigns, especially around peak shopping season.

Most of the best examples of customer-focused marketing offer value to the customer. For instance, providing free gifts is an excellent marketing tactic. Christmas is an expensive time for customers, so being able to offer added value for their money shows how much a business appreciates their audience. During Black Friday, free gifts are a good way to show just how much value is being offered, as the key to Black Friday success means offering a better deal than your competitors.

Another customer-focused marketing strategy is the idea of building communities. Whether you use your website, blog comments, or social media accounts, most businesses have a range of platforms they can use to provide a forum for consumer discussion. By providing a place for consumers to have discussions, and then observing and engaging with those discussions, you can establish a much closer relationship with your customers.

However, make sure you don’t push that relationship too far: it’s also important not to over-engage and overwhelm the customer with marketing messages. According to the 2023 Optimove Consumer Marketing Fatigue Survey, 73% of consumers would prefer to receive fewer marketing messages, with more than one in four (27%) saying they feel “bombarded” by messaging.  A smart, customer-focused marketing strategy limits  marketing emails to only the most relevant content. 

How to Maximise Black Friday Sales With Marketing

Black Friday is consistently listed as one of the biggest retail shopping days in the world, and should hold a prominent place on almost any business calendar. While the day initially began as a US-only sales opportunity, UK and European businesses now also hold significant Black Friday sales. 

Since Black Friday itself is only a single day (specifically the first Friday after Thanksgiving), one of the more popular marketing techniques to maximise Black Friday sales is to extend it through the rest of the week. Most businesses will still offer their biggest discounts on Friday. But it’s common (and effective) to begin reducing prices on Monday, slowly increasing the discounts and building customer enthusiasm until Black Friday itself.  

“Comparative” marketing is also a useful tactic during Black Friday, as it will help you stand out in a marketplace where almost every business is likely to be reducing prices. Comparative marketing means to present your products (or in the context of Black Friday, your discounts and promotions) as being superior to your competitors. This helps steer money-conscious customers towards your business.

Finally, consider ways you could implement digital products into your marketing for Black Friday. If you have a customer loyalty app, for example, it can provide an excellent channel for marketing messaging and announcements. To increase downloads and usage of the app, consider offering promotions that are only available to app users.   

Christmas Campaigns: Advice for 2024

Christmas is a huge event for businesses, particularly supermarkets, retailers, and those selling “giftable” consumer products. If you fall into any of these categories, a significant chunk of your marketing budget should be reserved for promoting your business over the festive season. In fact, many marketing experts advise starting your Christmas marketing campaigns as early as July-September.

But what to include in these campaigns? Taking a customer-centric approach might mean leveraging sentimentality. Emotionally-charged marketing campaigns, featuring family-focused, traditional imagery, tend to be highly successful over the Christmas season. However, the idea behind these types of campaigns is that they are relatable, or at least provoke nostalgia amongst your audience. Keep this in mind when selecting imagery for these campaigns. 

Similarly to Black Friday, integrating digital products can be a huge benefit to your marketing. Even small design changes like adding Christmas imagery to the user interface of your brand can have a positive impact. One crucial point to remember is that Christmas represents a significant expenditure for most families. If you can use your customer loyalty program or brand app to deliver significant value during this time, your customers will appreciate it.    

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