10 Christmas Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses

Christmas is one of the busiest marketing periods of the year, and also one of the easiest to get wrong. The Christmas marketing ideas that work for small businesses are usually a bit more boring than the ones you see in the big campaigns. You don't need a snow covered logo, a flashing website banner and a discount code every three days.

Make it easy for people to buy, make it obvious when they need to buy by, and go back to the customers who already know you rather than spending everything chasing new ones.

Here are ten things worth doing across advertising, social, email and your website.

1. Build a Christmas landing page

If you sell products, bring the Christmas range together somewhere people can browse it properly, sorted by price, recipient, product type, best sellers or stocking fillers. Most people arriving on your site at Christmas aren't looking for a specific item, they're looking for an idea, and a page built for browsing serves that much better than your normal shop layout.

Service businesses can do the same with end of year offers, gift vouchers or January packages. It's a page worth building once and reusing every year.

2. Write gift guides

Gift guides answer the question almost everyone has in December, which is simply "what do I buy them?"

The usual ones work for a reason. Gifts under £25, gifts for him, gifts for her, Secret Santa ideas, last minute gifts, something for the person who has everything. Each one can become a website page, a blog, an email and a week of social posts, so the content goes a long way.

They're also one of the few bits of Christmas content with genuine search traffic behind them, as long as they go up early enough to get indexed.

3. Go back to people who already visited

December isn't really about reach. The people who looked at your site in September and didn't buy are a much warmer audience than anyone you'll reach cold in the middle of December, when ad costs are at their highest all year.

Build campaigns specifically for previous website visitors, social media engagers and existing customers. The messaging can be far more direct with people who already know who you are.

4. Make your deadlines impossible to miss

If you sell physical products, delivery deadlines drive more sales than almost anything else you'll post. Put your final dates for standard delivery, express delivery, personalised products and Christmas collection somewhere obvious, and repeat them.

Don't make people dig through the site to find it. A banner, a line in every email and a pinned social post covers most of it.

5. Use countdowns, but keep them honest

Urgency helps people decide. Campaigns built around "10 days left for Christmas delivery" or "final weekend to order" give customers a reason to stop putting it off.

The only rule is that the deadline has to be real. Fake urgency gets noticed quickly and it's not worth the short term bump.

6. Email your existing customers

Customer acquisition is expensive, particularly in December. Christmas is a good excuse to reconnect with people who've already bought from you, with new products, the Christmas range, an exclusive offer or recommendations based on what they bought last time.

Somebody who bought from you last Christmas is probably the easiest sale you'll make this Christmas. Email is the cheapest way to reach them and the one channel where you're not bidding against everyone else.

7. Show the people behind the business

Not every post has to sell something. Your team, the Christmas preparations, orders being packed, behind the scenes footage, the decorations going up, your own favourite products, a thank you message at the end of the year.

It keeps social feeds worth following through a month when everyone else is posting discount graphics, and it makes a small business feel like a small business, which is usually the advantage you've got.

8. Plan for the last minute shoppers

There will always be people who leave it until the final few days. Once physical delivery is off the table, that traffic doesn't disappear, it just needs somewhere to go.

Gift vouchers, digital gift cards, experiences, downloadable products and January bookings all work. Don't stop marketing the moment the last delivery date passes, because that week is full of people who still need to buy something.

9. Start selling January before Christmas ends

This one gets overlooked and it's probably the most valuable idea on the list for service businesses. Gyms, training providers, professional services and anyone selling consultations can start filling January while people are still in the mood to think about next year.

Something as simple as "thinking about your goals for next year? Book your January consultation now" run through December gives you a pipeline in place before the new year starts, rather than an empty diary on 2 January.

10. Write down what actually worked

When it's over, resist moving straight on to the next thing. Spend an hour reviewing revenue, ad spend, return on ad spend, leads, conversion rate, best performing creatives, best performing products, email revenue and website traffic.

Most businesses don't do this, which is why they rebuild the same campaign from scratch every year. Half a page of notes now makes next Christmas considerably easier, and it tells you which creative to start from rather than guessing again.

How early is early enough?

Christmas search interest starts climbing through October and peaks in the first half of December. For anything you want picking up organic traffic, like gift guides or a Christmas landing page, earlier is better, because Google needs time to find and rank it.

Advertising is the opposite. Costs rise steadily through November and peak in the fortnight before Christmas, so audience building is cheap now and expensive later. Those two things point the same way, which is that most of the work wants doing in October and early November.

Frequently asked questions

When should I start Christmas marketing? Content and landing pages want to be live from mid October so they have time to get indexed. Advertising can start later, though building audiences early is much cheaper than reaching people cold in December.

Do Christmas marketing ideas work for service businesses? Yes, though differently. Gift vouchers, end of year offers and selling January availability tend to work better than trying to force a product style Christmas sale.

What's the most cost effective Christmas marketing channel? Usually email, because you already own the audience. Retargeting is normally second, since you're reaching people who've already shown interest rather than paying December prices for cold traffic.

Should I discount at Christmas? Not necessarily. Christmas buyers are often less price sensitive than Black Friday buyers because they're solving a problem rather than hunting a bargain. Convenience, delivery certainty and gift presentation can matter more than a percentage off.

How do I compete with bigger companies during Christmas? By not competing on the same terms. You're unlikely to outspend them, but you can be more personal, more specific and far quicker to respond, and local businesses have an advantage in anything that involves collection or last minute availability.

Tying it together

Seasonal campaigns work best when they're not bolted on to the side of everything else. The advertising, email, social, website and the way you handle enquiries all need to point in the same direction, otherwise you get traffic in December and no real idea what happened to it.

If you'd like help getting your Christmas or January campaigns ready, book a strategy call and we can look at what's worth prioritising with the time left.