Holiday Video Marketing Campaigns 101 – Guide to Creating the Best

The holiday season is the best time for companies and businesses to emphasize on the spirit of giving. Almost any type of business in any industry has something special to offer to their customers during the holiday season. This is when you can treat your customers to promotions, sales, and discounts to accommodate their increased demand for purchasing all the things they want for themselves and for their loved ones during the holidays. While holiday video marketing campaigns are always a good idea to do, this does not mean that they are easy to prepare for.

There is a lot to take in and consider when you come up with your holiday marketing campaigns since it will be during the holiday season where you have to take on the most amount of customers.

You have to consider factors like if your company even has the resources to have a holiday marketing campaign and if you do, will the benefits be worth the costs you will allot for the campaign.

You also have to think about what are the things that you need and what are the steps you need to take to plan out your holiday video marketing campaign effectively.

While it has a lot of potential to be profitable and fruitful, creating your holiday marketing campaigns can still be a big risk and may end up costing you if you are not able to plan it accordingly.

This article will help guide your company throughout the whole process of coming up with your holiday marketing campaign. You will know the reasons why you should have one, the elements you need, the steps you need to take, what strategies you have to use, what type of content you can post, and ideas and examples you can follow.

Why Should You Have a Holiday Video Marketing Campaign?

So if by this point you might still be wondering, should I have a holiday marketing campaign? Is it going to be worth all the effort? How will I stand out if everyone is going to do it? Why can’t I treat it just like a normal marketing campaign?

We hope that these reasons that we will give will help you think of holiday marketing not as a burden or a difficult task to do, but as a rewarding opportunity and something that you’ll be excited to do in the future.

Here are 8 reasons why you should have a holiday campaign:

1. People have a sense of urgency during the holiday season.

The holiday season doesn’t really last a long time, come to think of it. The holidays really ramp up by December and end around the time of the New Year.

When your customers are aware that there is only a certain time for them to do their Christmas shopping, they are more likely to act quickly and engage with your holiday campaigns and the discounts and promotions that come with it.

2. It is the perfect time to reward loyalty.

The holiday season is the season of showing appreciation and for giving out gifts. This is the best time for you to do this to your loyal customers by offering them exclusive sales, promotions, or deals.

These exclusive discounts that they can get from you will help keep your customers loyal. This means that they will be more likely to continue to buy from you again in the future, and most probably during the holiday season as well.

3. It allows you to relate to your customers.

Sometimes, it may be difficult for you to find a strong connection with your customers. But when it comes to the holidays, pretty much everyone understands what comes with it.

The holiday season is a great time to show that you aren’t so different with your own customers. The more genuine your holiday campaign is, the greater it will resonate to your audience which will make your connection a lot stronger.

4. The holidays are always associated with positive emotions.

Despite the stress that may accompany some people and their families during this time when it comes to holiday preparations, most people still associate the holidays with feelings of togetherness, forgiveness, and joy.

This means that when you associate your company with holiday themes, symbols, and colors, people can attribute those to the same positive emotions they feel during the holidays.

5. It gives you more chances to do good.

It is a great opportunity to provide some goodwill in the community during this season of giving. You can partner with local organizations for a cause and participate in food drives or by handing out toys to children that are not fortunate enough to receive gifts all the time during the holidays.

If you do these acts of goodwill properly and in the right spirit, not only will it feel good to give back, but it will also help build your brand image as well. People will associate you with generosity and giving which can also help increase your sales as well.

6. People intend to buy when they shop.

For shoppers, the holidays are a different time compared to the rest of the year because they are much more likely to shop with a real intent to buy.

They may not have clear ideas on what they want to buy just yet, but they do know that they have to buy gifts for their loved ones. With this reasoning, they are more willing to spend and with the right nudge from your campaign, they may be willing to spend for you.

7. Consumers look to social media to seek inspiration during holiday shopping.

While for most of the year, people are looking at everyone’s social media just for social purposes, these habits change once the holiday season arrives. Consumers start to use social media to find gift inspirations and shopping deals during the holidays.

Running your holiday marketing campaign on social media will definitely get you more engagement and conversion because of everyone’s reliance and dependence on social media when it is time for them to look for gifts for their holiday shopping.

8. There are more potential customers during this season.

During the holidays, it’s not just your regular customers who will be more likely to buy, but also people who normally do not shop often will start to ramp up their shopping as well.

With higher consumer traffic during the holidays means higher potential customers. That is why it is important to put out a great holiday marketing campaign so you can hopefully grab the attention of those extra shoppers.

Elements To Creating Effective and Successful Campaigns

Now that you know all the different reasons why you should create your own holiday marketing campaign, here are all the elements that you need to make these holiday campaigns effective and successful:

The Building of Anticipation

For holiday marketing campaigns, everybody knows around what time frame it will happen. Instead of looking at it like a disadvantage since holiday dates are always fixed, you can use it to your advantage by building anticipation and generating conversations about your upcoming holiday campaign.

For these pre-marketing efforts, you can do a variety of things which will help promote your upcoming campaign. One thing you can do is to create a countdown on your social media accounts and websites.

Another thing you can do which will surely be effective is to have multiple teaser videos which you can post in anticipation of your holiday campaign. These teaser videos could give a sneak peek on your holiday theme, certain discounts, special products, and other deals that your customers will get during your holiday marketing campaign.

These teaser videos will definitely create buzz and intrigue among your consumers and other potential customers when done right.

Your Holiday Marketing Theme

Because consumers are programmed to take advantage of deals during the holidays, you should create an online experience that will always remind them of this special time of the year.

There are certain colors, icons, and other visual cues that instantly remind people of the holidays. Whether it’s having red and green colors or showing Santa Claus or having Christmas trees and lights, your marketing content should be able to make the most of these to get your customers in the holiday spirit.

You can have a lot of different ways of applying these holiday themes to your marketing materials. To really drive home the holiday theme that your campaign will have, you can have your promotional videos and corporate videos follow your holiday visual themes as well.

Letting people see what your holiday campaign is about through these videos makes the campaign feel more alive and more concrete to your customers.

User-Generated Content

Normally, people trust the recommendations and opinions of their friends and families more than businesses. That is what makes user-generated content so effective.

It is best for you to take advantage of your customers’ relationships with their friends and family, especially during the holidays where they tend to grow stronger, by featuring more user-generated content for your holiday campaigns.

By featuring and promoting content made by your customers to promote your holiday campaign, you are able to build trust with them since you are showcasing content made by someone’s friend or family member which holds even more value during the holiday season.

User-generated content can take on a lot of different forms, from reviews to  social media posts to testimonials among others.

Videos are a great way to showcase all the user-generated content that you will receive. Videos that are sent by users as they react or talk about your product can display genuine reactions from them. Testimonials and product reviews work even better when they are done through videos because it allows your customers to actually talk about their positive experiences.

Also, compiling and featuring all the different user-generated content, whether it be posts or images, into a video that you can post on your social media accounts is a great way of saying thank you to your loyal customers.

Interactivity With Your Customers

Being interactive with your customers means using different platforms to provide a personalized dialogue that helps optimize your customer’s experience.

This interactivity addresses your customers as individuals by getting them to respond and engage to certain types of content like contests, quizzes, and especially videos.

Videos are a great way to create interactivity with your customers as they can watch, like, comment, and share them with their friends and family if they find the content valuable and entertaining.

Interactivity helps your holiday video marketing campaigns in a variety of ways. It can increase user engagement by creating interest and excitement, improve the standard of leads by qualifying prospects, make your campaign more shareable, and positively influence conversions.

To make sure you get all these benefits from interactivity, you have to capitalize and maximize your usage of different types of video content which encourages the most interactivity between you and your customers.

Steps You Must Take to Plan Your Campaigns

Here are the steps you need to take to make your holiday marketing campaign the best it can be:

1. Define Your Holiday Video Marketing Campaign Objectives and Your Target Audience

Defining the objectives and target audience of your campaign allows you to be clearer and more focused on what you need to do and who to communicate with the most.

For your objectives, you should establish the sales goal that you want to achieve during this holiday season. You can look at the sales figures from last year’s holidays, which days your sales performed the best, and the percentage of new acquisitions you get compared to retention.

For your target audience, you should be looking at customers that are deal-seekers and last-minute shoppers. Deal-seekers try to find the best deals online and constantly search for rewards in rewards apps. Last-minute shoppers are indecisive but urgent. You need to take advantage of their urgency and supply their needs as soon as possible.

These types of customers are good targets since they are more open to discovering new brands.

2. Decide on Your Holiday Offerings

Know that you have settled on what your objective is and which audience you want to target, you can now decide on the holiday offerings you will entice them with.

This is where you have to weigh in the different possible combinations of offerings you want to provide. You can choose between having gift certificates, reward points, product bundles, discounts, bonuses, among others.

If you want to have more insight on what offering to use and what range of amounts you can put on discount, you can have a look at offers or deals your competitors are making.

3. Decorate and Spread the Holiday Spirit on Your Social Media

During your holiday campaign, it is important that you also embrace the holiday spirit on your website and all your social media accounts. This means decorating your website, your profile photos, cover photos, and videos with your own holiday campaign theme to really emphasize that you are ready for the holiday season.

Once you have finally established and organized what offerings you will have, the specific amount of these offerings you will expend, and when you will make them available, it is best to carry this out on all your marketing platforms, especially social media.

On social media, you can have posts and also create paid ads as well. To make sure these social media posts become ingrained in your customers’ mind, it would be best to create different videos that highlight all your holiday offerings.

You can create social media videos that don’t really talk about your products but tell an emotional story about the holiday season. These videos have a high potential for organic engagement because of its universal content.

You can also have product videos that highlight all the products that will have discounts, make customer testimonial videos on certain products, or give a behind-the-scenes look on how your products are being made. There are many different video types you can use which can show your customers your company, its products, and its holiday offerings.

What Holiday Video Marketing Campaign Strategies You Must Use

Here are some important strategies you must use to make the most out of your holiday marketing campaign:

Approach Your Campaign With a Focus on Content

Because holiday shopping and online shopping has been going on for a while now, some customers may choose to ignore traditional sales and marketing tactics.

This means you have to take a more innovative approach and that is done by using content marketing. Content marketing gives you an opportunity to make your customers’ shopping experiences with your brand more personalized.

This means pushing for different types of content to post online like social media posts, articles, photos, and videos. These types of content allow for more interactivity, more communication, and more genuine conversations with your customers.

Videos are a great way of highlighting the benefits that you can get from content marketing. With videos, you are able to entertain and clearly communicate your key messages about your holiday offerings because you can stimulate both your customers’ visual and auditory senses.

This makes videos stand out more compared to other types of content like articles and photos. Videos, when done right, also garners more organic engagement which can eventually lead to more sales as well.

Give Your Customers a Real Reason to Buy

When coming up with how to promote your holiday campaign, you should be able to communicate clear incentives and rewards to your customers so that they can complete their purchases.

You want to make sure that your holiday offerings are creating or building genuine relationships with your customers and not just giveaways that will make people think your company is cheap. The hope is that these holiday offerings will give you loyal customers who will make repeat purchases in the future.

Videos can be an effective way of encouraging and even endorsing customer loyalty throughout your holiday campaigns. For example, you can have videos showcasing and thanking the customers that availed of your holiday offerings.

Make sure that your top priority for these holiday campaigns is establishing real connections with customers, not taking advantage of their holiday spending.

Holiday Video Marketing Campaign Ideas You Should Try

Here are some ideas you can consider doing for your holiday marketing campaigns:

Grant Early Access Deals to Your Best Customers

Giving your loyal customers exclusive offers is a great way to make them know that they’re your priority during this holiday campaign.

These unique discounts and early access deals can really prove to your customers that they are being valued highly by your company.

You can communicate these rewards through emails or even messaging them personally on their social media accounts.

You can even create personalized videos where you can just add the name of your loyal customers to your video templates for your invitations and promotions.

Offer Valuable Bundles and Upsells

To be able to tap into everyone’s drive for value during their holiday shopping, it is important that you are able to provide product bundles and upsells for your customers.

You can offer bundles at discounted rates which can help increase the amount of sales you get and also bumps up your average order value.

Upsells can also be effective as they basically are complementary products that are added to an order they are already making. They aren’t just effective for increasing sales, but they are also great in increasing customer satisfaction since you’re offering products that your customers will also need.

It is important you remind your customers of these bundles and upsells through promotions and videos on your social media accounts and your ecommerce website.

Holiday Video Marketing Campaign Examples

Here are some entertaining holiday marketing videos that became a great to tell their brand’s story and values during the holiday season:

Hallmark – Warm Their Hearts

VIDEO LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c03a1RlhUPQ

Hallmark’s holiday video marketing strategy has a simple premise that shows people in relatable situations.

What makes the video great is how it displays the values of respect, care, and understanding while not making the advertisement too emotional.

Heineken – Holiday Troubles

VIDEO LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC45FjbqKtQ

This funny video perfectly encapsulates the holiday spirit despite experiencing unfortunate events while preparing for the holidays.

It is a terrific way of providing comic relief to a holiday video to make it light and appealing with a positive message despite the people going through unfortunate situations.

Microsoft – Holiday Magic

VIDEO LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wx1wVWPp-ng

Microsoft’s video starts out looking like a traditional holiday video but takes a humorous turn by the end.

This is a great example because it showcases the holiday spirit, has a humorous moment at the end, and has their product featured in the story.

H&M – Come Together

VIDEO LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXLO2dFfwLE

This video stands out among other holiday videos because it has well-acclaimed director, Wes Anderson and his trademark cinematography. It also has an engaging story which plays out during its four minutes. 

It is a corporate video that is well-made with a high budget and has soulful storytelling that caters not just to H&M shoppers, but everyone else as well.

As evidenced by all these great holiday videos, the most important thing you have to do is properly display your company values and how they are emphasized during the holiday season. Your products can still be featured and be an important part of the story, but they don’t always need to be on-screen.

If you want to create eye-catching video content, whether it be video advertisements or corporate videos that will boost your holiday marketing campaigns, our team at fewStones is ready to help.

fewStones can provide high quality videos and will be collaborating and helping you throughout the whole creation process, from ideation up until the final edits to be made.
You can learn more about how we can help you improve your holiday marketing campaign goals with videos by putting thorugh your requirements and also receive an instant quote.

Related articles:

• Video Marketing trends in Singapore 2023: Statistics, Data & Strategy
• Social Media Videos for Business: Ultimate Guide to Engaging Videos
• How To Create Corporate Videos That Drive Sales