We don’t need to tell you how important the holidays are for B2C companies.

Chances are you’re not only aware of how much money consumers spend during the holidays, you’re also one of those consumers.

In 2019, Shopify broke its past Black Friday and Cyber Monday record with $2.9 billion in global sales. For reference, in 2018 they had $1.8 billion in sales. Yep… they scaled by a billion.

Peak sales during the holiday hit $1.5 million per minute and 25.5 million customers bought something from a Shopify store.

If you’re like us at DigitalMarketer, you see two things: opportunity and strategy.

The opportunity to have your product be the answer to your consumer’s gift-buying problems is right around the corner. There’s something you have (your product) that your customer wants. The strategy comes into play by preparing for your holiday strategy now.

You don’t want to be scrambling at the end of October with fingers crossed that your thrown-together holiday marketing strategy is going to work. Instead, you want to be confident that you’re about to make some serious conversions because you’re using the ads that worked well all year—giving them a huge advantage during the holiday buying craze.

It’s also crucial to be taking into account the past year. COVID-19 has changed buying patterns and throwing a marketing budget into a campaign that you’re not totally sure of isn’t necessarily the best idea. (That’s the nicest way we can put it).

Before the pumpkin spice is fresh in the air, you need to get your holiday marketing strategy figured out so you know exactly what you need to prepare for the holidays this year.

If you’re a B2C business owner and you’re ready to crush the holiday sales, here are 4 tips to get you started.

Figure Out What Holiday(s) Your Audience Cares the Most About

This is the first tip for a reason—it needs to be done first. For different products, the customer may care more about one holiday than another.

This is easy to figure out for products that are specific to holidays (like Halloween costumes or Christmas decorations) but what if your product works well as a Cyber Monday deal and as a Christmas gift?

Create 2 different ad copies for it. Leading up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you’ll showcase the ad copy that talks about your product as something the person buying it wants to own.

The copy leading up to December holidays will be different. This copy will talk about your product as a gift. You can use happy customer testimonials from customers who received the item as a gift or people who gifted it and were thrilled with the person’s reaction.

This is what DIY Gift Kits did for their product of a DIY hot sauce kit (thanks to the help of Molly Pittman!).

Here’s the ad they are showing to promote their product as something the buyer wants to own:

And here’s the ad they are showing to promote their DIY hot sauce kit as a gift:

So once you have your product’s holiday targeting picked out, you can move on to building out your ads’ driving factors.

Use Urgency to Show Customers This is a Short-Term Deal

Like every holiday marketing ad, the time is ticking. Your customers are going to be aware of this when they see that your copy mentions the holidays and is giving a discount/promotion because of it—but you still want to remind them.

You can remind them in your email funnel or in the ad copy itself. Give your customers a definitive date for the end of the sale (ex. December 17th) to create a sense of urgency.

Then, double that urgency with a hard-to-beat offer.

This can be something along the lines of buying a knife set and getting a free wooden cutting board, but only if you buy before 12/4. If you buy after the knife set is still at a discount, but the cutting board isn’t included.

This creates double the urgency (as long as you’re offering an upsell of a product your customers want).

Compare Your Holiday Ads with What’s Working Already

Odds are you already have the basis for a killer holiday ad. And it’s probably an ad already running. So take a look at the ads performing well for you right now and audit how you could transform the copy and CTA to be holiday-friendly.

Quick tip, make sure you find the best ads you could turn into holiday campaigns before you sit down with your team to discuss your strategy this year. You don’t want to waste time finding what ads are performing best once your team is together. Have somebody collect the data ahead of time, so your team is ready with ideas when you sit down together.

For example, let’s say this Facebook ad has been doing well at getting people to buy Miracle Brand’s antibacterial sheets throughout the year.

Before their holiday meeting, Miracle Brand’s team would start to brainstorm how they could change this ad to make it more festive. For example, they could reposition the copy to show how this is the perfect holiday gift for the ones you care about.

Canva can use the same strategy. Their Instagram ad is promoting their feature that lets you remove backgrounds with one click, an ideal tool for ecommerce businesses. They can easily turn this ad’s script and layout into an ad that shows how to remove backgrounds specifically for holiday-related products.

Remember, holidays don’t mean you need entirely new content. If you already know what ads work, use their strengths and figure out how you can make small changes that feed into the holidays.

Use Holiday Specific Content to Drive Website Visitors to Your Landing Page

If your funnel involves pre-sell articles, like BOOM! By Cindy Joseph uses to acquire new customers, turn your presell article into a holiday-themed article. For example, BOOM! makeup line could use a pre-sell article of 5 Holiday Makeup Tips for Older Woman. This isn’t far off from their original pre-sell article, 5 Makeup Tips for Older Woman.

Moment could do the same. They have a Kickstarter campaign for their work gear. The Moment team can tweak the copy in the below email to talk about getting the perfect work-from-anywhere backpack for their newly remote spouse, family, or friends, driving traffic over to their Kickstarter page.

You see what we’re doing here?

We’re looking for ways we can turn what is already working into a holiday marketing strategy—not reinventing the wheel. The holidays are a time for opportunity and strategy, implement both and you’ve got a winning ad.

If you’re a B2C company, the time to craft your perfect holiday offer is now, so you’re ready for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the December Holidays.