5 Last-Minute Festive Marketing Tips to Boost Sales

Most large retailers have their Christmas marketing all planned out way in advance – we’re talking as soon as the previous plan ends in some cases. This is because they often have large-scale creative to complete, such as Christmas TV adverts and merchandizing. While you may not have the same requirements, planning ahead is something you should consider for 2023, if only to make your October and November a bit less stressful and smooth sailing.

However, when you consider that 75% of UK SMEs are single-person companies, and more than 1 in 10 has less than 49 employees, it’s easy to see why it gets pushed to the wayside. We don’t all have a marketing department for support, so it gets done when it gets done.

Never fear – there’s still time to create an effective last-minute Christmas marketing plan, so here are some tips:

Step 1: Budgeting and stock levels

The first step is to see if you have any budget left to create your marketing materials and distribute them, and make sure you have the stock necessary to create the kinds of sales you want.

Your budget doesn’t need to be massive, consider:

• Stock: Do you need to buy in, or do you have any leftover stock you can create gift sets, mix-and-match sales, or multibuy offers with?
• Creative design time: how much time and cost will it take to create your visuals in-house or with a graphic designer?
• Printing costs: If you’re using posters, leaflets, hand-stamped festive bags, adverts in publications, PPC or Paid Social ads, etc. – what are the costs, and can they be done in time?

Make sure you consider all the options and go forward with the one that best suits your budget before the end of November.

Step 2: Internal and competitor research

To make the most of your offers, have a look back at any previous sales and explore what has worked best for you in the past. Did your customers like a particular product? Were your BOGOF sales the most effective? What offers gave you the highest profit? Do you have some stock which underperformed that you could couple with another?

Next, check out what your competitors are doing and peruse Google Trends for more general developments. Christmas is already everywhere, and some are promoting Black Friday first, but you can still find out what sort of offers and activities they’re conducting for Christmas. For example, if they have a deal on an item, but yours is better quality or more affordable, maybe you should proceed with that. Similarly, you can see what messaging they’re using, which can help inform your creative decisions too.

Once you have all this information, it will help you progress your plans in the right direction.

Step 3: Finalizing your materials

Now that you have your budget, research and stock levels, you can proceed to create your visuals.

If you’re doing this yourself or with a designer, you must work in priority order and complete the most time-consuming items first, like the physically printed items. Once you have these, it will be easy to adjust and tweak them to fit your digital marketing activity since it’ll be much the same, only in different formats.

Remember to create:

• Instore POS displays or posters
• Leaflets
• Adverts
• Social media images
• Email marketing images
• Website banners and images
• Festive bags

It may be easiest to create a festive version of your logo and tagline for your main imagery instead of overcomplicating it with additional messaging and offer information. After all, bitesize messaging is preferred these days.

Step 4: Consider an event or freebie

There are still some who wait until December 1st to put up their decorations for the festive season, so why not buy into that with a special launch event?

Your festive deals could be launched through an in-store event throughout one day or via an exclusive after-hours event for customers who received invites when they purchased or through your email marketing campaigns. This plays into reward and loyalty schemes and is a great way to build engagement and boost sales in the lead-up to it.

Similar to this is the free gift option. You could convince your social followers and online shoppers to come in-store with the promise of a free gift with every purchase – but only with in-store purchases. Think themes mince pies and candy canes or small low-cost stocking fillers like lip balms, free appointments or money-off vouchers.

Top Tip: Small Business Saturday is on December 3rd this year, and the whole idea is to promote local businesses online using the #SmallBizSatUK and #SmallBusinessSaturday hashtags. Why not couple this with your launch for maximum impact?

Step 5: Remember the small things

December is a funny old time for the usual 9-5 people. There are often far more holidays alongside the stress of getting work finished in time for the big break, so their shopping time can go a bit haywire. Remember to make the most of any late-night opening and publish your festive opening hours well in advance so they know when you’re open.

As well as that, consider your in-store placement of certain items. Check out sales or point-of-purchase items maximize the impulse buying of those already purchasing from you. They’re the ultimate upseller, so place these low-cost, high-profit items along your queue and around the tills with some impactful POS messaging to make the most of it.

Just because we’re mid-November doesn’t mean there’s no time to put a bit of a festive marketing plan together. The initial work only takes a few days, so act while you can and get make ready for the festive boost.