16 Holiday Marketing Ideas to Boost Your Sales (2025)

Did you know that in 2023, online holiday sales reached $221.1 billion.

Every year revenue is breaking new records and is expected to rise even well during 2025.

So, what are the strategies you’ve planned for holiday season coming this year?

Well, if you don’t have one, you better be prepared because the holiday season is a great opportunity to drive a considerable amount of profits. And in this blog, we’ll share all the details you need. 😊

Here, we’ve done our in-depth research and listed the 16 best surprising holiday marketing strategies that you can use to create high-converting campaigns and drive crazy sales and profits. Whether you’re running an established online store or just opening a new one, this guide is all you need to make your brand stand out in this holiday season to maximize sales and revenue.

Shall we start then?

Key Statistics Around Holiday Marketing (2025)

Before we get in, let’s understand some recent statistics around holiday marketing and how it is expected this year.

✅ Online shopping is expected to grow 8-9% during the holiday season 2025. ✅ 43% of global consumers plan to increase online shopping in the holiday season. ✅ 60% of consumers will begin holiday shopping before Thanksgiving. ✅ 85% of customers prefer free shipping, and 15% prefer faster shipping. ✅ 68% of consumers pay more attention to holiday emails. ✅ 85% of Gen Z will use a phone or tablet for holiday shopping.

Why is Holiday Marketing Important For Your Business?

The holiday season is one of the most awaited seasons businesses promote their offerings heavily, connect with customers, and maximize sales. But that’s just one of the reasons.

Let’s find out broader reasons why you need to eye holiday seasons for marketing your business.

1. Customer spending is at its peak as they often spend heavily on gifts, essentials, and festive items.
2. High demand for gifts, decorations, and seasonal products.
3. Personalized marketing campaigns help evoke joy, nostalgia, and warmth, AKA better and long-term connection with customers.
4. Increased social media usage during the holiday season makes it an ideal time to run impactful campaigns.
5. Holiday seasons offer opportunities to bring out out-of-the-box marketing ideas and eye-catching campaigns.
6. Allows businesses to outperform competitors through unique offers and creative strategies.

And in overall, engaging promotions and engaging campaigns drive higher sales, ensuring a profitable end to the year.

Now, you understand why the holiday season is the biggest chance for businesses to drive crazy sales and new customers. It’s time to explore some surprising strategies which can help you prepare this holiday season to drive max ROI.

What Are Top Holiday Marketing Ideas to Boost Sales in 2025?

Here, we’ve listed 16 surprising holiday marketing ideas that you can implement to drive sales like never before. Let’s explore!

1. Host Festive Giveaways

Hosting festive giveaways is another fantastic way to engage with potential customers during the holiday season.

There are numerous benefits of hosting festive giveaways, such as increasing brand awareness, boosting engagement with customers, more sales, and loyal customers.

The main aim of running giveaways is to increase brand visibility and build a strong audience in social media channels.

Let’s understand how you can run a holiday giveaway contest.

For example, if you run a skincare brand, you can post on Instagram about upcoming holiday giveaways—best-selling products set. To enter, Follow us, like this post, and Tag a friend. 

This strategy helps businesses expand their reach to potential customers, increase brand visibility, and bring new customers to your business.

2. Create Irresistible Holiday Offers

Whenever the holiday season rolls around, everyone is on the lookout for great deals that motivate them to make purchases.

This is the perfect opportunity for businesses to create irresistible offers that easily attract potential customers and encourage them to act quickly—before they miss out on a great deal. Also, shoppers are more likely to make a purchase when they feel they’re getting exceptional value.

Some popular irresistible offers include:

• “Buy One, Get One Free”
• “Buy One, Get One 50% Off”
• “Holiday Bundle: Save 30% on Orders Above a Certain Cart Value”

And many more.

When you combine these types of offers with a limited-time countdown, it creates a sense of urgency that drives customers to make immediate purchases—perfect for deal hunters.

3. Decorate Your Online Store for the Holidays

Holiday season is not just about offers and discounts, your online store design should give off a memorable experience and joy which makes their purchase decision faster and connects with your brand.

Even if a customer visits your online store accidentally, theme-based decorations can grab user attention and might encourage them to stick around for longer.

In fact, 80% of customers are more likely to shop with brands that offer personalized experiences, such as holiday-theme stores for buying holiday items.

You need to decorate your entire website, its banner, themed color, festive icons and pop-up notifications to give immediate holiday spirit to customers.

For example – If you want to sell candles and snowflakes this holiday season, you need to decorate your homepage with glowing and floating candles, snowflakes softly falling in the background, and many more eye-catching elements that make shopping experiences more memorable for customers.

Tweaking these small changes can lead to big results, especially in the holiday season.

4. Provide Gift Suggestions

Another strategy to increase your sales this holiday season is by offering relevant gift suggestions to customers.

As the holiday season can get overwhelming and customers want perfect gift items then helping them find the right items can increase chances to make purchases.

If customers are coming to your online store, exploring products, add-to-cart, and spending hours searching for the right gifts, then based on their interest and buying pattern, your online store can auto-suggest relevant gift items, which may take customers’ attention and drive extra sales in your business.

Also, you need to make the process of finding and buying gifts from your online store much easier.

It’s similar to upselling and cross-selling, where you can recommend gift items to customers based on their previous purchases and give them extra discounts and bonuses, which encourage them to make purchases faster.

5. Offer Free Gifts and Shipping

Who doesn’t want free gifts and shipping, especially during the holiday season?

Well, this is the most effective and high-converting offer that every customer wants to grab.

It helps to encourage every potential customer to spend more and grab rewards like free shipping and gift items.

As this holiday season is a time of giving then offering such eye-catching deals to your customers can drive huge sales in your business this holiday season.

In fact, 70% of customers prefer free shipping, and 62% of customers don’t purchase if shipping isn’t free.

It clearly shows how free shipping is a key factor for them to make buying decisions.

Plus, offering free gift items after a certain cart value can encourage customers to spend more and overall increase sales in your business.

For example –  If you’re running a skincare online store, then you can offer free items for every purchase over $40 cart value and additional free shipping, which makes it easier for customers to make an immediate purchase.

Overall, it increased sales, satisfied customers, and high chances of repeat buyers.

6. Retarget Customers

If your online store is getting good traffic, especially in the holiday season, that doesn’t mean you’re getting sales as well.

According to the stats, only 4 out of every 100 people who visit your website buy your products.

But what if I told you that there’s a way to increase these conversion rates from the same people who didn’t purchase from your website earlier? Yes, ‘Retargeting your visitors/past customers’ comes in as an effective strategy for business.

There are two ways to use retargeting, i.e., running ads or email campaigns.

So, if you’ve email IDs of previous customers who came to your website, explored products, or add-to-cart but didn’t check out, then you can use email marketing campaigns to send email reminders about your new irresistible offers, which can attract them to make a purchase or just a follow-up reminder that say:

• “Your cart misses you! Complete your order now and enjoy 30% off.”

This way, you can re-engage with your abandoned cart users.

On the other hand, you can utilize social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook to run promotional campaigns and target only those people who came to your website previously and attract them with new deals and discounts.

It helps previous visitors immediately recognize your brand because they’ve visited earlier, and an irresistible offer helps them make quick purchase decisions.

That’s a really effective method that almost every brand uses to turn their lost visitors into customers and bring sales to business.

7. Create Urgency

One of the most popular ways that almost every business uses to increase sales during the holiday season is by creating a sense of urgency.

But how can you create a sense of urgency for your products?

Well, there are several ways you can create urgency during the holiday season and encourage customers to make quick buying decisions. Some of the effective ways can be:

• Using a countdown timer
• Limited-time offer
• Show low-stock alerts
• Last-minute deal
• Flash sales

By combining these strategies, you can run multiple urgency triggers that encourage customers to make quick buying decisions. So, instead of waiting, give customers a ‘Now or Never’ deal.

For example – If you are running a holiday special discount, add a countdown timer on your online store, which shows only 13 hours left to end the deal of 50% off. It encourages customers to make a quick buying experience and leads to immediate purchase.

8. Actively Engage with Customers on Social Channels

Social media is one of the biggest sources of customers for businesses, especially in festive seasons like holidays. 

At this time, almost everyone is active on social media platforms, posting and sharing festive content.

It’s the right time for businesses to engage with their potential customers on social media channels and turn their followers into customers.

There are numerous ways businesses have to engage with potential customers on social media platforms, such as responding to comments, answering questions, posting theme content, participating in trending conversations, and running giveaways.

Here are some engaging ideas for posts during holiday seasons to drive engagement:

• Holiday Polls and Questions – “What’s your favorite holiday movie?”
• User-Generated Content (UGC) – “Share photos or stories from customers using your products during festive season”
• DIY Tips or Tutorials – “Quick Holiday Home Decor Ideas”
• Flash Sale Announcements – “24-hour flash sales up to 50% off”

Doing such small tasks leads to high engagement with customers and builds loyalty.

9. Use Video Ads in Marketing Campaigns

Video ads are the most powerful way to run marketing campaigns during the holiday season. 

Did you know? Over 91% of businesses use videos to promote their products to potential audiences because 90% of people believe that video ads help them make purchase decisions faster.

Videos have the most incredible impact on how people engage, and more engagement leads to fast purchasing decisions.

So, if you’re preparing for this holiday season to promote your product then use video for running marketing campaigns and catch more people’s attention.

10. Collaborate with Influencers

Collaborating with influencers is one of the smartest ways for businesses to promote their products with authenticity during the holiday season.

When an influencer promotes your product to their audience, then it builds trust and a connection between the audience and your brand, which leads to more sales and brand reputation.

Many giant brands are established and recognized globally by leveraging influencer marketing.

Plus, small brands don’t need to work with big influencers who have millions of followers. They can focus on reaching small influencers who have a good amount of followers in the particular industry your product is in so that you can connect with the right audiences and drive high ROI.

11. Sell Gift Cards

Selling gift cards is the easiest way to boost your sales during this holiday season.

Because many customers are planning to buy gift cards this year. And, when customers buy gift cards then it increases sales. Gift Cards are also the best gift to share with loved ones, especially if you don’t know what to give then this can be an ultimate solution.

12. Create a Holiday-themed Referral or Loyalty Program

The holiday season is all about sharing joy, and businesses do it wisely by running referral and loyalty programs with their customers. 

So, if you have a loyal customer community, then you should create referral or loyalty programs and invite potential customers to win rewards like discounts, gift cards, points, or festive-themed products.

For example – you can run a referral program like “Refer a friend and get $50 off coupon”.

It can reward your existing loyal customers and bring new customers during this holiday.

Every customer loves winning rewards, and creating such loyalty or referral programs helps brands connect with customers and drive more sales and new customers into the business.

13. Invest In Paid Advertisements

If you asked what’s the right time for a business to spend on advertisements and get high ROI, then it’s the festive season.

The holiday season is a prime time for businesses to increase paid advertisements and get in front of potential customers. Because customers are in a buying mood and whoever comes first in front of them can drive sales in their business.

In this highly competitive market, businesses need to spend on advertisements to stay in the game.

Some of the best platforms to utilize for paid advertisements are Google Ads, Facebook/Instagram Ads, YouTube Ads, TikTok Ads, etc, which enable businesses to reach the right audience and drive sales with high ROI.

For example – If you’re selling Christmas items, then you can run ads on Google to target keywords like “best Christmas gifts under $50”, and whenever people search this keyword, your online store appears first, and there’s a high chance of clicks and conversions.

Similarly, you can run ads on multiple platforms to get your potential audience’s attention and turn them into customers.

14. Personalize Your Email-Marketing Campaigns

68% of shoppers pay more attention to emails during the holiday season because they know that they’ll receive existing deals and discount offers from brands during the holiday season.

So, it’s your chance to utilize email marketing and grab this huge opportunity.

However, many businesses made one common mistake, i.e., sending generic emails to their customers, which didn’t get any results.

So, you need to share personalized emails to potential customers with irresistible offers that lead to high conversion.

For example – If someone purchases an item like a wallet from your store, then you can send a personalized email by offering relevant other items at discounted prices, such as leather belts, something which they are likely to consider this holiday season.

By referring to their name and last purchase in the email, you can make it personalized and recommend relevant products to increase the chances of making a purchase.

There are various ways to use email marketing to connect with potential customers and drive more traffic and sales.

15. Upsell through “Custom Gift Wrapping”

During the holiday season, people give gifts to their loved ones with beautiful wrapping for a personal touch. 

This idea can be an upsell for your business. So whenever a customer proceeds to check out any product on your online store, you can offer custom gift wrapping for a festive theme with an extra charge, which many people like to pay and lead to upsell.

Around 50% of consumers are willing to pay extra for personalized packaging during the holidays.

This not only increases upsells but also bonds a strong connection between the brand and customers for such a personalized experience.

Additional Considerations for Planning Holiday Marketing Campaign

Here are some additional considerations when you’re planning for a holiday marketing campaign:

1. Start Early and Set Clear Objectives

Timing is everything in business, especially during the holiday season.

If you want to stay ahead of the competitors, the first thing to consider is to start planning and promoting early. Otherwise, your competitor will steal your customers. You need to plan and set clear objectives you want to achieve during this holiday, like more sales, bringing new customers, repeat purchases, or clearing old inventory. 

When you have a clear objective, it’s easier to work towards it, create irresistible offers around it, and promote heavily and early to reach potential customers and drive sales.

2. Focus on Personalizing Experiences

Providing a personalized customer experience is now helping brands build a strong relationship with customers, which leads to more sales. Instead of sending generic wishes, you need to spend some time to tailor your message for your potential customers.

This will help you catch customers’ attention and build trust for the brand.

3. Choose the Right Channels and Tools

Many businesses make mistakes and run paid advertisements on the wrong channels, which leads to no sales in return. So, businesses need to choose the right channels to target where their potential customers are available.

Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or email, you need to know exactly which platform can help you reach potential customers during the festive season and drive your sales. Because choosing the right tools and channels can drive high ROI in your business.

4. Keep an Eye on Competitors

If you’re preparing for this holiday season then your competitors too. So make sure to keep an eye on competitors’ strategies, what offers they’re running, and how they catch customers’ attention.

If you are aware of your competitors’ strategies, you can plan and come up with irresistible offers that can turn their potential customers into yours. Let’s say your competitors are offering free shipping; then you can offer free shipping and a free gift with every purchase. It helps your business step ahead and drive more sales.

5. Think from a Shopper’s Perspective

The holiday season is special for customers, and every brand must understand from their customer’s perspective to make the holiday season more special. You can think about how customers will react when they see your offer.

• Are they happy to see gifts, fast delivery, or custom packaging?
• What are the kind of discounts they would totally invest in?
• What are the best-selling products?

If you think from a shopper’s perspective, it becomes easier for you to create campaigns your customers want and make more sales than the competition. 

Final Words

Holiday marketing is a big chance for businesses to connect with their potential customers, boost sales, and increase brand visibility. However, a competitive market requires unique ways to stand out.

By following these strategies, you can prepare for this holiday season and drive sales like never before.

Now, it’s your turn to take action, try implementing these strategies and find out which brings results in your business. We hope this guide helps you find some crazy strategies to make this holiday season more special.

At AureateLabs, we help businesses to prepare for the holiday season by adding new features, designing holiday-specific landing pages, and more things related to their online store to bring sales and new customers. Still, if you have any questions left?

Reach our experts — we’re here to support you every step of the way! 😊