Approximately 30% of Canadians shop for the holidays on Black Friday.

The reality is that in order for brands to be competitive in the digital advertising space during the holiday season, you need to start working on your strategy early to see the benefits later. Last year, holiday retail sales reached $789.4 billion with a projected 2.5% growth in 2023. If you want to be part of that, you need to start thinking about your products, promotions and holiday ads schedule now. By starting early, you are giving your business a good chance of developing conversion-worthy ads to connect with your audience and make them want to include you on their holidays shopping list.

Keep reading for our tips to get your business ready for the holiday ads season. 

Concept

Having a strong concept that weaves throughout your holiday ads campaign is a great place to start planning. And remember, it’s not always about overtly selling to your audience. A good holiday ads campaign is all about messaging and evoking some kind of feeling with your customers. Some of the most popular holiday brands focus their ads efforts on the idea of bringing people together and sharing the season with the people you love. 

Think about Coca Cola. Their holiday ads almost never talk about their product. They hang their holiday ads campaigns around concepts like “Real Magic” (2020-2021) and “The Holidays Always Find A Way” (2022). Similarly, Lululemon uses their holiday campaign to focus on “Giving Presence”. The efficacy of these campaigns is that they connect with their customers’ feelings, which in turn keeps them at top of mind. 

Another popular concept around the holidays that is more overtly targeted for holiday shopping is the “12 Days of…”. Sometimes it’s deals, sales and discounts. Other times it’s giveaways and challenges, or simply incorporating a holiday theme to your products and content. 

Whichever direction you choose, there’s no wrong concept. You have to ensure that bringing your concept to life suits your brand, goals, and budget. 

57% of buyers plan to shop online during the holidays.

Platforms

With social media platforms offering a variety of methods to advertise and shop in-app, choosing your platforms is an important part of your holiday ads strategy. Think about who your target audience is where they are most active. If you’re not on that platform, now is the time to establish your brand there and build a following. That way, when you launch your holiday ads campaign, you look credible and trustworthy. 

Here are some of our favourite platforms for e-commerce integrations and advertising:

While Instagram is covered under the Meta umbrella, it’s worth exploring the platform’s specific e-commerce integrations and how you can use them to support your holiday ads campaign. With Instagram Shop, feed post shopping, story shopping and reels shopping, Instagram allows you to pull in products directly from your e-commerce website and gives customers the ability to shop in-app. This is a great opportunity to create entertaining content that doesn’t feel salesy, but encourages your audience to engage with your brand, and even convert them to customers.

Read our blog about taking advantage of Instagram shopping here.

TikTok

With TikTok’s emphasis on video content and entertainment, the platform is the ideal place to run an ads campaign that emphasizes the user experience, rather than directly trying to sell. Ads on TikTok don’t feel like ads, but there are e-commerce integrations that allow your audience to click on links directly from content. Spend some time creating videos about your brand, products and specifically your holiday campaign. This content should be friendly, conversational and not overly salesy. Use TikTok to tell your audience who you are, what you do and what problems you can solve in a way that will resonate with them.

Pinterest

If you’re an e-commerce brand and you’re not on Pinterest, you may be missing out on reaching a huge segment of your target audience. 80% of Pinterest users have discovered a new brand on the platform. Pinterest is also not a passive medium typically. Users go to Pinterest because they are looking for something: a product, inspiration, or education. With many ad objectives that can integrate into a multi-objective campaign and ads placements on users’ home feeds, search panel and similar pins section, Pinterest offers the opportunity to run successful ads campaigns that convert.

83% of Pinterest users have made a purchase based on pins from brands.

Collect and Create Assets

When it comes to online shopping in general, but during the holidays specifically, you need to catch the attention of your audience quickly. There are countless promotions running with brands competing against each other for conversions. You need to make sure your assets will help you stand out. 

Pinterest, TikTok and Instagram are all visual-first platforms where images and videos can have a big impact. While you’re planning your holiday ads campaign, take stock of your asset library to ensure you have the best content possible to represent your brand. If your content isn’t engaging, interesting, or attention grabbing, you’ll have a harder time connecting with your audience and converting customers. Strong, high-quality brand assets are crucial to achieving your advertising goals. If you don’t have photos and videos that represent your brand and tell your story, now is the time to book a photo or video shoot. Ask us how.