Christmas marketing ideas on a budget

t would be something of a colossal understatement to say that Christmas 2020 is going to be a bit different from every other year.

But for embattled retailers, this festive period is going to be critical for business survival and saving jobs. Marketing and advertising campaigns still have to take place, yet how can brands with what will likely be markedly smaller budgets do to grab attention, generate sales but do it in a more cost-effective, cheaper way?

From the national and international players to local micro-brands, here’s a look at some of the ways in which Christmas marketing can be done on a budget?

Switch to cheaper channels

Now, we all love the war of the Christmas ads. Will John Lewis invoke the most tears this year, or maybe Sainsbury’s will do it again with another 1914 mid-war kickabout? Maybe the little blue Argos alien family will return!

But these campaigns cost millions of pounds. Just think how much the before-mentioned department store must have spent flying that grandpa to the Moon so he could wave at his grandchild back on Earth!

You could reach just as many people, and perhaps in a more targeted way too, by switching to cheaper marketing channels for the big Christmas push. Need to target older demographics? Most of them are on Facebook these days anyway. Remarket, remarket, remarket, and engage your existing customer-base through segmented email campaigns.

Your Christmas campaign this year can quite easily be your message and your offering instead of big-budget productions across traditional media designed to grab attention and Twitter mentions.

There’s a flip side to this as well. This year, more than any other year, there’s greater scope for getting it catastrophically wrong. Public opinion on big-spending advertising campaigns is far from positive (see my last point in this article for proof), and the wrong message could cause more harm than good for the festive sales push.

I’m not saying play it safe, but think twice, three times and maybe 40-times more before signing off on the creative idea.

Influence your way to festive success

If you have a lot of product but not much budget, influencer marketing could be the festive approach for your brand!

Tapping into a network of trusted influencers, especially smaller micro-influencers, can gain a lot of trusted coverage by sending product samples or free gifts instead of shelling out on bigger, mega social media stars.

Around 80% of marketers say influencer marketing is effective, and micro-influencers (those with fewer than 30k followers) tend to see a 60% higher engagement rate — as well as proving more cost-effective.

You can also leverage partner promotions to put some budget behind influencer (or user-generated content) posts to ensure they reach even more people.

Defer competition prizes until you can afford them

If your big idea for Christmas 2020 is to run an amazing competition, then you could support a dwindling marketing budget by making the prize redeemable for next year instead of right now.

Competitions are a really cost-effective way of drumming up mass social media engagement and reach or driving mailing list sign-ups via a landing page.

But to make the campaign more effective, you can focus all remaining budget on the promotion of the campaign right now and save the cash on purchasing the prize until later down the line.

This could work particularly well for holiday or experience brands — something to look forward to in 2021!

Recognise your best customers

One of the most under-utilised digital marketing strategies is that of social surprises, or surprise and delight. A great example is a restaurant that tracks localised mentions on Twitter of people complaining about their crappy lunch. They can then swoop in with an offer of a free lunch tomorrow to make up for it.

Whilst this approach of surprise and delight typically focus on customer acquisition, you could use a similar strategy to recognise your best customers.

With data protection / generally not wanting to seem snoopy in mind, you could call out certain customers on social media for being the most loyal / active / shopping the most and give them a prize to say thanks!

Or, you could email them directly, maybe offer a gift as a thank you and look to drive UGC in return.

Another option is to focus on your employees instead and make them the stars of your Christmas marketing efforts. Openly recognising staff members for their contributions not only enhances employer brand (which research shows affect both hiring, retention and sales), but it taps into what customers want to see brands doing this year for their Christmas promotions (more on that later).

Real people, real stories, and celebrating your employees is a fantastic message — and one that will turn your people into your greatest marketing mouthpiece too.

It’s taking employee recognition public for everyone to celebrate and appreciate.

Focus on doing good instead of selling stuff

Survey results from OnePoll released in the summer found that three-quarters of people think brands should focus on real people this year and move away from producing their usual style of Christmas campaign.

Sixty-three per cent even said they would feel less positively about brands who spend big on Crimbo campaigns.

What this shows businesses is that the landscape has well and truly changed. And as we’ve seen from the amazing acts of community (from people and companies alike) throughout the pandemic, people really do want to shop and recognise those organisations who are doing their bit.

So, for your Christmas campaign this year, why not focus on doing good instead of selling stuff? After all, the initial goal of any marketing or advertising campaign is to grab attention and reach, but you can do that by helping others (and carefully making sure everyone knows about it).

Consumers are ‘craving real-life, authentic content’, and during the year of Covid, those real-life stories can be just as much about what your brand is doing to help others than people using your products or services.