Holiday marketing gets a lot easier when you start before the first snow squalls roll through Simcoe County. By the time most holiday shoppers sit down with their gift lists, the businesses that catch their eye have already tuned up their websites, set their ad budgets and lined up their emails. Here at 3SIXTY, we see it every fall. The owners who plan in October spend December filling orders instead of scrambling.
So we’re giving you a little holiday gift – the digital marketing checklist we use with our own clients. It covers timing, your website, Google and Meta ads, email, and how to keep your customers engaged through Boxing Day and beyond. Work through it over the next few weeks and you’ll head into the busiest stretch of the year with a plan instead of panic.
When Should Your Business Start Your Holiday Marketing Campaigns?
Right now, if you haven’t already. Shoppers start earlier every year, and many begin doing their research and bookmarking gifts well before the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping frenzy. If your marketing isn’t in place when people start browsing, those early sales go to the competitor who was.
Cost is the other reason. Ad prices climb through November as more businesses bid for the same audiences. Campaigns launched in late October have time to learn who responds, so they’re cheaper to run once competition peaks. Starting early also gives you room to fix a broken link or a confusing offer while the stakes are low.
This is the rough timeline we typically suggest to clients.
- Late October. Audit your website, set budgets and decide on your offers.
- Early November. Launch your gift guides and awareness ads. Tease your Black Friday offers.
- November 27 to 30. Run your strongest Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals and retarget your earlier website visitors.
- First two weeks of December. Remind shoppers about shipping cutoffs and any special offers you have in place.
- Mid to late December. Promote gift cards and local pickup as last minute options.
- December 26 to 31. Launch your Boxing Day and Boxing Week deals, still one of the biggest shopping events of the year in Canada.
- January. Welcome new customers and give them a reason to come back.
How Do I Get My Website Ready for Holiday Shoppers?
Every ad, email and social post you run this season points back to your website, so it has to hold up under pressure. We look at three things you need to prioritize.
Speed comes first. Shoppers comparing gifts across several tabs won’t wait for a slow page to load. Oversized photos and unused plugins are the usual culprits, and both are quick fixes.
The mobile experience. More than half of online holiday purchases last season happened on mobile devices, so the path from product page to checkout needs to work with a thumb. Tiny buttons, pop-ups that won’t close and forms that ask for too much will cost you sales.
Make promotions easy to find. A homepage banner helps, but a dedicated holiday landing page with gifts sorted by price, age groups or audiences does more. Keep it at the same web address every year so it builds search value over time.
A quick website check you can do this week
- Run your homepage through Google PageSpeed Insights and fix anything flagged in red
- Place a test order on your phone, from product page to confirmation email
- Post your Canada Post and courier cutoff dates near the add-to-cart button
- Update your holiday hours on your Google Business Profile
- Make your gift return policy visible, something like “Returns accepted until January 31”
Check stock levels on your top sellers in your e-commerce store as well. Running out of a promoted product mid-campaign burns through ad money fast.
How Much Should I Spend on Google Ads For the Holidays?
There’s no single right number, but most of our clients raise their Google Ads budgets for November and December rather than spreading the same amount evenly across the year. Searches for gifts and deals jump, and a daily budget that runs out by noon means your ads disappear right when people are looking.
Seasonal keywords are where local businesses can win. Big retailers own broad terms like “Christmas gifts.” You can compete on specific searches such as “gift baskets Barrie,” “Boxing Day furniture sale Ontario” or “last-minute gifts Orillia.” Add negative keywords like “free” or “DIY” as well, so you aren’t paying for clicks from people who were never going to buy.
Ad extensions, which Google calls assets, give your ads more room to work. A promotion asset can show your Black Friday offer right in the search result. Sitelinks can send people straight to your gift guide, and callouts can highlight free shipping or local pickup. Schedule your ad copy to change with each phase of the season so a Black Friday ad isn’t still running on December 15.
Remarketing is the other piece we set up to target holiday shoppers. With the Google tag on your website, Google Ads builds lists of people who visited and shows them your ads as they browse other websites, watch YouTube or search again. That last one is especially handy in December. These lists take time to fill, so add the tag now rather than the week before Black Friday. And exclude recent buyers, so you aren’t paying to show a sweater to someone who already ordered it.
What Should a Meta Holiday Ad Campaign Include?
Facebook and Instagram are where a lot of people go looking for gift ideas, so treat them like a shop window. Carousel ads suit gift guides because each card can feature a different product, price point or recipient. Short videos filmed on a phone often beat polished ads, especially when they show the product being used by a real person (it’s a good idea to skip AI for this one).
Save part of your budget for retargeting. Warm audiences are people who already visited your site, watched your videos or added something to their cart and left. They know who you are, so they cost less to convert than strangers. For e-commerce brands, dynamic ads that show each person the exact product they viewed are some of the best performers we run all season.
Swap your creative every week or two. People scroll right past an image they’ve already seen five times.
How Do You Coordinate Email Marketing With Holiday Ads?
Email is one of the few channels you fully own. There’s no algorithm deciding who sees your message, your subscribers already chose to hear from you, and sending a campaign costs far less than a week of ads. The catch is that every other business knows this too. Inboxes overflow in December, and someone getting three emails a day from you is more likely to hit unsubscribe than open the fourth. Send fewer, better emails, use subject lines that say what’s inside and give people a reason to open beyond another discount code.
Your emails and ads should tell the same story on the same days. If Instagram is promoting 25% off while your inbox message announces free shipping, shoppers get confused and some won’t buy at all. At 3SIXTY, we build one calendar that shows every ad launch and email sent side by side.
A few email ideas that pair well with paid campaigns.
- Give subscribers early access to your Black Friday deals 24 to 48 hours before the ads go live
- Send your gift guide email the same week your gift guide ads launch
- Set up an abandoned cart sequence that mentions your last day to order for Christmas delivery
- Send a final gift card email around December 20 for the true last-minute crowd
- Schedule a Boxing Week promotional email to send out first thing on December 26
Use your ads to grow your list, too. A sign-up offer on your holiday page turns a one-time visitor into someone you can reach again .
How Can You Turn Holiday Shoppers Into Year-Round Customers?
Plenty of businesses ease off in January, and that’s a missed opportunity. Many of your holiday customers bought from you for the first time. Some people received gift cards they haven’t used yet. Others are browsing Boxing Week sales with money to spend.
Send new customers a short welcome series that introduces your business beyond the gift they bought. Ask for reviews while the purchase is fresh. Retarget January visitors with a simple thank you offer on their next order, and tag holiday buyers in your email list so you can reach them again next fall.
Then set aside an hour to review the season. Which ads brought in sales, which emails got opened and which products sold out? Those answers give you a head start on next year.
Let’s Get Your Holiday Marketing Ready So You Can Cash In This Year
There’s still time to pull your holiday marketing together, but the window to launch an effective campaign gets smaller every week. If you’d like a critical look at your website, ads and email plan, the team at 3SIXTY is happy to help you optimize today for the busy season ahead.
Ready to make the holiday season a success for your business? Reach out to 3SIXTY Marketing Solutions and book a free consultation now to get started. We’re a phone call away when you need us and our team can help you brainstorm your campaign ideas, design your campaign graphics and ads, as well as execute the campaigns for you so you don’t have to stress over that part either!
