How to maximise your holiday advertising campaign

Get the most out of your holiday advertising campaign to maximise your holiday sales. The end of year holiday season is like the Super Bowl of advertising. You start off with Halloween, move into Thanksgiving and rush through Black Friday and Cyber Monday before the grand final of it all, Christmas and Boxing Day.

With people’s spending expected to reach record highs, your brands need a refined strategy to convert high holiday traffic into loyal customers.

The end-of-year shopping season

Roy Morgan reports that the Australian Retailers Association expects pre-Christmas sales to reach $73.1 billion. This is a 4.2% increase from 2024. 

The Deloitte Retail Holiday Report 2025 suggests that 84% of retailers expect stronger sales in 2025, up from 51% in 2024. They also predict that Chrismas and Boxing Day will deliver more sales than Click Frenzy, Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Most consumers plan to spend more during the holiday season, with 33% expecting to increase their spending compared to last year. Australians aged 18 - 24 and blue-collar workers are leading the charge back to the checkout. 

Even if you can't compete with big chains on sales, consider how you can advertise to stand out and attract pre-Christmas shoppers. 

If you don't have a proven sales plan yet, here are some steps you can take now to ensure results by 31 December.

Learn from the advertising campaign wins... and mistakes

Plan your holiday campaigns in advance, especially as an eCommerce brand. Before creating new campaigns, review past ones to see what was effective and what wasn't. 

The top questions to ask yourself are:

• How did your holiday campaign go last year?
• If it went well, why did it go well?
• If it went poorly, why did it go poorly

By using the data you have, you can work out where your customers are and which channels work well to find them. Check your website data to identify which channels brought in the most traffic and which ones had the highest conversion rates.

You also want to look at your website and your landing page. Firstly, did you create a landing page? If not, why? 

Landing pages are a great way to track the success of a campaign if your prospects are going to a specific page on your website rather than just your home page. 

Use Google Analytics and heat mapping tools to see how customers use your website. Find out how far they scroll and what they click on. You can then make changes before you launch your next campaign. 

Next up, you want to look at the ad creative you used last year. What did the ads look like and how did the look differ across each channel? Tweak your ad creative so you are using graphics and copy that you know have worked well to convert in the past. 

Where to find your customer

With any digital advertising campaign, you’re going to want to build a strong foundation. Start with the first-party data you have, like website activity and purchase history. Make sure you upload your customer match data too. This information in your Google Ads platform will help you cross-sell to current customers and find new ones similar to your best customers. 

Ensure you also have Google Analytics enabled and Google Tags sorted so your traffic and engagement data is accurate.

Prep and train before the end-of-the-year

If you can, start prepping for your Christmas advertising campaigns early. This will give you time to test and optimise your campaign so by the time you get to Boxing Day, your ads are nailing it every time. 

However, having a really successful campaign and being able to influence a purchase decision is something you should be working on all-year-round. 

Look at ways you can connect to your customers throughout the year so that you build a loyal group of followers. When you get to your busy season, they will have come along for the ride with you all year and be ready to celebrate… and buy! 

Don’t just get in touch when you want them to buy from you. Make sure you are building the relationship throughout the year.  

With big sales like Black Friday and Christmas, one way to keep your customers warm is to do teaser campaigns. These campaigns aim to keep customers engaged and encourage them to join your email list for regular communication. Include sneak peeks of your products or sales to build excitement. 

Social media ads are a great way to share your teasers, especially as Reels and TikToks.

Holidays are the Super Bowl

This is the time that you want to finish strong. Continue to capture your customers and use your highest-performing assets. This is the time to show it off. Don’t leave anything on the table.

As you review your past campaigns and think about how to improve, take a moment to see what others are doing too.

There is a lot to learn from a competitor. Or as Simon Sinek puts it, a worthy rival.

Use Meta Ads Library or Google Ads Transparency Center to see what ads your competitors are running. For B2B brands, check out LinkedIn’s Ad Library too. This great to see what sales they are offering and how they are promoting their Christmas offerings.

See how you can do it better. Think about what you offer that’s different to your competitors. Why should a customer pick your brand over theirs? Use that as content for promoting to potential customers.

Who is going Christmas well

One area that has seen a huge impact, especially on social media, is the rise of Advent Calendars. There is almost an unspoken competition online to find the weirdest one. Aussie influencer Christian Hull does a whole series on the weird and wacky ones he finds. 

If you're well-prepared, consider creating your own advent calendar to sell or give to loyal customers. This is even something you could do digitally. 

The digital advent calendar can be used to transform a single purchase intention into 24 days of sustained engagement. By gamifying the holiday season, you can drive repeat and consistent daily traffic to your website. 

As part of the process, you could ask for an email to ‘open the doors’. This will quickly build your first-party data for future retargeting. Each daily reveal, whether it's an exclusive sale, interactive content, or sneak peek, creates a sense of daily FOMO.  

Optimise the user experience

User experience is a must when it comes to a sale. If something doesn’t work, takes too long to figure out or they simply can’t make a purchase, they will be on to the next. 

Take a look at your data and see how most people view your website. Is it mobile or desktop? You then want to make sure that your website is 100% optimised for both. This will help boost sales.

According to Shopify, 72% of shoppers completed their Black Friday transactions on a mobile in 2021. Ensure your mobile site is ready to convert visitors into buyers before launching your next digital advertising campaign. 

This is also a good time to do a buyer journey audit, which will help make the path to purchase as simple as possible. Be clear and straightforward to avoid losing potential customers to competitors, regardless of how good your offer is. 

These are some questions to ask:

• Does the first click from an ad or email lead to the right product?
• Can shoppers easily use the search features?
• Is the product information easy to digest?
• Can you remove any clicks from the checkout experience to streamline the process?
• Are you capturing data for retargeting or abandoned cart recovery?

Once you’ve audited your buyer journey, you can start to implement any changes that will lead to success.

Personalise communication

2026 just might be the year of personalisation when it comes to marketing. People are increasingly craving genuine human connection. When people get something from a brand, they want to feel special. They don’t want to be one of many getting the same email.

Personalisation has moved far beyond a simple, Hi [insert first name] email element. Customers are more likely to convert from personalised communications. According to HubSpot, personalised call-to-actions (CTA) perform 202% better than basic CTAs. 

Personalisation also works on existing customers with 60% of shoppers also anticipating becoming repeat buyers following personalised shopping experiences. 

In 2026, it will become more common to send a specific email to a customer. You might do this when you see they clicked on your ad about face cream and you want to tell them the face cream is on special. The interesting thing is that many people will use AI to easily make their communications and marketing more personal!

Segment your best-selling products to create a Holiday Christmas Gift Guide, featuring similar items to promote upselling. Or share products they will also love based on their past purchase history.

You can also group products together by price. If a customer has spent $100 in the past, the likelihood that they would all of a sudden decide to spend $500 is low. So instead of sending them high-ticket products, you could send them a gift guide for under $200. 

The wrap up (pun intended)

To maximise your revenue during the peak holiday season, you need to focus. Make sure Christmas and Boxing Day drive the biggest sales. 

Success hinges on a rapid, data-driven strategy. Review last year's advertising performance to identify your top ad creatives and channels. Then, use first-party data for targeted and retargeted campaigns. 

Ensure your website’s path to purchase is smooth and leverage behavioral data to segment customers and deliver highly personalised content.

Finish strong by monitoring competitor strategies and showcasing your unique selling points. By focusing on data integrity, user experience and genuine connection, you are positioned to convert this massive opportunity into your best result yet.

Working out Christmas campaigns can be daunting for some. From audience segmentation to developing ad creatives, if you need expert support to fine-tune your strategy, audit your buyer journey or manage your digital advertising efforts effectively, whether during the holiday rush or at any point in the year, get in touch. We’re here to help turn data into definitive results.