As 2022 comes to a close, and the festive season has dawned upon us, it’s time to dust off the New Year's marketing ideas folder and grab a hold of all the rich marketing campaigns it has to offer.
The only issue is that many tried-and-tested festive marketing campaigns can come off a little cliché, or over-done.
On this list, I’ll guide you through some more creative ideas and strategies you can use this holiday season to improve your marketing campaigns.
Best New Year's Marketing Ideas
After a year that saw retail sales grow by 16.9% after a rather slow 2020, December 2021’s retail sales dropped by 1.9% from the previous month. This was due to the rising prices of basic amenities.
The great news is that this year, ecommerce in the U.S. grew 10.8% in the third quarter of 2022. This offers a glimpse of hope for online businesses. Retail sales also grew by 7.2%, showing that people are happy to return to shops after the pandemic.
To fully utilize the festive season, your marketing campaigns need to not only give customers that special holiday feeling, but also need to be different from the large pool of run-of-the-mill festive content out there.
Here are the top New Year’s marketing ideas you can utilize this festive season.
1. Send Customized New Year’s Emails
As the festive season approaches, getting a New Year’s email marketing campaign up and running is essential. This is a simple exercise, but if done wrong, most customers simply scroll past the email.
Personalized emails have time and time again proven to have a higher click-through rate (CTR) than emails that don’t. According to this study, personalized emails have a 2.5x higher CTR.
This is especially true if you’re running a small business with loyal customers. A personalized New Year's email will show your customers that you care about their business.
So, how do you write a personalized email that stands out from the rest of the boring, “season’s greetings” emails?
- Add your customer’s name for some extra personalization.
- Make sure you’re targeting your audience and their intent when writing the email.
- Send it before New Year’s, since people’s inboxes will be flooded with New Year’s Emails on New Year's Day.
- Create a festive-themed call-to-action button.
If you’re running a New Year’s sale, don’t forget to mention and link to it.
If your email open rates have been low all year, it might be your subject line.
Don’t know what to write in your subject line? Don’t worry, I’ve got your back. Here’s a list of some of the best email subject lines to get people’s attention.
If you feel like you aren’t able to craft professional-looking emails, don’t worry. There are tools like Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) that can help you.
Brevo is a marketing tool that is also capable of creating an email list and sending mass, personalized emails to potential leads. The option to create a template is what makes it really great.
Email marketing tools like this are an excellent way to optimize your email campaigns.
2. Welcome the New Year on Social Media
Social media marketing is an important part of any media campaign. So it only makes sense that you should include New Year marketing as part of your social media marketing campaign.
There are many ways to engage your followers on social media. One such example is giveaways.
Giveaways tend to have higher engagement rates. Not to mention, if you ask people to like and share to be eligible, you’ll likely attract new potential leads.
You can also use New Year’s social media posts to get followers excited about what your brand is bringing to the table in the new year.
New Year's is also a great time to show off your new brand logo, avatar, or branding. If you’re not feeling like completely changing your branding, you can opt for a short-term festive change.
Google is easily the best example, with their logo for Google Search constantly changing according to date, occasion, holiday, or season. It’s even location specific, with Google’s logo changing according to special days in other countries.
If you’re looking to create the ultimate social media post, you can start off by using PixTeller.
This tool provides easy ways through which you can create an avatar for your social media pages from scratch or choose from their highly enriched profile pictures. Choose a new year theme and edit it according to your liking and brand colors.
This can definitely catch the attention of your social media audience and increase brand awareness on social channels. It’ll also put your brand’s name on the top of their minds at the right time so that you can start off strong in the new year.
3. Create a New Year’s Themed Challenge
Creating a new challenge will get your followers involved and engaging with your content and brand.
One of the best social media platforms to start these sorts of challenges is TikTok. It seems every week there seems to be a new trending challenge.
@movewithusapp What's your next step? Our New Year Challenge sign-ups open December 12th! 🗓️ #challenge #fitnessjourney ♬ Epic Emotional – AShamaluevMusic
Above is an excellent example. Move With Us is a women’s health and fitness program. In this TikTok, they’re already promoting their upcoming New Year’s challenge.
There are many other types of social media contests you can create with a New Year’s twist. Some social media contest ideas include:
- Photo/video contest
- Caption this contest
- Viral dance contest
- Best quote contest
Here’s another funny challenge, using a Drake meme.
New Year’s challenges aren’t all just about getting fit, so you can wear that pair of jeans that haven’t fit right since 2019. There are plenty of other trends.
@cdngirlcashstuffer Can’t wait to start this savings challenge in the New Year!
♬ original sound – cdnGirlCashStuffer
Cdngirlcashstuffer is a TikToker known for her cash-saving tips and challenges. This year, she’s not only created a New Year’s money-saving challenge, but she’s also selling her 52-week savings challenge set on Etsy to help her followers save along with her.
4. Host a Livestream Event
Livestream events seem to have become the norm on many larger social media channels. YouTube channels like Good Mythical Morning recently had their annual Good Mythical Evening, an adult-orientated version of their episode.
This livestream wasn’t free. Viewers purchased a ticket to a livestream of the event on livestreaming host, Moment. This is also a prominent way that musicians like Twenty One Pilots created and played live shows during the pandemic.
This might be a viable option if you have over a hundred thousand followers, but for smaller brands and influencers, you can also host a livestream event on your social media account. This could include TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitch.
For last year’s New Year’s countdown, YouTube channel, Earthcam, hosted a livestream event of the New Year’s countdown in Times Square, New York.
The video from the livestream has been viewed 193K times.
5. Use New Year’s Themed Hashtags
#NewYearNewMe has over 2 million posts on Instagram. It’s also a hashtag that you can use to promote a fun contest.
You can ask your followers to take a photo of themselves, write a funny New Year's resolution in the caption space, and use the hashtag #NewYearNewMe.
Here’s a great example of a viral dance contest that used the hashtag #newyear2022. PC Lapez created this dancing into 2022 video last year. His TikTok channel has almost 130K followers, and the video has over 4K likes.
@pclapez #moneydancechallenge #2022 #newyear #money #foryoupage #newchallenge #dancechallenge
♬ original sound – PC Lapez
To monitor mentions, track your hashtags, and engage your customers, use HubSpot Social Media software. It helps you monitor mentions so that you can easily engage in conversations that matter to your brand.
6. Don’t Forget Traditional Festive Marketing
Publishing creative social media and marketing content is a great way to get more engagement and conversions, but don’t forget traditional festive marketing.
If you own a brick-and-mortar shop, try adding festive decorations and have festive sales to make the most of Christmas and New Year shopping.
The National Retail Federation is estimating that, in the United States alone, people will spend between $942-$960 billion during this holiday season. An overall increase of 8% over last year.
To capitalize on this increase in spending, traditional holiday sales, themed ads/campaigns, and some decorations can do wonders for your business, whether it be online or physical.
As you can see, large brands have already started festive promotions. On Adidas’ official website, they’ve already created a festive catalog for shoppers looking to purchase gifts. This promotion carries on all the way through to New Year’s.
If you’re looking for some holiday inspiration, Canva is a great place to start. Canva offers themes for website pages, as well as banners, menus, posters, and so much more! All of these have New Year’s and Christmas themes to choose from.
7. Launch a New Product for the New Year
One of the most popular New Year's marketing ideas for businesses is to launch new products at the start of a New Year.
A great New Year marketing idea would need heavy marketing campaigns throughout December, eventually leading up to the product launch at midnight on New Year’s Eve.
You can even offer a discount for the first customers to sweeten the deal.
Although not related to the western New Year, Reebok created a cool, year of the dog pair of shoes for the 2018 Lunar New Year.
8. Have a New Year’s Day Sale
Even if you’re not launching a new product, it’s a great idea to have a limited New Year’s Day sale.
While your holidays and sales may have just ended, there may be customers who are waiting for better bargains. This is the perfect time to give those customers a shot at buying your products or services.
Give out discount coupons to your customers during the sale. This can even help increase brand loyalty.
Here’s an example of a New Year’s email I received last year. What I really like about this email is the countdown timer. It counts the time down until the sale ends, which is a great way to convince customers to buy now instead of waiting.
9. Launch a Post New Year Sale
Sales will always decrease during the post-holiday lull in January, only slightly picking up as Valentine's Day rears its love-struck head.
To soften the blow, you can always offer post New Year’s sales. These sales are a great way to get rid of any stock leftover from the holiday sales.
It could also be a great way to possibly attract customers who were curious during the festive season but didn’t want to pay the full price.
For example, Booking.com came up with a 20% discount offer for the 2020 holiday season, and they continued it well into 2021 to incentivize their prospects to book hotels and flights with them.
10. Utilize Holiday Impulse Purchases
Holidays are a time when people eagerly want to purchase things they’ve been wanting all year, but didn’t buy.
It’s there in the back of their minds, just looking for a reason to click “buy.” That’s where holiday discounts, sales, and “rewards” come in.
Make sure you have a sales funnel lined up and ready during the holiday season. When customers are on your email list, make sure to remind them of items they might have added to their carts, and sweeten the deal a bit with a discount or free delivery.
Spotify is an excellent example. Every year, they send users who canceled their premium accounts within a timeframe a limited deal. This deal offers you 3 months for the price of a single month as a way to get you back on their subscription model.
11. Have a Body-Positive Promotion
Yet another innovative New Year marketing idea is that of launching a body-positive promotion for your audience.
A lot of New Year’s resolutions are about weight loss. In fact, about 31% of Americans wanted to lose weight as a part of their New Year's resolutions for 2022. Additionally, 44% of them want to exercise more, too.
You can leverage these resolutions as an opportunity for marketing your products or services. Having a promotion that specifically targets this group of customers can work greatly in your favor.
You can create an atmosphere where your customers will be empowered to love their body as it is. At the same time, you can promote a healthy lifestyle through the marketing campaign. You can run promotions on clothes of all sizes and even market them in such a manner.
Aerie, for instance, markets their clothes with photos of models of all sizes. They don’t retouch any of their photos to push for body positivity.
You can even add products to your promotion that will help customers reach their resolution goals. For instance, an electrical appliances brand can advertise smoothie makers that can help improve diets.
Make sure that you share these promotions through all the modes of marketing available.
You must also make sure that the promotion is for a specific product that is related to the resolution. By highlighting its benefits and offering a discount, you can push the customers to take action.
12. Host a Themed New Year’s Party
No list of New Year's marketing ideas could be complete without a New Year’s Eve party idea.
Everyone wants to ring in the New Year with some sort of celebration. Pubs and restaurants charge a fortune to attend a New Year's Eve party. However, not everyone wants to shell out so much cash to celebrate.
You can use the occasion to your advantage by throwing a party for your loyal customers. The party doesn’t necessarily need to have DJs and a special menu. It can be anything related to your business too.
For instance, you could let the guests try out your latest products at the party.
Such New Year's marketing ideas can go a long way to help you to increase brand loyalty. Just make sure that you advertise the event well. Be it on social media or brick-and-mortar locations, such events can be a big draw for people.
You could even partner with influential names to host or promote the party.
Ciroc, for example, collaborated with Sean Combs for their ads. He even hosted a New Year’s party with the hashtag #CirocTheNewYear. This party was sponsored by them and helped them reach out to more people too.
13. Share a Branded Promotional Calendar
Another one of the top New Year's marketing ideas is to make a calendar for the coming year.
Consider creating a customized calendar and sending it out to your loyal customers. You could even offer this as an add-on to your customers’ holiday purchases.
How does this help your business?
Your customers can use the calendars throughout the year. This can help keep your business at the top of their minds all year long. This is one of the easiest-to-implement and simple New Year's marketing ideas that can help you grow your brand.
How To Develop a Memorable New Year’s Ad Campaign
Don’t Take it Too Seriously
Humor is your friend when it comes to creating and running ad campaigns. Some of the best ad campaigns have been built off the backs of funny sketches and ads. Recently, memes have also been used by companies on their social media pages to help promote their brands.
Here’s a quirky Twitter post from McDonald’s European Twitter account, showing off some holiday cheer.
Spreading a little Christmas cheer from our Swedish colleagues @mcdse pic.twitter.com/5cfVg91CzH
— McDonald's Europe (@McDonaldsEurope) December 19, 2014
Image via Twitter
Use As Many Marketing Channels As Possible
To gain as much awareness as possible about your brand’s New Year marketing campaign, you’ll need to use all possible marketing channels.
This includes, but is not limited to:
- Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube
- Paid commercials on TV and radio
- Paid ads in written content like newspapers and magazines
- Google Ads
Create a Holiday Campaign Schedule
It might only last about two months at most, but planning your marketing campaign’s schedule is important.
Picking the best days to have sales, which days to run ads, and the best times to post on social media will all have an effect on how well your campaign does. This is especially true if you want to have limited sales on exact dates, like Christmas Eve or New Year’s Day.
The success of these limited sale campaigns will largely depend on how well they were marketed beforehand.
FAQs
Q1. How to do Chinese New Year campaigns right?
A. Consider your audience's behavior and the theme of the holiday.
The main theme of the Chinese New Year holiday is family, and it should reflect in your marketing campaigns. Your messaging should also emotionally connect with your target audience and emphasize how your products help bring people together.
Q2. How to attract last-minute holiday shoppers?
A. Here is how you can capture the interest of last-minute holiday shoppers:
– Offer them tailored gift guides.
– Center your gifts on a theme like dad, adventure, secret Santa, daughter, etc. and feature them in prominent areas.
– Promote gift cards and gift certificates.
– Lower your prices or offer discounts.
– Run social media giveaways and contests.
– Offer a flash sale.
Q3. What's an example of a viral marketing attempt that failed?
A. In 2019, Burberry®, a British luxury fashion house, ran a Chinese Lunar New Year marketing campaign that attracted a lot of criticism.
Their campaign, which featured family portraits, missed the point in terms of their target audience and the theme of the holiday.
As a result, many criticized the family portraits as creepy and likened them to horror films.
Q4. Why do marketing campaigns fail?
A. The following are some reasons why your marketing campaigns could fail:
– You failed to understand your target audience.
– Your product or service did not deliver as advertised.
– Your message did not address the needs or wants of your audience.
– You set unrealistic business goals.
– You did not promote it enough or timed the marketing campaign poorly.
Ready to Get More Traction?
New Year’s Day may seem like the end of the past year and the end of the holiday season. However, with effective New Year's marketing ideas and strategies, you can make the most of this occasion.
Launching promotions, contests, or new products, and sending New Year’s greetings can go a long way to build your brand’s image and boost sales.
Which New Year's marketing ideas have you implemented in the past? Let us know your innovative New Year's marketing ideas and thoughts on the ones mentioned in this post in the comments section below.
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