Holiday Video Marketing Trends & Checklist for 2021

There’s no denying that the holiday season brings some of the busiest shopping days of the year, but for businesses of all sizes, it’s not enough to have a great product or service to nail the sale. To take full advantage of the season of spending, you’ll need to market yourself to new and potential customers online, and there’s no better way than with video.

With consumer behavior trending toward online shopping and more businesses bringing their offering online than ever, you’ll need to go the extra mile to stand out this year. And with video ads being the #1 way consumers discovered a brand they later purchased from in 2021, Animoto is the tool you need to succeed this season.

Here’s a quick rundown of what we’ll cover in this post:

• Holiday video marketing trends
  • Consumer trends
• Business trends
• Planning a successful holiday marketing campaign
  • Know your audience
  • Set goals ahead of time
• Create your videos ahead of time
• Your holiday video checklist

Holiday video marketing trends

We surveyed 500 consumers and 500 businesses to break down the biggest trends in video marketing around the holiday season. Let’s dive into the results.

What consumers are saying

• 55% of consumers were influenced to make a purchase for the holidays after viewing a video from a brand on social media.
• 46% of consumers said video is the #1 way they prefer to learn about a product while holiday shopping, followed by 35% who prefer to read and 19% who prefer to look at product photos.
• When holiday shopping, consumers ranked their favorite social platforms to find new products and services on as YouTube, Facebook Feed, and TikTok.
• Video was ranked the #1 most helpful form of content when shopping online.
• Consumers said how-to videos are their favorite type of content from brands.
• 83% of consumers said they’re likely to visit the social media page of a brand or product they’re interested in.
• 58% of consumers watched more video ads on social media than on TV, up from 39% in 2019.

What businesses are doing

• 48% of businesses credited social media videos as the most effective element of their ad strategy from last year's holiday ad campaign, with 15% saying photos on social media, 12% saying email marketing, and only 10% saying in-store marketing.
• When asked why they plan to use video to market their businesses during the 2021 holiday season, 62% of businesses said video encourages customers to interact, 58% said video helps them showcase their product or service, 58% said video helps drive sales, 57% said video helps drive brand awareness, 52% said video makes them look professional on social media, 32% said their competitors use marketing videos.
• 94% of marketers said paid video ads had a positive return on investment (ROI) for their business.
• 93% of businesses landed a new customer after sharing a video on social media.
• Video has the best ROI for marketers advertising their business.

Planning a successful holiday marketing campaign

With this trend toward video for holiday marketing, it’s time to get your business on board. Animoto makes it easy to start making videos for your brand right away, but before you start creating, let’s go over some of the key steps for planning a successful video marketing campaign.

Know your audience

One of the most important pieces of information you can have is who your target audience is, especially if you’re running a targeted ad campaign. If you’re running your first seasonal marketing campaign, or you’re just not sure who you should be targeting, start by asking yourself some of the following questions.

• Do you want to reach new or existing customers?
• Are you trying to reach a local or global audience?
• Should you be targeting the demographic that will likely use your product or service or the people who will be gifting it?
• Is there a specific age group you should target?
• Can you narrow your audience by interests or browsing activity?

Once you know who your audience is, it’s just as important to know where you can find them. We’ve gathered some data on where shoppers are watching, discovering, and buying. Use this info to help plan where you’ll be posting your marketing videos this season.

Lastly, you can take your campaign the extra mile by understanding where your audience falls in your marketing funnel. Do they have a high intent to buy your product? Or are they just hearing about your brand? Understanding how close your audience is to buying helps you gear the content of your videos specifically to them.

Set goals ahead of time

Now that you know who is seeing your ads, where they’re seeing them, and how familiar they are with your business, it’s time to identify the action you’d like them to take. By setting a clear goal for your videos–such as purchases, subscriptions, or website traffic–you’ll be able to easily evaluate the success of your campaign.

One way to easily understand the goal of your content is to split up your videos into two buckets: Paid and organic. Paid content, such as a promoted ad on social media, is often shared with the goal of a purchase or sign-up. Organic content, like a post on your brand’s Instagram or Facebook page, is intended to foster brand awareness and maintain a presence on social for new and prospective users to connect and engage with.

Did you know that video has the best return on investment (ROI) for marketers advertising their business online? If you’re able to put a spend behind your campaign, it’s also important to plan ahead and set a goal for your desired ROI. To help you plan your strategic spend and earn the highest potential ROI, check out all of our emerging video marketing trends for 2022.

Create your videos ahead of time

We recommend you start creating your videos ASAP, both to ensure your campaign runs on time and to allow yourself time to focus on the demands of your business during the holiday season, or even to take some much-deserved time off.

Here are two tips to keep in mind as you start prepping your campaign:

1. Create your videos in batches to ensure they look cohesive. We recommend choosing a holiday color palette to use throughout your holiday content to keep your videos easily recognizable.

Pro tip: You can always copy your video projects to use as a time-saving template for all of your videos in your campaign.

2. Make a Saved Brand with your holiday branding. A Saved Brand is your shortcut to apply select elements of your brand identity to your videos in a fraction of the time. Professional plan users can create, edit, and apply one Saved Brand, making it easy to edit your Saved Brand for the holiday season. Professional Plus users have access to multiple Saved Brands, so you can keep your usual branding on hand and create a second Saved Brand just for this campaign.

Your holiday video checklist

Here are the videos you should be making for your business for the entire holiday season. Keep track as you create your way through the checklist.

☑ Sale Announcement

Kick off the shopping season with our Cyber Monday Announcement template, designed to let customers know about the savings to come.

☑ Social Media Teaser

Get your social audience ready to save with our vertical Annual Sale template.

☑ Thanksgiving Greeting

Don’t forget organic content! Make a warm holiday card for your customers with the Thanksgiving Greeting template.

☑ Black Friday Promo

Share a reminder of your biggest deals of the year with our Black Friday Promo template.

☑ Cyber Monday Promo

Let your followers know the sale is on with a short, one-block video using the Cyber Monday Promo template.

☑ Small Business Saturday Promo

Small and medium businesses with a local audience can’t skip out on a Small Business Saturday Promo.

☑ Hanukkah Greeting

Wish your customers a happy Festival of Lights with our Hanukkah Greeting template.

☑ Holiday Gift Guide

Let customers know there’s still time to buy your best-selling items and services with the Gift Guide template.

☑ Holiday Promo

Christmas is right around the corner. Make sure shoppers know how to get the best price with the Holiday Promo template.

☑ Holiday Event Invitation

Hosting a holly, jolly event for customers and employees? Let them know the details with the Holiday Event Invitation template.

☑ Holiday Service Promotion

Promote your service that makes a great holiday gift using our Mini Photo Session template.

☑ Gift Card Promo

Gift-givers can’t go wrong with a gift card. Let them know how to buy with the Last-Minute Gift Card Promo template.

☑ Customer Thank You Card

Once the shopping season is over, share a Customer Thank You Card video on social to express your gratitude for another holiday season in the books.

☑ Holiday Greeting

Create an easy holiday greeting in seconds with the Simple Holiday Stop Motion template. Just add your campaign colors, export, and share.

☑ New Year’s Promo

Inspire your viewers to stick to their resolutions with a discount using our New Year’s Promo template.

☑ Company Year in Review

Share how your company grew and evolved this year using the Company Year in Review template.

☑ New Year’s Greeting

Ring in the new year with a heartfelt and festive New Year’s Greeting video for your loyal customers.

☑ Post-Holiday Clearance Sale

Keep the shoppers shopping and clean out any remaining seasonal stock with a Post-Holiday Clearance Sale video.

Get started with holiday video marketing

Ready to see success with video this holiday season? Start creating even better videos for your business today with the Professional Plus plan!