Video Marketing

Guide to Video Marketing for the Holidays

Kari Livesay

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Each year, Animoto surveys marketers and consumers to help businesses anticipate shifting social media trends. In 2022, we learned that video is the most helpful form of content when shopping online..

To help you make the most of your holiday marketing this year, we’ve put together a guide with everything you need to easily create marketing videos and reach potential customers this holiday season.

Are you ready to light up the holiday season with video? Let’s get started!

10 Ideas for Holiday Video Marketing

Once you know you want to use video to market your business this holiday season, the next step is deciding what videos you want to create. We’ll start with a promotional video idea, but you’ll see there are plenty of ways you can use video to reach potential customers and spread awareness of your company, products, or services with video this holiday season without trying to sell directly.

You can add your brand’s logo, colors, and font to every video with the click of a button using Saved Brands. If you’re on the Professional plan you can create one Saved Brand, or if you’re on the Professional Plus plan you can create multiple Saved Brands, allowing you to make your video on-brand in a fraction of the time, every time.

1. Holiday Promotion

When it comes to holiday marketing, one of your top goals is likely sales. A promotional video is designed to help you drive sales by offering a special deal or discount.

This type of video works best when it’s run as an ad targeted specifically at current customers or people interested in topics related to your product. To find out more, check out our blog post on reaching new customers with targeted ads on Facebook and Instagram.

A holiday promotion doesn’t have to be a sale. You could offer gift wrapping, free shipping, or other non-discount-related promos. Check out our blog post on holiday promotion ideas for inspiration.

Ready to make your promo video? We’ve got a template that’ll make it quick and easy.

2. Annual Sale

Is there an annual sale you’re building your holiday marketing plan around? Make sure it gets the attention it deserves by highlighting it with video.

Our Annual Sale template lets you easily put the spotlight on your hottest once-a-year sales, like Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

As you’re creating your holiday videos, make sure your brand doesn’t go unnoticed. Add your own logo, brand colors, and font to your videos with just one click using Saved Brands, available on our Professional and Professional Plus plans.

3. Thanksgiving Greeting

Your customers likely have dozens of vendors and shops to choose from, yet they have decided to use your products or services. This Thanksgiving, use video to let them know how grateful you are for them with a warm Thanksgiving greeting. Incorporating thoughtful holiday messaging into your organic video marketing is a great way to humanize the brand.

You can also use this opportunity to include a teaser featuring any upcoming holiday sales you want to promote. Share your gratitude with our Thanksgiving Greeting template.

4. Hanukkah Greetings

Make sure you’re prepared to wish your customers a happy Hanukkah! The Festival of Lights begins in November this year, so be sure to celebrate the holiday with a simple yet heartfelt video.

If you need some additional Hanukkah photos and video clips, check out our library of stock images and clips from Getty Images. You can get unlimited access to 1 million+ photos and videos on our Professional plan or 100 million+ photos and videos on our Professional Plus plan. Try out our Hanukkah Greetings template for your seasonal marketing video today.

5. Small Business Saturday

Use video to generate awareness for online and in-person sales this Small Business Saturday. If you’re a brick-and-mortar shop, make sure to note your location, hours of operation, and any incentives that might draw customers to visit your store on this big spending day.

Try using our Small Business Saturday Promo template to increase awareness for your business as well as other small businesses in your local area.

6. Cyber Monday & Cyber Week

Trying to reach your holiday season sales goals? Cyber Monday is one of the biggest days of the year for online retailers, which means you’d better come ready to play! Use video to share exclusive Cyber Monday deals, create a sense of urgency, and get shoppers ready to fill up their shopping carts.

Like the holiday promo, this is a great video to put ad dollars behind. Try out our Cyber Monday Announcement template to create an eye-catching video ad for social.

7. Fun Social Video

Spread a little holiday cheer with a share-worthy social video. The objective of this type of marketing video isn’t explicitly to drive sales, as it is with a promo video. It’s designed to entertain, inspire, or educate with festive content that viewers can find value in. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still use it to promote your business!

Here’s an example of a video created with the Festive Fun Facts template. This video shares interesting tidbits about a holiday favorite, fruitcake, but you can easily make this template work for you with your own images, clips, and your Saved Brand.

Create a stronger connection with your audience and humanize your video by relaying your fun facts with Voice-over.

8. Christmas Greeting

We’ve covered Thanksgiving and Hanukkah, and now it’s time to share a more general holiday greeting on social media. Use our Simple Holiday Stop Motion template to show appreciation for your customers and wish them a happy holiday season.

Try boosting the video as a targeted ad for a list of people that have purchased from you in the past to get your video in front of your loyal customers. Seeing your video greeting in their news feeds will keep you top of mind when it matters most—when they’re thinking about their holiday shopping!

9. Holiday Event Invitation

Throwing a holiday party or event for your customers and clients? Video can be a great way to let people know about it and to recap the festivities afterward. Use our Holiday Event Invitation template to invite guests to your celebration.

10. Our Company’s Year

Speaking of recaps, the holiday season is the perfect time to recap highlights from the entire year. Share milestones, awards, and major company news from the year using the Our Company’s Year template. You can also use this as a way to plant seeds for gift ideas by mentioning top products.

Holiday Video Strategy Cheat Sheet

Now that your ideas are planned out, it’s time to think about how video plays into your overall holiday marketing strategy. Here are two key ways to track your video marketing success this season.

Setting Goals

We’ve talked about promoting your products as holiday gifts and sharing holiday cheer, but what are your other goals during the holidays? Here are a few ideas:

  • Creating connections and engaging with customers
  • Offering products that make great gifts
  • Sharing your expertise
  • Attracting new social media followers
  • Attracting new visitors to your website

Measuring Success

You’ll also want to make sure to record, in advance, how you’ll measure your success. You may have goals for revenue for your business for the holiday season, but what will your goals be for video specifically? Here are some ideas:

  • Post at least __ holiday videos
  • Increase video views by __%
  • Increase reactions by __%
  • Increase shares by __%

Holiday Video Creation Help

Having a little trouble getting started? We’ve put together some resources to help you out.

Text for your Holiday Videos

Writer’s block got you down? No problem. We’ve put together a list of 60 different ways to say “Happy Holidays” in your next video. From the basics, like
“Seasons Greetings” and “Merry Christmas” to heartwarming well-wishes for your customers, song-inspired greetings, quotes, and more, we’ve got you covered.

Your Holiday Color Palette

The traditional red and green for the holidays can start to feel a little stale, which is why our marketing design team put together a cheat sheet with four holiday color palettes to help you elevate the look of your holiday marketing videos. It comes complete with hex codes (the six-digit code that looks like #FFFFFF) so you can be sure to plug in exactly the right color to your own marketing.

We’re here to help

Last but not least, we’ve got a supportive community of Animoto customers, video marketers, and Animoto employees on Facebook. Join the Animoto Social Video Marketing Community for ideas, tips, inspiration, and feedback on videos you’re working on.

Happy holiday video making!