The holiday season is one of the busiest times of the year—not just for shoppers but for marketers, authors, and business owners. If you’re a small business owner or an independent author, thinking ahead about holiday marketing can help you avoid last-minute stress while ensuring your message stands out in a crowded marketplace.

In this post, I’ll walk you through the key steps for building a strong holiday marketing strategy. You’ll learn how early preparation, clear goals, consistent content, and refined messaging can help grow your sales and audience engagement. Plus, I’ll show you how working with a professional editor can help keep your content polished and consistent across all platforms.

Why Early Planning Matters for Holiday Marketing

The holiday season brings with it increased competition, time constraints, and high audience expectations. Whether you’re selling books or products, early preparation offers clear benefits:

• More time to refine your strategy and messaging
• Opportunities to create high-quality content without rushing
• A better chance of standing out with thoughtful, audience-first campaigns

📊 Fun fact: Around 12 percent of book sales happen at Christmas, and up to 25 percent of annual book sales occur during the holiday season. That’s a big incentive to start now, even if it feels early!

Set Clear Marketing Goals for the Holiday Season

Before writing a single social media post or email, decide what you want to achieve. Do you want to increase sales for a specific product or book? Grow your social media followers? Promote a seasonal offer or holiday event?

Having a clear, measurable goal helps guide your content, making each blog post, ad, and email part of a coordinated effort. And an editor like me can assist in aligning your content with these goals by ensuring consistency in tone, clarity, and brand messaging.

Craft a Holiday Content Calendar

Don’t rely on scattered ideas—map out your content ahead of time with a holiday content calendar. A simple calendar might include a combination of these items:

• Monthly blog posts that tie your product or service to Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, or New Year’s
• Paid ad campaigns that tie your messaging to local events or seasonal happenings
• Email newsletters that include gift guides, like “Best Books for Teachers” or “Top Stocking Stuffers for Dog Lovers”
• Preholiday teaser social media posts for upcoming sales or product launches

Pro tip: An editor helps ensure your content is consistent, high-quality, and ready to go—saving you time and stress during the busiest season.

Tips for Creating Holiday Messaging That Resonates

Holiday marketing isn’t just about selling—it’s about connecting. Strong messaging ties into themes like gratitude, family, celebration, and gift-giving. But without careful thought, tying into a theme can feel inauthentic or cheesy. Forcing a theme into your message is a turnoff to readers. They’ll pick up on disconnects and inauthentic content.

Foster connections with your readers by staying true to your brand voice—while embracing holiday themes. Use storytelling to position your product or book as a thoughtful gift. This is a great time to feature reviews like this: “The perfect read for your favorite teacher.”

Need some help crafting authentic, persuasive messaging? Editors can help refine your text so it’s consistent and clear—without sounding overly salesy or off-brand.

Prepare Promotional Materials Early

One of the biggest holiday marketing pitfalls is waiting until November or December to pull things together. Set yourself up for success by drafting these materials early:

When writing promotional materials, remember to optimize your content with relevant keywords:

If you’re running Amazon ads or putting together a holiday gift guide for your readers, polishing these materials ahead of time is key. An editor ensures they’re high quality and consistent with your brand’s tone and style.

Account for the Seasons in Your Launch Plans

The holiday season brings logistical challenges. On the publishing front, printers and publishers have reduced staff availability, and shipping and distribution slow down. And with marketing, opportunities may be limited. Some podcasts or events pause for the holidays, and audiences are harder to reach because of busy schedules.

Building in extra lead time helps avoid these challenges. Plan your marketing launches for September through early November to get ahead of the rush.

Use Analytics to Inform Your Strategy

Finally, don’t forget to look back before moving forward. Review last year’s marketing analytics to see what campaigns performed best, which messages resonated with your audience, and where there’s room for improvement. Use these insights to adjust your content and marketing calendar to be more effective this year.

Pro tip: Ensure each piece of content aligns with your strategy and supports your goals.

Keep Your Holiday Messaging Consistent

Planning early is the first step—but making sure your content looks and sounds professional is just as important. Whether you’re drafting gift guide blog posts, email campaigns, or product descriptions, clear and consistent messaging helps build trust and drive engagement.

To help you get started, I’m offering my Self-Editing Starter Kit. It’s a free resource designed to help small business teams and indie authors polish their writing and maintain brand consistency—especially during high-stakes marketing seasons like the holidays.

👉 Download your Self-Editing Starter Kit here!

Need More Help with Holiday Marketing?

Start building your holiday content calendar and your editorial team now—don’t wait until the fall rush. Get ahead of the holiday hubbub and headaches by contacting me to learn how I can help tailor your messaging for holiday promotions, gift guides, and seasonal campaigns. We’ll review your marketing materials and identify areas for improvement or repurposing and make sure your holiday content is polished, consistent, and ready to perform.

Reach out today to ask about my content writing and editing services. Together, we’ll make your writing bulletproof!