Creative Tips to Add under the Tree This Holiday Season

The holidays are approaching fast, and brands that are doing it right are already mapping out their seasonal strategies. With core retail sales reaching a record of over $994B during the 2024 holiday season, the competition for brands to connect with engaged shoppers has never been greater. And each holiday season, there’s no better medium to reach consumers than digital audio—whether they’re playing classic holiday hits to get in the spirit or turning on festive tunes to set the party vibe.

Achieving success this holiday season requires more than just seasonal messaging. Resonating with holiday shoppers means prepping early, simplifying the consumer journey, upping personalization, and more to cut through the noise and drive meaningful connections. Follow these nine creative tips to elevate your holiday campaigns and deliver results that’ll have you jingling throughout the rest of the year. Plus, for a detailed breakdown on consumer trends and our ready-to-activate solutions, unwrap our latest Advertiser’s Guide to the Holidays. 

1. Go with the Tides of the Holiday Season

Smart advertisers know that timing is everything. Rather than waiting for the Black Friday push to launch campaigns, successful brands begin their messaging early, especially for top-of-funnel awareness efforts.

Starting your holiday campaigns as early as July allows you to build brand awareness—before the advertising landscape becomes oversaturated with brands fighting over limited consumer attention. This helps establish your brand in consumers' minds before they activate their most active shopping mode of the year. 

2. Prep for Pre-season Shopping

Modern consumers don't wait for major promotional moments like Black Friday to start their holiday shopping. In fact, 47% of shoppers take advantage of sales and deals year-round to buy the perfect gift and then save it for the holidays. This growing shift signifies how consumers are becoming more strategic, and brands have to adapt in real-time.

With 30% of consumers saying it’s easier on their finances to spread out their holiday spending, there's a significant opportunity to engage early shoppers. Creating and running audio campaigns long before November and December hit influences pre-season shopping behaviors. Consider messaging that emphasizes the financial benefits of early shopping, or highlight how your products make perfect gifts to save for later. 

And speaking of good deals, give budget-conscious shoppers a deal through their headphones. With streaming audio solutions like sponsored listening or Happy Hour, you can reward listeners with uninterrupted listening in exchange for ad interaction. 

3. Shine a Bright Light on Sales

During the holidays, consumers are actively seeking deals and discounts, especially given the current economic climate and influx of promotions during this time. In fact, 64% of consumers shopped during key sales dates and events.

When consumers are budget-conscious (and who isn’t these days), strategic sales messaging is crucial. Simply announcing a sale isn't enough. You need to create urgency and excitement around your offers. Consider bundling strategies that help consumers feel they're getting more value while maintaining your profit margins. Additionally, position your sales as opportunities for smart shopping rather than mere price reductions.

4. Simplify the Path to Purchase

It’s never been easier to search for an item to buy and find almost endless options staring back at us. However, decision fatigue is real, and it's hurting your conversions. With 79% of consumers abandoning their shopping carts in the last three months due to overwhelming choices, streamlining the customer journey is essential.

During moments like these, digital audio is a guiding light. Whether you’re reaching last-minute gift givers, busy parents, or travel-loving young professionals, target them with demographic, behavioral, or contextual signals on Pandora—where you’re sure to meet ad-receptive listeners. Over seven in 10 Pandora listeners take any action after hearing or seeing a holiday ad.  

When it comes to your creative, make it easy for consumers to take the action you want by guiding them with clear next steps. Use specific CTAs, reference your audience’s key attributes to make it personal, and remove unnecessary complexity from your messaging. 

5. Spread the Holiday Cheer

The holidays bring complex emotions, and your brand can provide genuine value by acknowledging this reality. With 89% of US adults feeling stressed during the holidays and 66% reporting feeling lonely, there's an opportunity to connect and uplift moods through mood-based targeting.

Listeners consistently turn to music and podcasts for emotional support, with 75% saying music relaxes them, and 60% saying podcasts enhance the overall holiday experience.

With mood targeting, you can develop messages that acknowledge different emotional states—from excitement about upcoming events to anxiety about reuniting with the extended family. Your ads can provide comfort, inspiration, or simply a moment of joy in a listener’s day.

6. Be a Part of Every Moment with Sequential Audio

Sequential audio represents a revolutionary approach to holiday advertising. Rather than cramming your entire message into a single :30s spot, sequential audio campaigns allow for more creative storytelling. 

This technique is particularly powerful during the holidays when consumers go through distinct phases—from initial holiday planning, to active shopping, to hectic, last-minute purchasing. Each phase requires slightly different messaging, and sequential audio lets you deliver the right message at the right time.

Throughout your campaign, you can create anticipation or develop characters that listeners connect with over time. Plus, we’ll leave you with this: Sequential audio generates higher engagement rates and stronger brand recall compared to traditional single-message campaigns.

7. Avoid a One-Size-Fits-All Approach to the Holidays

The holidays are celebrated differently across various cultural and ethnic communities, and advertising campaigns need to reflect this diversity. Successful holiday campaigns acknowledge these differences through culturally relevant messaging, appropriate imagery, and respectful representation. With multicultural listeners over-indexing in holiday spending, they’re an audience that can’t be overlooked. 

Audio advertising provides unique opportunities for cultural personalization through diverse music selection, holiday representation, voice talent, and cultural references. These elements create stronger emotional connections with diverse audiences while demonstrating your brand's commitment to inclusivity.

8. Leverage Dynamic Audio

Dynamic audio enables hyper-personalized messaging by using real-time data to customize ad content for individual listeners. This capability allows brands to create hundreds or thousands of ad variations based on factors like location, weather, listening context, and user preferences.

This technology proves particularly powerful during the holiday season when relevance and timeliness are crucial. Dynamic audio can reference holiday-specific events, countdown timers, or seasonal weather patterns to motivate a listener to take action.

9. Don't Discount In-Car and At-Home Time

Connected devices have transformed how consumers experience audio content. Brands are able to reach audiences in intimate, engaged environments, from their car to their home, during moments when they're most receptive to brand messages. With the average US household owning 17 connected devices, the opportunities for connection are extensive.  

Thanks to connected home and connected car, your brand can be a part of cozy, co-listening moments at home or on the road with families as they run shopping errands or travel. Choose from :10, :15, or :30 second audio ads to deliver various holiday messaging. 

Sleigh Your Holiday Campaign Goals with SiriusXM Media

The holiday season waits for no brand. The most successful campaigns start with the right partner (hint: that’s us). We connect your brand with 160M monthly listeners across streaming audio, podcasts, and SiriusXM, providing the scale and targeting precision needed for effective holiday campaigns.

Ready to deck the halls with digital audio? Let’s talk. 

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