Your 2020 Holiday Marketing Calendar

Let's face it, 2020 has been a year unlike any other, both personally and professionally. But it's not over just yet -- so let's roll up our sleeves and finish strong! As we enter the last few months of the year, we've prepared a comprehensive video marketing plan to help you win more business over the holiday season.

Here’s how we’re going to do it. In this post, we’ve broken up the months of November and December into four sections below to make it easy for you to create and schedule all the videos you need for a successful holiday. Each section includes:

• A designated working period to give you time to create videos
• A list of holidays that fall in the time frame
• Suggested posting dates for marketing videos (marked with a play button)

Each section also links out to an accompanying post that lays out the types of videos to create for each holiday period, including template suggestions, best practices, video inspiration, and more! Sound good? Let’s get this show on the road!

Phase 1: Thanksgiving and the Post-Thanksgiving Rush

• Video creation dates: November 9 – 19
• Suggested posting dates: November 23 – December 1

It may start slow, but November is back-loaded with plenty of opportunity for small businesses to make their presence felt on social media. Thanksgiving and the days that follow it are full of opportunities to reach customers, old and new.

Check out our phase 1 calendar and make a note on your own calendar of which videos you’d like to create and post.

Like we said, there’s a lot of opportunity for using video during the post-Thanksgiving rush. Here’s a list of everything going on. If you need a little help deciding which videos to post for your business, check out our post-Thanksgiving video marketing guide.

• Thanksgiving is on November 26, 2020
• Black Friday is on November 27, 2020
• Small Business Saturday is on November 28, 2020
• Cyber Monday is on December 30, 2020
• Giving Tuesday is on December 1, 2020

If you do plan to put on a post-Thanksgiving sale, it pays to begin marketing it ahead of time, so in addition to videos on the dates above, we also recommend sharing a sale teaser in advance (it’s scheduled for November 23 on the calendar).

That’s the basics, but we’ve got a ton more in the way of ideas and inspiration in our accompanying blog post, so click the button below to get started!

Phase 2: Holiday Ads

• Video creation dates: November 30 – December 4
• Suggested posting dates: December 7 – 17

Once Thanksgiving has come and gone, it’s time to break out the tinsel and start spreading the news! Your business is the place to shop for all the December festivities. Let’s let the people know.

For this phase of your holiday video marketing, we recommend some ideas and posting dates for video ads. These videos are designed to be posted as targeted ads, rather than organic content for brand awareness. The goal here is really to inspire people to buy from you.

Here are our suggestions:

• Holiday Sale Promo
• Gift Guide Video
• Ad Targeting Gift-Givers
• Free Shipping Day

In our accompanying guide, you’ll find everything you need to create thumb-stopping, wallet-opening holiday ads for your business.

Phase 3: Fun Holiday Videos

• Video creation dates: December 7 – 11
• Suggested posting dates: December 15 – 24

Holiday shoppers are getting marketed at from every which way from now through Christmas. In this phase, we’re focused on the types of videos that’ll help you stay top of mind during this time of year without the direct sell.

These videos should help you share your expertise, humanize your business, and put a smile on the faces of your viewers. They should also help keep you top of mind for the folks that saw your ads in the last phase but haven’t yet completed their holiday shopping.

We’ve rounded up suggestions for three fun holiday videos that you can create. Our full guide contains examples and templates that you can use to easily create these videos on your own.

• Fun Facts
• Holiday How-To
• Holiday Greeting

Click below for our full guide to holiday marketing without the hard sell.

Phase 4: New Year’s Videos

• Video creation dates: December 14 – 18
• Suggested posting dates: December 28 – 31

Last but not least, it’s time to create and share some New Year videos. Ready to dive in?

Consider these videos your chance to share the biggest wins and developments for your business from the calendar year, as well as to make sure your customers know that they’re on your mind as we enter 2021. In this phase, we’ve recommended two videos:

• Year-End Recap
• New Year’s Greeting

For one final time, click that button to get our full guide to New Year’s videos, and finish 2020 in style.

Ready to get started?

This holiday season might look a bit different this year, but creating videos to connect with buyers on social media remains as important as ever. For more guidance, feedback, and inspiration, join our Facebook group, The Animoto Social Video Marketing Community, and if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments.