Looking for the best Thanksgiving ideas for the year?
Well, we’ve got you covered.
November is the harvesting month of the year for retail businesses to boost sales. It’s common for brands and marketers to roll their sleeves to create the best Thanksgiving marketing campaigns for the weekend.
Considering the fierce competition that you may face, we’ve put together a set of Thanksgiving marketing ideas that can help you make the most of this massive sale to clear out your inventory and make great profits.
But why is Thanksgiving a boon for retailers?
It’s because Thanksgiving is among the largest sales of the year in the United States. There are several shoppers’ checkpoints over the weekend, including Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday sales.
And the numbers speak for themselves.
In 2021, nearly 180 million Americans shopped (both in-store and online) during the five-day holiday shopping period starting from Thanksgiving Day to Cyber Monday. About 49% of them even shopped during early holiday sales.
Image via National Retail Federation
Last year, the most common gifts bought over the Thanksgiving weekend included clothing and accessories (51%), toys (32%), gift cards (28%), movies/music/video games/books (27%), and electronics (24%).
So, if you’re selling any of these gifts, then you’ve got a reason to start preparing for the big weekend right away.
Okay, so much for the pep talk.
Let’s stay focused on the top Thanksgiving marketing ideas that you should infuse into your festival marketing strategy for this year.
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Top 6 Thanksgiving Marketing Ideas for 2023
Thanksgiving is the time when people get together with their families and give gifts to each other too. Retailers regularly lay out the best discounts of the year during this weekend to attract buyers from all over the country to drive their sales up. You could join the party too, but only if you know the right Thanksgiving marketing ideas that can help you attract and convert your audience.
Following are the top 6 Thanksgiving marketing ideas for 2023 that will help you boost sales figures during this year’s Black Friday Sale and Cyber Monday.
1. Start Early Deals in October
Many retailers prepone their Thanksgiving holiday sale by introducing early deals in October and early November, which allows them to tap into the buzzing market before the main sale starts.
As mentioned earlier, nearly half of American shoppers took advantage of early holiday sales last year. In fact, 82 percent of the holiday weekend shoppers believe that the deals were the same or, in some cases, better than the Thanksgiving weekend.
So, it’s a good idea to have a prolonged holiday sale. You can choose to keep the best discounts for the Thanksgiving weekend.
Note how Sam’s Club started its sale on 27th October.
Image via Instagram
2. Send Thanksgiving Email Newsletters
If you don’t send email newsletters to your customers regularly, now is the time to start sending them.
And if you already do, it’s time to give your newsletters a Thanksgiving twist.
Email newsletters are one of the most effective Thanksgiving marketing ideas that can help you stay in touch with your customers and inform them about your sale.
Even if the newsletters facilitate one-way communication with your customers, they are very useful as marketing tools because they can help keep them engaged. This would pay off well because they might turn to your brand when they head out to shop during the Thanksgiving sale.
With an appealing email newsletter, you can nudge your customers to pay a visit to your online or even the physical store. Essentially, newsletters can help you directly drive conversions.
So, how do you create the perfect newsletter?
Crafting an appealing festive season email newsletter goes beyond using festive theme templates and a greeting.
If people don’t open your email, they won’t see the content you’ve created. So, it’s important to craft a powerful subject line that convinces users to open your email. And its importance is underscored by the fact that the average open rate for emails is 21 percent.
A powerful subject line can help improve your open rate.
To create one, you can use one of the many headline analyzer tools in the market.
Here is a Thanksgiving marketing idea of how Foodstirs bakery leveraged a catchy yet helpful headline, “The top 5 things you should have on your Thanksgiving list ✅” for its email marketing campaign. This is what their email looked like.
Image via Foodstirs
3. Show Some Appreciation Towards Community and Customers
The most common mistake marketers make while coming up with Thanksgiving marketing ideas is that they forget the human element of it. You should try to put your sales pitch aside for once and think about how you can connect with your customers.
From a business perspective, you can thank your customers for their trust or loyalty. It’s a sensible Thanksgiving marketing idea to convey appreciation via a newsletter or even a text message. This will unquestionably strengthen the emotional connection between your business and the customers.
Moreover, sharing your business journey on your website and social handle is yet another Thanksgiving marketing idea that can help humanize your brand.
While these ideas don’t directly drive sales, they do have an impact on how your customers perceive your brand. And this could make all the difference when the sale arrives as they may choose you over the rest.
Not just the customers, you should also express gratitude to your employees and share it on social platforms. After all, Thanksgiving is about people, and the people behind your products/services matter. Check out how a retailer put up a post about their employees during Thanksgiving. While it doesn’t thank them, it does bring a human element.
Image via Instagram
4. Sprinkle Some Thanksgiving Charm on Your Website
It’s 2023—you obviously have a website that you can beautify with some festive season elements to give your website a festive vibe.
It is one of the easiest Thanksgiving marketing ideas that you can quickly implement. If you’re a small-mid-sized retail business, you probably have used website builders to design your website, and making tweaks shouldn’t be a hassle.
In terms of themes, you can use some popping colors and elements pertaining to the Thanksgiving weekend, like a turkey or a black theme for Black Friday.
Also, don’t forget to highlight promotional messages and deals on the website banner and pop-ups to make your website more sale-oriented.
See how Best Buy changes its website each year for the Black Friday sale.
Image via WCPO
5. Use Instagram Polls and CTAs to Understand Customer Preferences
Over 500 million people watch Instagram Stories on a daily basis. That makes it a huge opportunity for you to promote your Thanksgiving sale.
Instagram Stories boast several useful features such as stickers and emojis, including the one that we’re talking about – Polls.
Image via Instagram
Instagram Story Polls help you understand the latest wants or needs of your customers, and that’s why launching them is a great idea. You’ll be able to identify exactly what your customers want from the Thanksgiving sale, and you can choose your products for the sale accordingly. This can play a major role in boosting your sales.
There is more on the Instagram platter when it comes to Thanksgiving Marketing Ideas – Story links.
You can leverage this Thanksgiving marketing idea to drive traffic to your ecommerce portal from Instagram and boost sales. Alternatively, you could use Stories to drive traffic to your Instagram Shop, where you can run your Thanksgiving promotion.
6. Run a Festive Challenge or Giveaway
Challenges and rewards are surefire Thanksgiving marketing ideas that get your customers excited about your brand. They work well by generating lots of engagement instantly—something that such short events call for.
But what does it take to succeed?
When it comes to contests, creativity is the key to success. One of the simplest Thanksgiving Marketing ideas is to encourage customers to submit their Thanksgiving wishlist, and the winner gets the things they wanted.
Another Thanksgiving marketing idea is to run a turkey recipe competition. To make it even more challenging, ask people to reinvent a side dish into a dessert. You can use this user-generated content and share it on social media channels to generate further engagement for the contest.
What’s more?
You can always go charitable if the competitive spirit doesn’t appeal to your brand image. Giving back to the community is a very clever way of associating your brand with the festival. Hence, it is one of the most promising Thanksgiving marketing ideas.
For instance, see how Safari put up this post on Instagram for charity.
Image via Instagram
Also, don’t be afraid of going bold and big.
Take a look at how an online retailer, Zappos, absolutely nailed it with their Thanksgiving marketing campaign in the past.
The story goes back to 2013 when, on Thanksgiving Eve, passengers on Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport found the conveyor belt turned into a giant roulette wheel where the passenger’s luggage served as the ball.
Image via Core77
FAQs
Q1. How do you market on Thanksgiving?
A. Here are some of the best Thanksgiving marketing ideas for 2023:
- Prepone deals to October
- Give your email newsletter a Thanksgiving twist
- Show appreciation to your customers and employees
- Sprinkle some Thanksgiving charm on your website
- Use Instagram Story polls and CTAs to understand customer wants and needs
- Run a festive challenge or giveaway
Q2. How can I promote my holiday marketing?
A. You can try these Thanksgiving marketing ideas in 2023 for holiday marketing:
- Use social media to promote your offers and deals
- Collaborate with influencers on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube
- Host contests and giveaways
- Prepone your marketing campaign
- Get your online store ready to handle loads of traffic
- Use email marketing
- Leverage branded hashtags
- Use Google and social media ads
Q3. How do you do a Thanksgiving giveaway?
A. Here is how you can do a Thanksgiving giveaway:
- Offer weekend getaways
- Give out free electronics
- Host an Instagram photo contest
- Gift basket giveaway
- Giveaway decorating items
- Turkey dinner giveaway
Q4. What should I post on social media for Thanksgiving?
A. Among all the possible options, the following are the most meaningful Thanksgiving marketing ideas for social media posts:
- Thank your customers and employees
- Advertise your festive season deals
- Share recipes, innovative products, and tips
- Create hype with Black Friday sale previews
- Use a Thanksgiving quote that relates to your ideology
- Share turkey recipes
Q5. What do you put in a Thanksgiving gift basket?
A. Here are some of the popular things people often put into their Thanksgiving basket:
- Candies: Caramels, chocolates, apple candies
- Drinks: Apple cider, tea, coffee, beer, wine
- Decorations: Fall-inspired decorative pieces for the Thanksgiving dinner table or living area
- Candles and gift cards
Q6. What are some of the best Thanksgiving marketing slogans?
A. Here are some of the best Thanksgiving marketing slogans:
- This is HUGE. Loot our Thanksgiving sale.
- 30% OFF – Early bird gets the offer!
- Your Thanksgiving begins here.
- Everything you need in your Thanksgiving gift basket.
- No need to thank us for these unprecedented deals.
Q7. How can I increase sales during the holiday season?
A. Try these Thanksgiving marketing ideas:
- Collect the required inventory
- Promote via the right marketing channels
- Create separate landing pages for the season
- Start your sale early and end later, if you can afford to
- Make sure you can increase supply when needed
- Help customers by creating Thanksgiving gift basket guides
- Offer referral discounts
- Run ads on Google and social media
Q8. What are your best Thanksgiving marketing ideas for ecommerce businesses?
A. Try these Thanksgiving marketing ideas for your e-commerce business:
- Start your marketing campaign early
- Improve your website navigation
- Incentivize your customers with steep discounts
- Create a product catalog for Thanksgiving
- Leverage email marketing
- Put shopping ads on Google and Instagram
- Use remarketing tactics to convert your visitors into customers
- Create product videos
- Collaborate with micro-influencers
Start Using These Thanksgiving Ideas!
There are endless business possibilities during Thanksgiving weekends. And the Thanksgiving marketing ideas we’ve discussed so far can help you make the most out of this holiday weekend.
From starting early deals in October to running festival giveaways and challenges, there’s a lot that can be done to help your business attract customers and drive up sales. Be it email marketing, social media, or even your website, make sure you leave no stone unturned to prepare for the festive rush.
Have any questions about the ideas mentioned above? Ask them in the comments.
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