5 Christmas marketing tips to fuel your toy campaigns

Jingle bells, Keycraft sells,

Wholesale toys and gifts,

Grotto delights for smiles so bright,

And a joyful Christmas day!

If you can’t tell, the Keycraft team are just a little bit excited that Santa will soon be on his way, now creating their own jingles! And this Christmas is certainly a great time to be a Keycraft toy retailer.

With wholesale toy stock held in our own global warehouses, we’re faring well with stock levels and delivering orders on time compared to toy distributors more reliant on shipping from China. Toys & games are still expected to be a best-seller product category this Christmas (naturally).

Affordable grotto gifts and stocking filler toys is a Keycraft’s specialty. With more families and friends likely to choose cost-conscious gift options this year, we’re anticipating record-breaking sales of our popular pocket money toy brands.

To help you make the most of the 2024 Christmas season, here are five festive marketing tips!

1. Spread social cheer

Recommendations from other people, including through online content, is 70% more effective than advertising. Leverage this by sharing more user-generated content on your social media.

• Start by creating in-store Christmas toy displays with plenty of festive visual appeal. Consider a Christmas-themed photo backdrop, and allocate a member of staff to help customers take pictures on their smartphones. Anything experiential that shoppers will want to post on social media is good.

• Use signage to advertise your social media account details, including a branded hashtag, stating that you will repost selected images from people who use this hashtag. For example, Early Learning Centre is a toy retail chain, and #ELCmoments is a unique hashtag consistently used with their Instagram images. (They could be using this hashtag on Facebook too!)

• Then share the posts from shoppers who tag you with images and confirmation of their great in-store experience! Instagramers particularly love when businesses interact and share their content. And even if shoppers don’t use your hashtag, it’s likely they will still mention your business.

Hashtags are an invaluable tool for gaining more visibility and customer reach organically (without paid promotion). Spend a little time researching non-branded hashtags that could work well for your store’s locality depending on how popular they are. For example, #VisitYork has around 108,000 posts on Instagram, or #ChristmasInLondon has over 199,000 posts.

Hire a freelancer or a marketing agency if you need some help.

2. Jolly stocking filler bundles

Promote stocking filler gift bundles created by gender and age groups. It’s a great seller for rushed parents who need to quickly get in and out with the gifts they need, or for indecisive gift-buyers. This can also work as a clever discount promotion that actually brings in more sales volume, rather than squeezing margins.

It’s a particularly effective trick for eCommerce stores, where the average basket size may not be as big without the benefit of an in-store browsing experience that generates impulse purchases.

3. Santa’s helper gift guides

People are always looking for gift ideas that make their shopping list easier to complete in time. Digital guides or image-based posts are great for showcasing products in specific gift categories on social media, tempting people into your physical or online store.

Break your gift guide up into gender and age categories, or create one image-based social post for each category, showing off a few products for each. If you create an image collage, make sure the items are individually big enough to see clearly.

Pinterest is another social channel that could work well here, especially for a US audience which accounts for half of all users. And remember my advice on using hashtags. For finding gift inspiration, people might use a generic tag like #christmasgifts.

4. Dazzling Christmas gift wrapping

Rather than discounting products when margins are tighter at the moment, promote a free gift-wrapping service instead. It’s a draw for time-strapped gift givers, or less talented gift wrappers such as myself! Train a member of staff, and provide a few wrapping paper options to choose from.

This works for eCommerce stores as well as physical stores if your website CMS can facilitate a gift-wrapping option for individual items at checkout.

5. Memorable multichannel ad campaigns

It takes more than one marketing touchpoint to convert most sales leads. For those retailers with a bigger advertising budget, design a multichannel Christmas campaign with inspiring content that’s formatted and adapted for each chosen platform or medium. Include your email subscribers, and pick your social or media platforms according to your audience demographics, behaviour and location.

If you have an eCommerce store, consider Shopping Results ads on Google, and definitely don’t forget to link your social ads to your website’s toy section or relevant product page.

If you’re already comfortable with multichannel campaigns and have the budget, why not investigate how to up the ante with an omnichannel approach? These advanced campaigns focus on a more personalized customer journey across marketing channels and user devices.