The new year is just around the corner, which means it’s time to turn your attention toward your 2023 marketing and content goals. One of the best ways to organize your holiday campaigns throughout the year is with a holiday marketing calendar.

Well-known holidays like Christmas, Thanksgiving, Independence Day and Halloween dominate the holiday marketing landscape with specific themes and immediately recognizable imagery. These holidays should be on every marketer’s radar, but if you only focus your efforts on the obvious dates, you’ll leave plenty of golden opportunities on the table.

Getting Started

Before implementing your campaigns, it will help to first outline your year in as much detail as possible. Whether you plan the whole year ahead of time or attack things one month or quarter at a time is up to you, but it’s essential to have a clear direction and to have all team members on the same page. By working at least a few months ahead, you’ll have goals on your calendar ready to achieve while leaving some room for adjustments down the road.

Another thing to consider before diving into the specifics of your holiday marketing calendar is to know what kind of content you want to deliver. Whether your company feels most comfortable with email marketing, content marketing, social media, editorial (i.e. blogs) or a little bit of everything, understanding your strengths will help you develop the best long-term plan. No matter what your preferred vehicle is, you’ll likely be focusing on one or more of these holiday campaign strategies:

• Promotions and sales – With offers like coupons, promo codes and free shipping, you’ll be able to re-engage existing customers (as well as hook new ones).
• Product launches – By planning your launches around shared cultural events, you’ll be able to build suspense and improve your chances of making a lasting impact.
• Giveaways – Increase engagement with high-profile content timed with different holidays.
• Themed content – Take advantage of the ubiquity of these holidays by designing emails and other content pieces with familiar imagery and correlated copy.

2023 Holidays

Everyone is familiar with the big holidays, and you shouldn’t ignore them. Customers will be expecting to hear from you during the traditional holiday season, but what about the rest of the year? We’ve compiled a short list of other holidays that often fly under the radar, each of which you can easily add your own marketing twist to:

• January 14 – National Dress Up Your Pet Day
• January 20 – Get to Know Your Customers Day
• January 29 – National Puzzle Day
• February 1 – Lunar New Year
• February 9 – World Pizza Day
• February 15 – Singles Awareness Day
• March 8 – International Women’s Day
• March 18 – World Sleep Day
• March 19 – Let’s Laugh Day
• April 10 – Siblings Day
• April 27 – Denim Day
• May 3 – Teachers’ Day
• June 8 – Best Friends Day
• June 19 – Juneteenth
• July 24 – Parents’ Day
• July 8 – National Video Games Day
• July 17 – World Emoji Day
• July 17 – Ice Cream Day
• July 20 – National Hot Dog Day
• July 30 – Friendship Day
• August 5 – International Beer Day
• August 8 – International Cat Day
• August 9 – Book Lovers Day
• August 26 – National Dog Day
• September 5 – Labor Day
• September 11 – Grandparents Day
• September 21 – International Day of Peace
• September 27 – World Tourism Day
• September 30 – International Podcast Day
• October 10 – World Mental Health Day
• October 24 – Diwali
• November 15 – National Entrepreneurs Day
• November 26 – Small Business Saturday
• November 28 – Cyber Monday
• December 14 – Free Shipping Day
• December 16 – National Ugly Christmas Sweater Day

This list doesn’t even scratch the surface. There are plenty of resources online where you can search for niche holidays, or you can even type “[specific date] holiday” into Google and you’ll find something worth celebrating.

You’ll also want to consider campaign strategies that revolve around a season, rather than a specific date. This of course can be implemented with the winter, spring, summer and fall in mind – each season is easy to revolve around a specific theme – but you can also extend this idea to things like the back-to-school season. Education is the #1 market in the promotional products industry, so reaching out to back-to-school buyers during the summer months is a must.

Do you have experience creating a comprehensive holiday marketing calendar and have any tips to share? What about favorite niche holidays to celebrate? Join the conversation on our members-only Facebook page.