During the holiday season, marketers will see increased advertising costs, increased timelines for campaigns to take place, more inventory being available, and higher demands from customers.
As a result, if there is no proper plan to execute these promotions, there is a possibility that even highly rated promotions may not yield the best results during this important revenue period of the year.
To support performance-focused marketing teams in preparing for, taking action during periods of peak traffic, and maintaining control over performance, this holiday performance marketing checklist helps to create an organized approach to planning, aligning with other members, and executing consistently throughout each holiday phase.
How Can This Checklist Help You?
This checklist is designed to be a practical guide, not a simple list of tasks. It will provide you with an approach to planning your holiday promotions well ahead of time, to assess your promotional concepts before peak days, and to execute your promotions when customer demand is at its highest.
You will receive detailed steps for creating your holiday promotional calendar, developing and validating your promotional offers, preparing your paid channels to be ready for the holiday season, optimizing the way you interact with your customers, and monitoring the success of all of your holiday campaigns in real-time.
What Will You Get From This Checklist?
In this checklist, you will get a clear breakdown of what needs to be done at every stage of the holiday season:
- A goal-setting and KPI framework to align revenue targets with strategy.
- A ready-to-use holiday calendar covering October through January.
- Offer planning guidance for early promos, peak sales, festive campaigns, and clearance periods.
- Paid media preparation steps for testing, scaling, and retargeting.
- Website and customer experience checks to prevent drop-offs during high traffic.
- A measurement and optimization system for fast decision-making during peak days.
- Bonus growth ideas to extend revenue beyond holidays into the new year.
Why This Checklist Works?
What makes this checklist effective is its seasonal-first approach. Instead of treating holiday marketing as one big campaign, it breaks execution into manageable stages with clear priorities for each month.
It brings marketing, operations, and performance tracking into one aligned workflow, helping teams avoid common holiday mistakes like inventory mismatches, creative delays, missed retargeting windows, or rushed optimizations.
Whether you are preparing for your first major holiday push or refining a repeatable seasonal process, this checklist helps you execute with confidence, consistency, and control, turning the holiday rush into a growth opportunity.
