Festive season preparation guide: promotions, advertising, & marketing ideas

Businesses that want to capitalise on some of the biggest shopping events of the year must start making the necessary preparations to optimise their success. Promotions have to be carefully calculated and considered, and marketing ideas often require time to fully execute and ramp up. Execution and gathering momentum are nothing more than essential to making full use of the sales seasons in today’s competitive markets, especially with a large share of event income shifting to online e-commerce channels.

This guide will explore the key sales seasons to watch for in Australia. We'll also cover essential promotion and marketing ideas to help you gear up your business and capture the surge in consumer spending.

Key peak sales seasons in Australia to look out for

Australia's major shopping seasons are highly anticipated events that drive significant consumer spending. Shoppers often plan large purchases around these periods, trusting they will find the best deals and biggest discounts. A well-prepared peak season strategy is therefore essential for Australian businesses to capitalise on this focused demand.

Key Australian sales seasons include:

• Black Friday & Cyber Monday
• Boxing Day
• Click Frenzy
• End-of-Financial Year (EOFY) Sales

1. Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Once seen as a primarily American event, Black Friday and Cyber Monday have become a major fixture in Australia's seasonal sales calendar. The event's popularity continues to grow, with a reported 8% year-over-year increase¹ in online traffic in Australia during the period, surpassing the global average and indicating strong local demand.

This strong local interest means that businesses should consider ramping up their marketing and advertising efforts early to capture shopper attention well before the main event begins.

2. Boxing Day

The festive shopping season doesn't end on Christmas Day. For many Australian shoppers, Boxing Day sales are a highly anticipated time to find great post-holiday bargains and spend gift cards.

Recent research from the Australian Retailers Association (ARA) and Roy Morgan shows Australians spent an estimated A$1.3 billion on Boxing Day and a further A$2.4 billion in the final days of December 2024², highlighting strong engagement in end-of-year sales. Understanding these evolving Christmas shopping trends helps businesses tailor their end-of-year deals and advertising efforts effectively to a bargain-hunting mindset.

3. Click Frenzy

Click Frenzy is Australia's own major online-only flash sale event, typically held in May and November. The event gathers thousands of deals from numerous online brands, allowing shoppers to browse the best offers in one place and click through to purchase directly from the retailer.

With reports showing 1 in 10 shoppers³ waiting for Click Frenzy for their year-end purchases, this limited-time sale presents a huge opportunity for e-commerce businesses to capture motivated online buyers.

4. End of financial year (EOFY) sales

With 85% of Australians now more price-conscious than they were five years ago⁴, the End of Financial Year (EOFY) sales season is a key time for planned, considered purchases. Its success is clear, with recent data showing 7 in 10 Australian shoppers⁵ intend to do their shopping during EOFY sales.

Big-ticket items like home appliances, electronics, and office equipment sell particularly well during this peak season. Businesses offering these products need to prepare their marketing and inventory well in advance.

Business strategies to get ahead of Australia’s key sales seasons

Regardless of whether you run a brick-and-mortar store or an e-commerce business, Australia's key sales seasons present a great opportunity to increase sales, clear old stock, build customer loyalty, and acquire new customers. To cash in on these events, you need to prepare your business's marketing and promotion strategy well in advance.

1. Adjust promotions to match consumer and competitors' expectations

Discounts and good deals play essential roles during the festive sales season, but small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and startups in both traditional retail and e-commerce must be extra cautious in this regard. Larger competitors with deeper pockets can offer bigger discounts, so a well-planned promotion strategy is necessary to compete effectively without sacrificing your profit margins. Careless deals can lead to suboptimal profits or even losses.

So, instead of merely mirroring what your industry peers are doing with deals and discounts, ensure that you have a curated promotion strategy for the peak season that best suits your company’s size and goals.

Here's what you need to do to come up with a well-planned promotional strategy:

• Consider your business objective: Do you want to increase sales, clear old stock, garner new customers, or retain current ones? Your priorities will determine how deep your discounts can be for your holiday ad campaign.
• Know your target audience: Narrow down on your target demographic for more streamlined promotional ideas. The right offer depends on your business goals and who your consumers are. Weigh your options with due diligence; for example, choosing discount codes or automatic onsite discounts for your e-commerce business can significantly affect your effective conversion rates. 
• Apply different promotions to different products: Not everything needs the same discount, even if they come from the same retail store. Discern what kind of promotions would best suit each product or product group, taking into consideration factors such as competitor competition, the need for more market awareness, whether it is classified as unwanted inventory, and so on.
• Strategically segment your discounts: Focus larger discounts on new or dormant customers. For loyal shoppers, consider exclusive offers or cross-selling promotions to reward them without eroding margins. This is also a great time for special gifting campaigns.

2. Lay out your marketing campaign timeline

A well-crafted marketing and advertising campaign is central to any successful seasonal campaign. During the holiday season, however, consumer channels like search engines, social media, and email inboxes will be flooded with ads from other companies pushing their products. This makes it harder for your message to reach its target audience.

Not only does this intense competition often drive up advertising costs, but each ad campaign becomes less impactful on its own. Every dollar spent on your marketing campaign ideas must therefore be highly intentional.

It’s thus best that you start early when it comes to peak season sales. To get ahead of the competition, try these:

• Tease your promotions well in advance: Customers often start looking for deals weeks before the main sales season. Entice them early with exclusive coupons and special offers for your festive marketing campaign.
• Have a social media marketing campaign. Get your customers to share and repost your Black Friday advertisements for additional discounts or through a giveaway, and keep an eye out for hashtags you can piggyback on. 
• Leverage social media marketing campaigns: Use platforms like Instagram and Facebook to run your festive advertising campaign. Encourage shares through giveaways and use relevant hashtags to expand your reach on social media.
• Use every channel to your advantage: Invest in the marketing channels that make the most sense for your business, be that email marketing, paid ads, organic posts, or otherwise. Just make sure you stay intentional with all your offline and online marketing ideas and efforts; the quantity should never be at the expense of quality. 
• Optimise product listings for the season: Although SEO is largely seen as a long-term game, optimising your product descriptions to include phrases like ‘Black Friday deal’ or ‘EOFY sale’ to capture shoppers who are actively searching for these terms. Many consumers have no idea of what brand to buy from when searching for a particular product to purchase, making them easy conversions.
• Prepare content themes for your products: If you’re aiming to acquire new customers through seasonal sales campaigns, it is essential to stockpile reader-friendly information that can be easily accessed by prospects looking to learn more. Plan your marketing idea around an overarching theme, such as a holiday gift guide, to rein in more shoppers. A strong theme helps you to build a strong brand identity during the busy season.

3. Logistics and site preparation

Your marketing and promotions bring customers to your site, but the final steps are payment and fulfillment. A clunky checkout process or unclear shipping information can lead to cart abandonment. A poor post-purchase experience, like a delivery delay during the holidays, can deter customers from returning in the future.

To ensure your logistics and order fulfillment can handle the surge, here are some preparation must-dos: 

• Make arrangements for adequate stock quantities: Analyse forecasts to ensure you have enough inventory of your key products to meet the expected demand.
• Set up low-stock alerts: Implement a system to automatically notify you when popular items are running low, so you can reorder or update the product page.
• Monitor "hot" products: Keep a close eye on frequently ordered items to manage inventory and anticipate fulfillment needs in real-time.
• Prepare packaging and shipping stations: Organise your packing area with all necessary materials (boxes, tape, labels) to speed up the dispatch process.
• Review your order management workflow: Ensure your process for handling a higher volume of orders is streamlined to prevent bottlenecks from order confirmation to dispatch.

Beyond inventory, small upgrades to your checkout process can provide huge quality-of-life improvements for shoppers. Offering free shipping from Australia, even if you absorb the cost elsewhere, is a major attraction. You can also make checkout easier by expanding your payment options. Integrating robust payment services like digital wallets (PayPal, Apple Pay) alongside credit cards caters to more customer preferences and smooths the path to purchase.

Sustainable logistics for the peak shopping season

The peak season sales surge often leads to a significant increase in packaging waste. Today, however, consumers are more eco-conscious than ever, and their purchasing decisions are influenced by a brand's green credentials. Embracing sustainable shipping is a powerful way to enhance your brand reputation and meet customer expectations.

Here's how you can ship your e-commerce orders around Australia and beyond with a sustainability-first approach:

• Choose eco-friendly packaging materials: Opt for materials like recycled cardboard, compostable mailers, and paper-based void fillers instead of traditional single-use plastics.
• Right-size your packaging: Avoid oversized boxes. Using packaging that snugly fits your product minimiszes material waste and reduces the volumetric weight, which can lower both shipping costs and transport emissions.
• Adopt a minimalist packing approach: Use only the essential amount of packaging needed to protect your product safely. This reduces both waste and the overall weight of the shipment.
• Offer consolidated shipping options: Encourage customers to group multiple items into a single shipment to reduce your carbon footprint per item and minimise the number of packages in transit.
• Partner with a green logistics provider: Work with a shipping carrier like DHL Express that has clear, science-based climate protection goals.

Deliver on your orders with DHL Express

A successful seasonal campaign doesn't end at checkout. Efficient order fulfillment is essential, as a late, missing, or damaged delivery can quickly erase a positive shopping experience and risk future customer loyalty.

DHL Express is your reliable logistics partner for timely delivery, whether you are shipping your goods into Southeast Asia or anywhere else in the world. Our global network helps businesses expand, and we offer options to offset shipping emissions through verified climate protection projects.

For businesses wanting to take a more direct role in decarboniszing logistics, DHL Express also offers GoGreen Plus. This service allows you to actively reduce your emissions by investing in Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), a cleaner alternative to conventional jet fuel.

Open a DHL Express Business Account today to fulfill all your shipping needs from Australia, both during the peak season and beyond.