Consumer Holiday Behavior: Top Holiday Priorities Every Business Should Have on Their Plate
The holiday season is the most competitive—and lucrative—time of year for businesses across every industry. But winning Q4 customer dollars isn’t as simple as turning on a few ads in mid-November and hoping for the best.
To help you navigate changing consumer behavior and prepare your digital strategy, we sat down with five industry experts from V Digital Services across Digital Strategy, SEO, Local Search, Paid Media, and Data Analytics. Here is their ultimate playbook for holiday success.
1. Full-Funnel Digital Strategy
Andrew Meister | Digital Marketing Strategist
The Core Priority: Start Early & Build a Full-Funnel Strategy
“The single most important thing businesses can do is plan early and think beyond the final transaction.”
During the holidays, competition for attention increases dramatically, so waiting until November to start marketing usually means higher costs and less time to influence the customer. The strongest holiday strategies start building awareness and intent well before the buying window, then use channels like search, social, streaming TV, display, and retargeting to stay in front of those audiences as they move closer to making a purchase.
The Common Pitfall: Waiting Until Customers Are Ready to Buy
Putting nearly all of your holiday budget into bottom-of-the-funnel tactics like paid search is a major mistake. Search is incredibly valuable, but during the holidays, you’re often competing for customers after they’ve already decided what they want. Businesses should be creating demand before trying to capture it. If you wait until someone searches “best holiday gift” or “Black Friday deals near me,” you’re entering the most competitive and expensive part of the customer journey.
The Quick Win: Build Your Retargeting Audiences Now
Start building your first-party audiences before the holiday rush:
- Ensure your website tracking is working and pixels are properly installed.
- Build custom audiences from website visitors, customer lists, and social engagement.
- When holiday campaigns launch, you won’t be starting from zero—you’ll have a warm list of people who know your brand ready to receive targeted offers.
Key Takeaway: Don’t wait for the holiday shopping season to start your holiday marketing. Build awareness, collect data, and create demand early.
2. SEO & AI Search Optimization
Barrett Langendoerfer | SEO / AIO Manager
The Core Priority: Lock Down Your Search & AI Presence Early
“Prepare your search presence before customers start searching—not once demand has already peaked.”
Lock down evergreen URLs and structured data (Schema) at least 60 days before peak season. Generative AI engines (Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity) rely heavily on clear entity data to synthesize recommendations. Implementing updated schema early ensures search bots and AI crawlers parse real-time information before traffic spikes.
Additionally, optimize high-value landing pages for clear pricing, location/service areas, availability, and simple booking options. Ensure your site answers straightforward questions customers ask AI, such as “Where can I find X near me?” or “What is the best option for X during the holidays?”
The Common Pitfall: Changing URLs Annually & Ignoring UX
- Creating new, year-specific URLs every season (e.g., /black-friday-2026 instead of /black-friday). Starting from scratch destroys accumulated backlink authority and forces search engines and AI models to re-learn your pages during a high-stakes quarter.
- Neglecting customer experience. If someone lands on a page and can’t quickly find availability, pricing, or next steps, that traffic won’t translate into revenue.
The Quick Win: Run a “Holiday Search-to-Conversion” Audit
Google the top 5–10 items you want customers to buy this season across traditional, local, and AI search results. Ask yourself:
- Can customers find us?
- Does the landing page immediately answer their question?
- Is the offer clear with an obvious call-to-action?
Pro-Tip: Take note of the third-party listicles, review sites, and domains that AI tools cite in their answers. Pitching those specific cited sources for inclusion gives you a shortcut to appearing directly inside AI search responses.
Key Takeaway: The businesses that win holiday search make themselves discoverable, useful, and easy to choose long before the customer hits “buy.”
3. Local SEO & Google Business Profile
Amanda Greenwood | Local SEO Manager
The Core Priority: Lock Down Your Store Hours & Basic Business Info
“Make sure your store hours and business information are accurate across online platforms before the holiday rush.”
If you don’t update your operating hours, Google may display a warning on your profile stating “Holiday hours may differ.” That simple badge creates consumer friction and sends shoppers to competitors. Even worse, if a customer makes a trip to your store only to find closed doors, you risk earning a bad review.
The Common Pitfall: Delayed Promotion of Holiday Offers
Waiting until the holiday season is already underway to promote sales, gift cards, or special events is a huge miss. Shoppers research locations and deals weeks in advance; delaying your announcements means losing out on early discovery searches.
The Quick Win: Run a 10-Minute Google Business Profile Tune-Up
Before Q4 hits, log into your Google Business Profile and verify:
- Holiday and special hours
- Phone number, website URL, and primary services
- Fresh photos and recent Google Posts promoting holiday offers
- All pending customer reviews have received responses
Key Takeaway: Eliminating buyer friction on local search prevents lost foot traffic and protects your online reputation.
4. Paid Media & Advertising Budgets
Mike Venable | Paid Media Manager
The Core Priority: Account for Rising Cost-Per-Clicks (CPCs)
“Cost-per-clicks go up anywhere from 20% to 30% leading up to the holiday season.”
Because advertising costs surge across channels, businesses should plan to increase their ad budgets starting in October. Raising your budget proactively prevents a sudden drop in ad exposure and campaign performance during peak shopping weeks.
The Common Pitfall: Waiting Until November to Build Creative
The biggest mistake advertisers make is delaying their planning. Waiting until the week before Black Friday to draft messaging or build ad assets means missing the crucial window when early shoppers are planning their purchases.
The Quick Win: Launch Early to Gather Optimization Data
Finalize campaign messaging and creative in September so ads can go live in October. The earlier your campaigns launch, the sooner you collect conversion data to optimize performance—allowing you to capture early demand efficiently while competitors scramble to launch.
Key Takeaway: Secure your campaign assets in September, bump up ad budgets in October, and let optimization drive your results through December.
5. Marketing Data & Analytics
Joe Pelosi | Senior Marketing Data Analyst
The Core Priority: Mine Historical & Competitor Data<
“Use historical data to identify what actually drove holiday performance over the last few years.”
Analyze prior customer profiles, high-performing sales channels, top products, key geographic markets, and conversion timing. Layer this with competitor insights: What offers are they running, and how can you differentiate your brand?
The Common Pitfall: Analyzing Performance in a Silo
Comparing November/December directly to October without accounting for Year-over-Year (YoY) seasonality distorts your analysis. Furthermore, failing to track changes in measurement strategy (e.g., implementing Offline Conversion Tracking this year when you only tracked web forms last year) ruins data accuracy. Understand how your measurement setup has evolved before drawing YoY conclusions.
The Quick Win: Build a Weekly Historical Benchmark
Map out last year’s performance week-by-week to identify exactly when conversions, revenue, and leads began to ramp up:
- Use this trajectory as a baseline signal for current campaigns.
- If current performance dips below historical trends, adjust budgets, targeting, or messaging immediately.
- Don’t stop on December 25th: Capitalize on post-holiday “self-gifting” shoppers through early January.
Key Takeaway: Historical data provides an early-warning system. Measure performance accurately to pivot before peak weeks slip away.
6. Content Strategy & Execution
Sarah Salthouse-Rhea | Lead Content Specialist
The Core Priority: Publish Seasonal Content Well in Advance
“Our single most critical task is finalizing and publishing holiday-themed content well before the season begins.”
Get gift guides, seasonal blogs, and email sequences drafted, approved, and live early. Organic search indexes and ranks content on a delay—publishing in November means missing early-bird shoppers and forfeiting search visibility to competitors who planned ahead.
The Common Pitfall: Generic Messaging & Over-Reliance on Unedited AI
Rushing content results in generic “Happy Holidays” posts that fail to solve consumer problems. While AI tools are incredible for speeding up drafting, they cannot replace human empathy, local expertise, or brand trust. Winning brands use AI for production speed, but rely on human editors to deliver heart, accuracy, and value.
The Quick Win: Refresh Existing Content Equity
You don’t need to start from scratch every year:
- Open Google Search Console or Google Analytics to find last year’s top-performing holiday content.
- Update existing landing pages with current-year dates, updated products, and fresh statistics.
- Use AI tools to quickly repurpose that updated master content into short email blurbs and social media captions.
Key Takeaway: Leverage existing domain authority by updating past seasonal content, and keep human oversight at the center of your AI content strategy.
7. Agency Operations
Tiana Porter | VP, Agency Operations
The Core Priority: What is the single most critical task or strategy your department focuses on to prepare for the holiday season?
Our top priority is ensuring the website is fast, stable, secure, and prepared to handle increased holiday traffic and customer demand. This means proactively reviewing and optimizing the site.
The Common Pitfall: What is one holiday prep mistake or oversight you frequently see businesses make in your area of expertise?
A common mistake is waiting until the holiday season is underway to identify website issues. Slow load times, broken links, outdated content, or issues with forms and key customer journeys can quickly impact the customer experience and conversions when traffic is at its peak.
The Quick Win: What is one actionable piece of advice or tool you’d recommend to help businesses tackle this holiday priority smoothly?
Test your most important customer journeys before the season begins. Review key landing pages, forms, calls-to-action, mobile functionality, and site speed.
Key Takeaway: Website performance is foundational to holiday success; ensure your infrastructure is optimized and user journeys are tested well before traffic peaks.
Summary Comparison Table
Final Takeaway for Q4 Success
If there is one common thread across every marketing discipline this year, it’s this: First-mover advantage wins the holidays.
Start building audiences, updating technical search assets, warming up ad accounts, and publishing guides today. By the time consumer shopping peaks, your business will be discoverable, credible, and ready to convert.