23 Thanksgiving Marketing Ideas Your Customers Will Gobble Up

Looking for Thanksgiving marketing ideas that will jumpstart holiday season sales?

November is a big month for small business owners. There’s Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Small Business Saturday — all stuffed together in a three-day span. (Not unlike a small-business turducken.)

With so much going on, you kind of have to pick and choose what seasonal marketing you can take on, and it’s not surprising that Thanksgiving marketing campaigns are one of the more underused.

There’s no need to go all out, but introducing a few Thanksgiving marketing ideas into your strategy will let you take hold of that turducken and show it who’s boss.

Thanksgiving Marketing Campaign Ideas

Get into a festive holiday mood with seasonal marketing. Here are 23 of the best Thanksgiving marketing ideas your customers will gobble up.

1. Show Community Support

November is the perfect time to give thanks to your community with charitable Thanksgiving marketing ideas. One way to do this is by volunteering your time somewhere. If you have employees, organize a team volunteer day.

Whether at an animal shelter or serving food for the homeless, giving back to your community shows you’re a small business that cares. Take a team photo at the end of the day and post it on your social media channels to give a behind-the-scenes look at your company.

2. Give a Thanksgiving Dinner Away

If you have a lot of local customers, consider giving away a Thanksgiving meal. You can go one step further and offer the winner the choice of keeping the dinner or donating it.

Holding a giveaway can help you get more followers, email subscribers, and customers. To make this Thanksgiving marketing idea more affordable, give away a portion of the dinner, like a few appetizers, a turkey, or dessert only.

Get the food items from a local business so you can tag them on social media and cross-promote with them.

The holidays are a stressful time — and a free Thanksgiving meal is an extremely enticing prize. Just make sure you collect email addresses to try to turn contest entrants into customers.

Alternatively, you can host a giveaway for Thanksgiving dinner table decor or place settings. Bonus points if you can tie this giveaway back to what you sell.

3. Update Your Social Media Accounts

The holiday season is the perfect time to add a fun, seasonal touch to your social media accounts. Affordable photo-editing sites like Canva and PicMonkey make it easy to update your social media accounts according to holidays, special events, and seasons.

You can update your profile pictures with seasonal items like leaves, pumpkins, turkeys, etc., or just incorporate a few fall colors to celebrate the holiday season.

If your followers are used to seeing your same logo or photo in their streams, updating these items seasonally can be what catches their eye and reminds them to check out your products.

4. Market Your Products to the Season

Almost any product can be marketed for Thanksgiving.

• If you sell clothes, put together the perfect comfy Thanksgiving outfit.
• If you sell candles, market them as the perfect hostess gift.
• If you sell home decor, show your customers how to create the perfect Thanksgiving table or how to get their home ready for all those dinner guests.
• If you sell toys, position them as the perfect way to keep the kids entertained on Thanksgiving day.
• If you sell desserts, market them as the perfect end to a great meal.

Then, promote them on all your social media accounts and via email. See? To make Thanksgiving marketing ideas work for you, all you need is a little creativity and scrappiness.

5. Give a Thanksgiving Cooking Demonstration

If you sell food, spices, sauces, or anything culinary-related, hold a cooking demonstration to drum up some excitement for your business. Use Facebook Live, Instagram Live, or TikTok — but you might want to do a couple of practice runs first that aren’t live.

Show customers how to make a great appetizer, main course, or dessert using one of your products or ingredients, and be sure to promote it heavily prior so you’ll have viewers.

‘Tis the season for holiday shopping, so demos like this will be crucial to online sales.

6. Hashtag It Out

Create a custom hashtag and use it to engage with your social media followers this holiday season.

Ask followers to share their favorite Thanksgiving memory (#thanksgivingthoughts) or ask them to share what they’re most thankful for this year (#givethanks), or maybe you go the funny route and ask them to share their biggest Thanksgiving disaster (thxbutnothx) or (Thanksgivingnightmares).

You can also turn this into a Thanksgiving marketing campaign by awarding the best comment a small gift card to your online store. You can also DM anyone who entered an exclusive promo code to help boost sales.

7. Hold a Canned-Food Drive

If you’re looking for Thanksgiving marketing strategies that give back, here’s a good one. If you have a brick-and-mortar location, holding a canned-food drive can be a great way to get customers into your store.

Offer customers an incentive to make a purchase while there by giving them a discount for their donation. Maybe one can gets 10% off, or 10 cans get 10% off… that part is up to you!

If you’re online only, you can volunteer at a food bank (and bring your team if you have any employees) and post a photo of yourself at the end of the day. Showing you care about your community and giving back is a great way to build loyal customers.

8. Create Themed Content

If you have a blog, an effective Thanksgiving marketing idea to try is themed content — just make sure it ties in with the products you sell.

For example, if you sell workout clothes, you can create content about how to have a healthier Thanksgiving and another post on Turkey Day exercises.

Think about the topics your target audience would be interested in reading about during the month of November and on the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, and then create content that addresses those topics.

You can post this content on social media, turn it into infographics for your blog, send it out in emails to your subscribers, and use it as a script for an Instagram Story or live TikTok video.

Remember, the best Thanksgiving marketing campaigns are the ones that keep on giving (without having to spend more money), so use this to your advantage.

9. Send Thank You Notes

If you sell online, you can bridge the inevitable personal gap by including a handwritten thank you note to your customers in your packaging during the holiday shopping season.

You don’t get to meet these customers face to face or even speak to them on the phone, but you can thank them for their business by writing them a quick note.

If you have too many customers to feasibly do this (lucky you!), type up a standard message and sign each one personally.

10. Give Gifts to Your Best Customers

Whether you sell in person or online, reward customer loyalty this Thanksgiving holiday by including free gifts with orders. While this may not be feasible for all customers, you can email those who’ve hit a certain monetary threshold an exclusive offer.

For example, say you sell handmade cosmetics, offer anyone who spent over $300 in a year with your business a free lip balm or eyeshadow as a thank you — and be sure to express gratitude for supporting your local business with a handwritten note.

11. Host a Seasonal Shopping Event/Live Demo

Thanksgiving marketing ideas can be as tasty as they are lucrative.

If you have a physical location, hold a Thanksgiving-themed event for customers.

Get a few pumpkin pies or a couple of dozen cookies for shoppers to munch on while they browse (order from local businesses and tag them to cross-promote), offer free gift wrapping and pre-Black Friday and Small Business Saturday discounts to entice people to shop early, or hold a demonstration in-store.

Show customers how to make a Thanksgiving-themed craft for their home or how to make a tasty dessert. Get creative, and you’ll get customers into your store!

If you are online only, you can hold your holiday marketing event virtually instead on Instagram Live, Facebook Live, or TikTok. Offer all attendees an exclusive discount code to shop at your online store, and consider holding a live giveaway (X amount to your online store) for attendees too.

12. Show Customers Your Personal Side

The top Thanksgiving marketing ideas are surprisingly affordable — and even free. Whether it’s in a blog post or in quick little bites for social media, showing customers what you’re thankful for this year (ahem, them) can help them connect with you.

P.S., you can easily make a Thanksgiving-themed social post for free on both Canva and PicMonkey.

13. Create Month-Long Deals

Holiday marketing is all about deals, deals, and more deals. Customers have a lot going on in November and a lot of choices for where they’ll buy their Thanksgiving meal ingredients, home decor, clothing, gifts, etc.

Get a head-start on your competitors by running your Thanksgiving marketing deals early in November and keeping them going all month long.

If you have an online store or e-commerce site, use a Thanksgiving-themed promo code like GOBBLE or GIVETHX.

14. Give a Thanksgiving-Themed Product Away

As mentioned earlier, almost any product can be positioned as perfect for Thanksgiving — hostess gifts, table decor, Thanksgiving outfits, entertainment for the kids, in-law presents, treat-yourself gifts, pet gifts, etc. And holding a giveaway benefits both you and your customers.

Choose a product for the giveaway (or choose multiple of a lower-priced product) and promote your giveaway via email and on your social media channels.

Collect emails using a tool like WooBox to help beef up your subscriber list for all those holiday-shopping emails you’ll be sending soon too.

15. Feature Your Customers

Say thanks to your customers by featuring them on your social media accounts, in your email newsletter, or on your blog. Ask them to tag you in a picture of themselves wearing/holding/using/eating your product and then feature the ones you select throughout the month.

Be sure to comment/retweet/like/etc. all the other submissions (if they’re coming through social) to show your appreciation and to get the most out of this user-generated content.

16. Donate Some of Your Proceeds

If you can financially afford it, why not designate a certain day in November to donate a portion of the proceeds to the charity of your choice?

Promote this day heavily in the weeks leading up to it, and who knows, maybe you’ll get enough transactions to make up what was donated too! You could also donate proceeds from Thanksgiving weekend, or any day that works best for you.

Consider emailing everyone a coupon who purchased on this day to hopefully get some return traffic and to let them know about any Thanksgiving sale promotions you’ll be running for the rest of the month.

17. Hold an After-Hours Shopping Event

If you have a retail location, partner with a few other local business owners to hold an after-hours shopping event. Market it as a way for customers to get their shopping done early (before all the Turkey Day madness begins) and offer discounts.

For example, you could do a BOGO offer of 23% off because Thanksgiving falls on the 23rd, or $10 off if customers spend $50. Gathering a variety of businesses in the same spot is enticing to customers, and if you throw in some fun extras like free goodies, drinks, and a giveaway, you have a recipe for success!

If you sell online, offer discounts at midnight on Black Friday or flash sales throughout the month to capitalize on FOMO and get in on the Thanksgiving promotional fun.

18. Look for Local Events

Fall is a lovely time to get involved in local events like craft festivals, art fairs, farmers’ markets, and more.

Do a quick search online to look for upcoming events in your area and grab booth space. You’ll help spread the word about your business locally and boost your November sales.

Post pictures of you at your booth online to show potential customers you’re a local business — giving a face to a name helps make a connection and fosters loyalty.

19. Use Thanksgiving Keywords

If you’re selling things like Thanksgiving decor and pumpkin-pie-scented lotion, you’ll want to target keywords your customers would use to search for these products in your product titles and description.

(When it comes to keywords, you want as many monthly searches as possible with as low competition as possible.)

Affordable keyword tools include SurferSEO and WriterZen. Semrush has a limited free plan that allows you 10 free keyword searches per day too.

20. Reach Out to Niche Bloggers

Say you sell handmade jewelry. Search online for fashion, jewelry, and lifestyle bloggers and compile a list. Then, visit each of their blogs and create a spreadsheet of how many followers they have on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Threads, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Contact the ones with large followings and ask them if they’d be willing to review your product in exchange for a blog post on your business.

You might also offer the blogger the chance to host a giveaway for their followers. (So you’ll need to be OK with providing two products for free.)

Try to tie it in with Turkey Day if possible. In this case, maybe it’s a bracelet in fall colors. Or a statement necklace with gold leaves. Offer the blogger’s followers a discount on future purchases to direct some of their traffic to you after your Thanksgiving promotion ends.

21. Try Facebook Advertising

If you haven’t tried Facebook advertising before, you’ll want to get familiar with it before Thanksgiving weekend.

It can be an effective way to drive more traffic to your online store or e-commerce site (and a brick-and-mortar store too!) and get more sales for not only Thanksgiving, but Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas/holiday shopping.

Try targeting specific interests within your ads. For example, if you sell children’s clothing, you might want to target the followers of a popular parent website with a huge following on Facebook.

Or you might target the followers of a company that makes children’s toys. Get creative and consider where your target audience hangs out. Then, create an ad that targets them and bring them over to your website.

22. Create Themed Product Bundles

An enticing Thanksgiving marketing idea is to create themed product bundles. Put a few relevant products together in a bundle and offer it for less than customers would pay if they bought the items separately.

Maybe it’s a “Thank Goodness for Thanksgiving Hostesses” bundle containing a few handmade goodies you sell.

Or maybe it comes with three lotions in your bestselling fall scents. Maybe it’s a “Thanksgiving Survival” bundle for those dreading family time (haha) that contains a candle with a soothing scent, stress-reducing oil, and bath bombs.

Have fun and get creative! Your customers will love these easy gift-giving ideas.

23. Use Thanksgiving-Themed Email Subject Lines

Subject lines can be a cruel, mysterious beast. Why? Because what works one day with your target audience may not work the next. But that’s why you need to stay one step ahead of your subscriber base at all times.

Funny, clever, interesting, and intriguing email subject lines are great, but they also must show customers the value of opening your email immediately, and preferably stay under 50 characters or fewer. Sheesh!

Here are a few seasonal examples for you:

• You’d be a turkey to miss this amazing deal!
• 25% off? Hurry before this deal is gobbled up
• 35% off this weekend! Use code THANKYOU
• We’re giving thanks with a HUGE sale
• Get everything you need for Thanksgiving here

P.S. You might want to try some fun Turkey-Day-themed emojis in your subject lines, too, depending on your target market, like these: 🍂 🍁 🦃 🥧

You can copy/paste them into your emails from here — this site ensures the emojis will render on all devices.

Thanksgiving Marketing Isn’t for the Birds

Now that you have 23 Thanksgiving marketing ideas you can incorporate into your marketing campaigns, you can get started on Thanksgiving promotions for your e-commerce business.

From themed social media posts to local charity contributions, take a few of these Thanksgiving marketing campaign ideas and see which ones work best for your business and target market in November.

Thankgiving marketing ideas will attract customers and boost your sales all season long. Treat yourself to an extra slice of pie or glass of wine on Turkey Day for all your hard work this month — you deserve it! Happy Thanksgiving!

Frequently Asked Questions

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