Christmas puts marketing under pressure. The lessons it reveals should shape what your business does next.
As Christmas approaches, marketing calendars fill quickly. Festive campaigns, customer gifts, seasonal offers, end-of-year announcements and the familiar question: “Can we get one more thing out before the holidays?”
For retailers, hospitality operators and consumer brands, this can be a crucial trading period. For businesses selling services, it can be an opportunity to strengthen relationships and start conversations about next year’s priorities.
But Christmas also exposes the gaps. The campaign that started too late. The website that failed to answer customers’ questions. The social content that attracted attention without generating enquiries.
As you plan for 2027, those experiences offer a useful starting point. What helped people choose your business, and what got in their way?
Here are seven priorities we believe should shape the year ahead.
1. Give every campaign a commercial purpose
“Being more visible” needs a clearer definition before it becomes a marketing objective.
Does your business need to attract a different type of customer? Increase repeat purchases? Build demand for a new service? Enter a new market? Improve the quality of enquiries?
Each ambition requires different messages, activity and measures.
At Christmas, a campaign might aim to secure advance bookings or encourage customers to buy a gift bundle. For a professional services business, the priority might be conversations with organisations setting their 2027 budgets.
Start with the result you need. Then decide how communications can help achieve it.
2. Make choosing your business easier
A persuasive campaign can lose its impact when the next step is confusing.
Google’s 2025 holiday analysis highlights the role of price, product confidence and purchase convenience in helping shoppers make decisions. Although focused on retail, it offers a useful prompt for other businesses: give people the information and reassurance they need to act.
Before investing in more traffic, review the journey you already offer.
Can visitors understand your services quickly? Are your case studies relevant? Is it easy to enquire, book or buy? Are delivery deadlines, availability and contact details clear?
For 2027, make improving that journey part of the marketing plan.
3. Prepare for discovery through AI
We expect AI-assisted discovery to become a more significant consideration in 2027, although adoption will vary by audience and sector.
Kantar’s 2026 trends research already identifies AI recommendations and agents as forces shaping brand discovery. That makes this an emerging behaviour worth preparing for, rather than a guaranteed prediction about how every customer will buy.
A practical starting point is to publish clear, accurate information about what your business does, who it helps and what makes it credible.
Useful service pages, detailed case studies, expert commentary and answers to genuine customer questions all deserve attention. Keep traditional search optimisation in the plan, while monitoring how your business appears in AI-generated answers.
4. Give people a reason to trust you
As content becomes easier to produce, our view is that distinctive expertise and credible evidence will become increasingly valuable.
Your strongest material may already exist inside the business: the specialist who explains a complicated issue clearly, the customer who can describe the difference you made, or the team whose work demonstrates your standards.
Build your content around those people and experiences.
For a Christmas campaign, that might mean showing the care behind a product or the people preparing an event. Across the year, it could mean practical advice, informed opinions and case studies that explain both the challenge and the outcome.
AI can support the process. Your people should give the work its perspective.
5. Make video work harder
Video deserves consideration within the wider communications plan. IAB UK reports that UK digital video advertising investment reached £9.3 billion in 2025, up 20% year on year. That demonstrates growing advertiser investment, although it does not mean every business needs the same video strategy.
Choose formats around the job they need to do.
A short demonstration can explain a product. A customer interview can provide reassurance. A project film can help a sales team show its capabilities.
Plan how footage will be used before filming. One well-briefed session can provide material for your website, social channels, presentations and follow-up communications.
6. Build relationships beyond the seasonal campaign
Christmas gives businesses a reason to reconnect. The opportunity grows when that contact continues into the new year.
For 2027, we expect more value to come from sustained relationships with relevant customers, creators, partners and communities. This is The Agency’s planning recommendation, rather than a claim that every brand needs a community programme.
A local producer collaboration, a useful customer email or a regular industry discussion may be more appropriate than a large, expensive activation.
Choose partnerships around shared audiences and a clear purpose. Give people a reason to stay involved after the initial announcement.
7. Connect your communications and measure the result
Customers experience your business across multiple touchpoints. Your PR, social content, website, email, advertising and sales conversations should reinforce the same promise.
That requires one shared brief: the audience, the problem, the message, the evidence and the action you want people to take.
Agree the measures at the same time. Reach and engagement can help explain performance, but connect them to outcomes such as qualified enquiries, bookings, repeat purchases or sales conversations.
Review what happened after the campaign. Use that evidence to make the next decision.
Put a clearer plan in your diary
Christmas can generate immediate opportunities and valuable lessons. Make time to capture both.
Before signing off your 2027 calendar, ask three questions: what does the business need to achieve, what will help our audience choose us, and what evidence will tell us we are making progress?
Those answers should guide the creative ideas, channel choices and investment that follow.
Planning your 2027 communications, social or marketing?
The Agency brings PR, social, content, digital and creative expertise together around your business goals. We work as an extension of your team, shaping practical plans and creative solutions around your priorities and budget.
Start a conversation at hello@the-agencyco.com or visit www.the-agencyco.com.