Picture this. It’s 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving. You’re in bed with your phone, designing a “SALE” graphic in Canva because you finally have five minutes. You post it, write a quick caption, and hit share.
Then you wait. Twelve likes. Two of them are your cousins. Zero sales.
Meanwhile, your inbox is packed with emails from brands that started teasing their holiday collections four weeks ago. Those brands didn’t get lucky. They had a plan.
I’ve watched this happen to talented founders every single year. I’ve spent more than 15 years in PR and brand strategy across sports, fashion, beauty, and culture, which started with my corporate career at Coca-Cola, where nothing launched without a plan. Here’s what I know for sure: The holiday season doesn’t reward the best product. It rewards the best-prepared brands.
The money on the table this year
Let’s talk numbers, because they’re big.
Deloitte projects U.S. holiday retail sales of $1.70 to $1.71 trillion from November 2026 through January 2027.
Here’s the stat I want you to sit with. In Bain’s 2026 survey, more than 90% of shoppers plan to shop Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or another major sales event.
Nine out of ten people are walking in with their wallets open. The question isn’t whether people will spend. It’s whether they’ll spend with you, or with the brand that showed up first.
So why does it feel like everyone’s eating but you?
Be honest with yourself. How many of these sound familiar?
You start too late. You plan to “do something for Black Friday” and then it’s November 20th. By then your customers have made their lists, joined other brands’ early-access lists, and decided where their money is going.
You post into the void. You’re creating content in a panic with no theme and no calendar. Your feed reads like a clearance rack, not a brand people want to gift.
You give away your margin. You slap 40% off everything because that’s what everyone else is doing. You end the season busier than ever and somehow with less money.
Your email list is collecting dust. You have subscribers, but you haven’t talked to them since spring. Now you’re trying to sell to strangers in the most crowded inbox week of the year.
You’re competing with Sephora’s budget. Big brands are pouring money into ads, and you’re boosting a post with $10 and a prayer. Without a strategy, you can’t outspend them, and you can’t outsmart them either.
Nobody wins a championship by winging it
Before PR, I played professional basketball in Italy and Germany. No team I played on ever walked onto the court and “figured it out” during the game. We had a game plan, we ran the plays in practice, and we adjusted at halftime.
Holiday marketing works the same way. The brands that win in December are executing a plan they built in October or even earlier. They know their theme, their offer, their audience, and exactly what goes out each week.
The fix: The 2026 Holiday Marketing Guide
I built the Dynamically Branded Holiday Marketing Guide to be that game plan for you. It’s the same week-by-week approach I use with brands, condensed so you can actually run it while running your business.
Here’s what’s inside:
- 12 key steps to a successful holiday campaign.
- A 6-week promotions plan. You’ll know exactly what to do each week, from building excitement in Week 1 to Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the last-minute Christmas push.
- A done-for-you Instagram content calendar. It covers what to post each day, which format (Reel or carousel), the hashtags, and a Story idea for every day.
- Email plays and subject lines that convert. You’ll learn when to send the preview, the early-access tease, the “24 hours left” reminder, and the last-chance email.
- Influencer and paid ad strategy. Find out how to work with influencers and micro-influencers, and how to run ads on a small budget without lighting money on fire.
- Gift guide pitch templates to get your products in front of editors and creators.
- Real campaign inspiration from brands like Sephora, Mielle, ASOS, and Pandora, so you can see what great looks like.
This is your year!
You already did the hard part. You built something people want. Now let’s make sure they can find it, fall in love with it, and buy it before someone else gets there first.
This holiday season, let’s go from scrambling on Black Friday morning to watching the orders come in from a plan you set in motion weeks ago.
Grab it, block off an afternoon this week, and map out your season. Then reply and tell me your holiday theme. I read every single one.
XOXO,
Dynamically Branded
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