How AI Has Transformed the 2024 Holiday Marketing Landscape: Three Key Strategies

Every business needs a sturdy, reliable marketing playbook for the holiday season. That’s a complicated proposition in 2024, though: On account of rapid advances in the development and adoption of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools, last year’s strategies no longer suffice. Generative AI search is now firmly in the mainstream, thanks to the fact that the tools are well baked into leading browsers themselves. Consumers are having conversations about their holiday shopping plans and needs across more social platforms than ever. And the ongoing trend away from brand-specific searches continues.

The bar is high for brands to be discovered and favored this holiday season. Businesses need airtight strategies for 2024, not 2023. Considering how the digital landscape has evolved through this past year, here are three important strategies to follow for holiday success.

Personalize at Scale to Meet Elevated Consumer Expectations

Over the past year, broader adoption of generative AI tools has accelerated a shift in search behavior itself. The trend, over time, has been for consumers to move away from keyword-oriented searches, and to instead run search queries with more conversational and casual phrasing. In other words, consumers are conducting more customized and specific searches, which demand more personalized search results. 

Brands can expect AI search users to gather their holiday plans, recipes, decor concepts, and more from AI search, rather than from multiple traditional searches. Brands need to accept that this means each individual consumer will have their own unique search experience. It also means they need to safeguard against errors and inaccuracies that can deliver unreliable results to the user. In the holiday season, brands need strong content strategies that cater to long-tail search results. Provide deeper, richer details about the brand, products, and services wherever content related to the business can be found – and verify those details are accurate. Make use of AI-powered solutions to adapt and personalize information for the consumer, as they increasingly expect from their search experiences.

Enable Hyperlocal Discoverability and AI-Driven Trend Alignment

The search experience is user-specific not only in intent and context but by location. The evolution of consumer search behavior has made search results inherently more local within the last few years. Applying the same messaging across a nationwide audience will not be sufficient for holiday campaigns. Multi-location brands face the challenge of developing targeted strategies to appear in hyper-localized search results. Fortunately, trends in AI development have also created advantages for brands that need to deliver relevant, accurate results at scale. 

Using AI and large language models, brands can manage, verify, and optimize their local listings and profiles. While updating and verifying all this information is overwhelming to human teams – especially location managers, who usually aren’t marketing experts – AI can help ensure accuracy and discoverability while staying true to the brand’s voice and overall message. AI also unlocks the ability to identify consumer trends in hyperlocal contexts, by analyzing reviews, conversations on social platforms, and other relevant content. For example, if AI analysis reveals a restaurant chain’s brunch menu is a trending topic in the business’s reviews and in content on other channels, the technology can suggest strategies to optimize for brunch discoverability across its content. An AI-powered strategy can help manage and process relevant information in real-time, lightening the load for the business’s employees during the holidays. 

Aim for Operational Efficiency and Strategic Collaboration

Businesses need to assess what processes they have the capacity to manage on their own, and where they will need tech assistance. AI is a valuable tool for making suggestions for a business – but the business still needs the resources to judge which suggestions are truly applicable for their brand. For a multi-location business, it requires a real familiarity with the places and communities where each location exists. 

In the high-stakes, holiday shopping season, businesses should take advantage of AI tools that can analyze relevant content – wherever it sits – and generate location-specific and consistently on-brand insights. AI and automation can help a business scale its efforts quickly, which the human team can then verify while focusing on their own strategy and goals. It’s also important to find the support and partnership the business needs in order to make location data and source citations discoverable as consumers assemble their shopping lists and plans.

Not Just Now, but for 2025 and Beyond

Innovation and collaboration must remain at the center of any holiday marketing strategy. Brands and marketers must be willing to experiment with generative AI tools, and they should seek partnerships with businesses that also prioritize AI adoption and testing. Marketing, tech, and operational teams all need to be aligned internally on AI-driven strategies. This is how brands can win in the competitive holiday shopping season, and prepare for the advances and changes we’re bound to see in 2025.