The last sev­er­al months of the year are a key time for retail­ers as they hope to cap­i­tal­ize on the hol­i­day shop­ping sea­son. In the fierce­ly com­pet­i­tive retail space, the brands that rise above are those that offer a supe­ri­or cus­tomer expe­ri­ence – one that is per­son­al­ized and con­sumer-cen­tric. A Gart­ner sur­vey found that “89% of com­pa­nies plan to com­pete pri­mar­i­ly on the basis of the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence by 2016,” mak­ing this a key way to stand out dur­ing the hol­i­day hype.

Most all retail­ers amp up their sea­son­al mar­ket­ing efforts to cap­ture and re-engage con­sumers, entic­ing them with deals and pro­mo­tions to edge out the com­pe­ti­tion.

For these types of efforts, pri­or­i­tiz­ing per­son­al­iza­tion to cre­ate a more 1:1 mes­sages will help you res­onate with your poten­tial buy­ers. Use the data you have make emails and ads more mean­ing­ful for the indi­vid­ual, based on their inter­ests and past behav­iors across your site and the web.

While these more direct, sales-spe­cif­ic tac­tics are valu­able to attract poten­tial cus­tomers, retail­ers should also think about how they can bring more sto­ry­telling into their hol­i­day con­tent to real­ly res­onate with shop­pers.

Here are some inspired hol­i­day con­tent cam­paign ideas.

Share Seasonally Inspired Blog Content That Your Audience Will Appreciate

Young and fresh cloth­ing brand Madewell knows its audi­ence well. It offered its cool-girl audi­ence some equal­ly cool con­tent last hol­i­day includ­ing gift­ing tips from pop­u­lar blog­gers, “non-cheesy” hol­i­day playlists, and tips for de-stress­ing.

Williams Sono­ma gets this right too by pro­vid­ing its culi­nary cus­tomers with tips for build­ing the per­fect cook­ie tin, recipes and all – a del­ish, bite-sized piece of rel­e­vant con­tent. They also expert­ly weave in links to addi­tion­al posts to help dri­ve read­ers to more deeply engage with their posts as well as seam­less­ly inte­grate corol­lary prod­ucts that con­sumers can buy in a few extra clicks, if so com­pelled.

Get Visual And Inspire Passion On Pinterest

Sepho­ra curates a fan­tas­tic selec­tion of Pin­ter­est boards for its styl­ish and social shop­pers. For the hol­i­days, they high­light gifts by price points, gifts for guys, ide­al stock­ing stuffers, Black Fri­day deals, and more.

In addi­tion to help­ing mak­ing your shop­ping eas­i­er, Sepho­ra offers boards to inspire hol­i­day looks so con­sumers can put pur­chas­es to use.

Anoth­er great brand that lever­ages Pin­ter­est well is one I’ve already sung the prais­es of: Lowes. While Lowes doesn’t seem like my first stop for hol­i­day shop­ping, they pro­vide con­sumers like me a rea­son to con­sid­er­ing com­ing in by offer­ing ideas for hol­i­day décor and DIY projects.

Create Compelling Video Narratives

One of my favorite hol­i­day exe­cu­tions came last year from Kate Spade with its first “episode” in a series called #mis­sad­ven­ture. The video stars Anna Kendrick – some­one their tar­get demo­graph­ic can cer­tain­ly con­nect with and relate to – as a “mad­cap hero­in” who gets locked out of her Man­hat­tan brown­stones, her Kate Spade shop­ping bags and hol­i­day gifts in tow.

This video feels more like a webisode in a series that I want to keep watch­ing than a sales tool. Of course, it neat­ly serves that pur­pose as well, offer­ing view­ers a shop­ping guide to Anna’s fea­tured looks.

As an addi­tion­al touch, the brand offers a behind the scenes video with Anna where she dis­cuss­es her wrap­ping strate­gies, the best gift she’s received, and her sea­son­al sur­vival strate­gies.

These more human, less salesy con­tent touch­es can help build trust and rap­port with audi­ences so you devel­op cus­tomers who want to come back to your brand dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son and beyond – not just because of the pur­chas­es, but also the util­i­ty in the inter­ac­tions and full expe­ri­ence they receive.

What are some of your favorite exam­ples of hol­i­day con­tent?