Channel Prioritization: Where to Focus for Maximum ROI This Holiday Season

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Key Takeaways

• You don’t need to be everywhere — you need to be where your customers are. Holiday ROI comes from focusing investment on the channels that truly drive impact.

• Email and SMS consistently deliver the highest ROI, while social commerce is the fastest-growing discovery driver.

• Paid ads fuel acquisition, but retention channels multiply the return.

• The smartest brands ruthlessly prioritize: fewer channels, more impact, higher ROI.

The Biggest Holiday Mistake: Trying to Be Everywhere

Every founder wants maximum visibility in Q4. The instinct is understandable: “If my brand isn’t on every channel, I’m missing sales.” But here’s the truth — spreading too thin is the quickest way to light your budget on fire.

Holiday marketing isn’t about being everywhere. It’s about being where it counts.

You don’t need to be everywhere — you need to be where your customers are. And your investment for each channel should be aligned with its impact. That’s the difference between a brand that scales profitably in Q4 and a brand that spends the season chasing impressions with no return.

The Founder’s Dilemma: Which Channels Deserve Your Money?

Most CEOs I speak to wrestle with the same questions:

• Should I double down on ads when costs spike during Cyber Week?

• Does influencer spend really pay back in December?

• How much should I put into in-store activations versus online?

• Is SMS worth pushing now, or do I stick to email?

The problem isn’t the questions — it’s that many founders try to answer all of them with yes.

Where Brands Go Wrong

• Chasing every platform: Running mediocre campaigns on ten channels instead of great campaigns on three.

• Overfunding acquisition: Pouring money into ads while retention emails and SMS flows sit underfunded.

• Treating channels as silos: Paid isn’t connected to email, email isn’t connected to retail — so attribution looks like chaos.

• Confusing presence with performance: Just because you showed up doesn’t mean you converted.

A Smarter Way to Prioritize Channels in Q4

Here’s the framework I use with my clients at The Lavender Agency to identify where the money actually works:

1. Start With ROI Anchors (Email + SMS)These are your highest-margin channels. Together, they deliver the best retention and post-purchase leverage. If these aren’t fully funded and optimized, you’re leaving free money behind.

2. Balance Acquisition With RetentionPaid ads and influencers bring customers in, but your CRM should catch them. Every dollar spent on acquisition without a strong retention loop is only half a dollar earned.

3. Identify Seasonal Multipliers Social commerce (TikTok Shop, Instagram Checkout) spikes during holidays. Leverage it for discovery, but don’t overbuild it into your Q4 budget if your margins are already thin.

4. Play the 40/30/20/10 Rule A sample structure: 40% paid ads, 30% retention (email/SMS), 20% content/influencers, 10% experiential retail activations. Adjust based on your margins and customer journey.

5. Cut Channels That Don’t Perform Brutal but effective. If your Pinterest campaigns haven’t driven ROI in 11 months, they won’t magically work in December. Focus your spend where the returns are proven.

The Data Doesn’t Lie

• Brands with balanced acquisition + retention see 30% higher year-over-year growth than brands that overspend on one channel (Forrester, 2024).

• Nearly 60% of shoppers said they planned to shop through at least one social commerce platform during the 2024 holiday season (Deloitte).

• Email remains the highest-performing digital channel in terms of ROI, year after year.

The Founder’s Reality Check

Ask yourself:

• Which channel is actually delivering ROI — and which one am I funding out of habit?

• If I had to cut my budget by 30%, which channels would I defend first?

• Am I measuring channel impact by conversions, or just by impressions?

From Channel Chaos to Clarity

At The Lavender Agency, I help founders stop spreading themselves thin and start investing with precision. As a Fractional CMO, I build marketing strategies that rank channels by impact and fund them accordingly — so every dollar in Q4 drives measurable ROI.

👉 Let’s review your channel mix and set clear priorities for Q4. Book your call now.

This Blog is Part of Our October Series on Omni-Channel Growth

Every October, founders are making last-minute calls on channel mix, budget splits, and store activations—meanwhile customer expectations are rising and ad costs are spiking. That’s why this month, The Fashion CEO’s Playbook is dedicated to practical, ROI-driven moves that connect digital and in-store before the holiday rush.

Before this post:

• The Omni-Channel Advantage: Seamlessly Blending Online and Offline 

Coming up:

• Omni-Channel Budgeting: How to Allocate Spend Across Digital + Physical Touchpoints

• Measuring What Matters: Performance Metrics That Tell the Real Story

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