Holiday Strategy Planning Starts Now

How to plan a Q4 marketing strategy for a fashion, beauty, or lifestyle brand

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Holiday e-commerce sales in the U.S. hit a record $241 billion in 2024—with apparel and beauty leading the charge. If you’re not thinking about your holiday strategy yet, here’s your friendly wake-up call: it’s July. And it’s time to start.

Holiday wins don’t happen by accident. They’re reverse engineered, campaign by campaign, from a number you actually care about: revenue.

Why July (and not a second later)?

Because the real power players in fashion, beauty, and lifestyle are already producing content, finalizing promos, and mapping every touchpoint leading up to Black Friday.

Need proof?

• According to Shopify’s 2023 Holiday Shopping Report, 47% of consumers started holiday shopping before November.

• Meta ad costs jumped over 30% during Q4 last year, peaking in mid-November.

• And new data from Adobe confirms that U.S. e-commerce spending reached a record $241 billion during the 2024 holiday season, with apparel and beauty categories leading the surge.

Translation? If you wait until fall to start planning, you’ll pay more to reach people who’ve already bought from your competitors.

Planning in July means:

• Locking in shoot dates before everyone else scrambles for talent

• Building campaigns around actual buying behavior

• Launching with confidence (and solid margins)

• Designing offer strategies that balance margin, messaging, and demand—rather than reacting to clearance panic

• Securing the strategic leadership needed to connect creative, paid, and retention into one cohesive plan

Step One: Reverse Engineer Your Revenue

Most brands set marketing goals in reverse—start posting and hope it pays off. But here’s how my clients inside The Lavender Agency build their plans:

1. Start with your Q4 revenue target

2. Decide how much of that should come from holiday campaigns

3. Divide that by your average order value to get your sales goal

4. Build your offer strategy around it (more on that in the next blog)

This is where most teams fall short—because no one’s driving the process. That’s why my clients hire me as their Fractional CMO—to translate goals into executable strategy and build campaigns that run like systems.

It’s clear, grounded, and lets your team work backward with focus. No fluff. No chaos.

Let’s Talk About What Breaks Holiday Campaigns

Holiday marketing doesn’t fail because of bad ads or weak emails. It fails because the strategy was rushed—or worse, nonexistent.

When planning is skipped or delayed:

• Promotions get slapped together at the last minute

• Email flows are shallow or off-brand

• Ads overspend and underperform

• Internal teams are overwhelmed and unaligned

The reality? These aren’t execution problems. They’re leadership gaps.

As a Fractional CMO for sustainability-driven brands, I’ve seen what happens when strategy is sidelined. I’ve also seen the results when it’s front and center: higher ROI, less stress, and stronger brand equity.

What a Real Holiday Strategy Looks Like

Here’s the formula I use with my clients to build campaigns that convert:

• Revenue First: You’re not guessing—you’re targeting

• Offer Stack: Which products are seasonal stars? What’s evergreen?

• Channel Roles: Paid brings traffic, owned channels convert it

• Campaign Ladder: Teaser → Launch → Nurture → Amplify

• Team Clarity: Everyone knows what’s happening—and when

This structure doesn’t just help you sell more. It helps your team feel like they’re actually building something instead of sprinting through chaos.

Want to Stop Scrambling and Start Scaling?

Your competitors are planning now. If you're serious about turning Q4 into your strongest quarter yet, don’t let July slip by.

Let’s get to work—with a strategy that’s backed by data, led by experience, and built to perform.

Let’s build your holiday marketing strategy before your competitors do. Book a discovery call today!

This article is part of our July Holiday Strategy Series. If you found this valuable, don’t miss what’s coming next—subscribe below to get future articles delivered straight to your inbox.

Coming up in this series:

• Your Promotions Aren’t the Strategy: How to build an offer strategy for holiday marketing

• Being Everywhere Is Overrated: Which marketing channels are best for Q4 holiday campaigns? (Coming Soon)

• You Have the Ideas. Who’s Running the Strategy? How fractional marketing services help fashion, beauty, and lifestyle brands execute holiday strategy (Coming Soon)

• Your Holiday Plan Is Only as Good as Your Timeline: What assets and timelines do fashion, beauty, and lifestyle brands need to launch a holiday marketing campaign? (Coming Soon)

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