The holiday season is a marketer’s Super Bowl. It’s a high-stakes, high-pressure, and incredibly noisy quarter. From October through January, your customers are in a digital blizzard of “50% OFF!” banners, “LAST CHANCE!” emails, and a non-stop, FOMO-fueled ad-spend war.
For most retail brands, the only way to compete is to shout louder, discount deeper, and embrace the chaos. But you’re not most retail brands.
You’re in the wellness space. Your entire brand is built on calm, on health, and on relief. A frantic, high-stress, “BUY NOW!” message is completely off-brand. It breaks the very trust you’ve worked so hard to build.
The good news? The holidays are, by far, the most stressful time of the year for your customer. They are desperate for what you’re selling. While every other brand is marketing indulgence, you get to market the antidote.
Your marketing strategy shouldn’t be to join the noise; it should be to offer a refuge from it. You aren’t just selling premium CBD products; you are selling a 15-minute mental break, a better night’s sleep, and the gift of showing up as a calmer, more present version of yourself for your family.
Here are five human-centric marketing ideas to connect with holiday shoppers.
1. Reframe the Gift as a Care Package
The Problem: A customer is stressed about what to buy their hard-to-shop-for relative. A single bottle of CBD oil can feel a little too personal or medical.
The Solution: Stop selling a product and start selling a solution. Create curated, beautifully packaged Holiday Wellness Bundles that are pre-themed to solve a specific holiday problem.
- The Silent Night Sleep Kit: A CBN/CBD tincture, a silk sleep mask, and a small tin of chamomile tea.
- The Holiday Host Recovery Kit: A high-potency topical for sore feet, a relaxing bath bomb, and a pack of calming gummies.
- The In-Law Survival Pack: (Wink-wink). A bottle of your most popular gummies or oils, branded as the go-to for staying calm and centered.
Why it Works: This is a brilliant strategy. You’ve reframed a wellness product as a luxurious, spa-like gift. It feels like a high-end, thoughtful care package, which is a much easier and more comfortable gift to give.
2. Run a “12 Days of Calm” Content Campaign
The Problem: A single “Black Friday 25% Off” email is guaranteed to be buried in an avalanche of identical offers from 50 other brands.
The Solution: Build a relationship, not just a one-day sale. Create a “12 Days of Calm” email and social media campaign for the first two weeks of December.
Why it Works: This is a drip campaign that trains your audience to look forward to your content. The key is to make it 80% value and 20% sales.
- Day 1: A 2-minute guided meditation (for free).
- Day 2: A 15% discount on all topicals.
- Day 3: A simple unplug challenge (e.g., “no phone for the first 30 minutes of your day”).
- Day 4: A free mini gummy pack with any purchase.
You are providing genuine, stress-reducing value, which builds immense brand loyalty and keeps you top-of-mind, all while creating 12 different (and smaller) excuses to buy.
3. Become an Anti-Stress Resource
The Problem: Your customer is actively, frantically searching for help. Their holiday anxiety is real.
The Solution: Be the answer to their Google search. Your blog and your SEO strategy are your most powerful, non-salesy tools. Focus on content that targets the pain points a stressed-out person would be searching for in November and December.
- “5 Ways to Protect Your Peace During a Hectic Family Gathering”
- “The Ultimate Holiday Travel Guide for Anxious Fliers”
- “Why You’re Not Sleeping (And How to Fix It This Holiday)”
Within that genuinely helpful article, your product is the natural, by-the-way solution for taking the edge off or getting the restorative sleep your body needs. You have just built trust and made a sale, all by just being helpful.
4. The Last-Minute Lifesaver
The Problem: It’s December 21st. The shipping deadlines have all passed. Your customer is in a full-blown panic.
The Solution: This is when you pivot your entire marketing message to one, single, beautiful solution: The Instant Digital Gift Card.
- Your Marketing: “Forgot a gift? Give the Gift of Calm in 10 seconds. No shipping required.”
- Why it Works: It’s the perfect panic purchase. It’s instant, it’s thoughtful, and it’s a clutter-free gift that everyone actually wants. For you, it’s a 100% margin sale and a perfect way to capture those last-minute, high-intent shoppers.
5. The “New Year, New You” Pivot
The Problem: Your marketing plan ends on December 25th.
The Solution: You’re missing the real wellness season. The period from December 26th to mid-January is when everyone is in reset mode. They’ve just spent six weeks indulging, and they are now ready to invest in their health.
- Your Marketing (starting Dec. 26th): “The party’s over. It’s time to get back to you.”
- The Offer: Create a New Year Wellness Routine kit.
- Why it Works: You are tapping into a powerful, pre-existing cultural mindset. The “New Year, New Me” resolution is the single biggest driver of health and wellness purchases all year. Your marketing should bridge the gap, framing your product as the tool to recover from the holiday stress and start the new year with a clear, calm mind.
Your customers don’t need another thing this holiday. They need relief. They need a moment of peace. Your CBD brand is not just in the wellness business; you are in the holiday survival business. When your marketing reflects that, you’ll not only win the season—you’ll build a loyal customer base for the entire year to come