You’re thinking about holding off on your Christmas ads. The election’s coming, everyone’s a bit twitchy about money, and it feels sensible to wait and see what happens.
I get it. I’m hearing it from online store owners every week right now. But here’s the thing about Christmas advertising in NZ: Christmas doesn’t care who wins. People are still going to buy presents. The only question is whether they buy yours.
Christmas is still coming, even if wallets are tighter
There’s real hesitation in the market this month. When people are nervous, they don’t stop buying at Christmas. They buy more carefully. Fewer impulse purchases, more research, more comparing.
That’s a smaller pie with more people fighting over it. The stores that win are the ones people already know and trust by the time they sit down to shop.
Why “wait and see” costs you more than it saves
Here’s how buying actually works. Someone sees your product on their Facebook feed in October. They scroll past. They see it again in November, maybe on Instagram, maybe as a Google Shopping ad while they’re looking for something for their brother-in-law. By December, you’re not a stranger anymore. You’re the shop they’ve seen around.
That’s the runway. Awareness first, then trust, then the sale.
If your first ad goes live on 10 December, you’re skipping straight to “buy from a shop you’ve never heard of”. Some people will. Most won’t, especially this year.
There’s a technical reason too. Google Ads and Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram) take time to learn who actually buys from you. The first few weeks of any campaign are the platform working out who to show your ads to. Start in December and you’re paying for that learning at the most expensive time of year, when every other retailer is bidding for the same eyeballs.
The Christmas calendar for NZ online stores
It’s not one big day. It’s a run of sales moments, and each one feeds the next.
Now to mid-November: be seen
This is the awareness stretch. Get your products in front of people while attention isn’t as crowded. Show the range, show what makes you different, show the stuff that would make a good present.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday (late November)
For a lot of NZ shoppers, this is where Christmas shopping starts. If you’re running a Black Friday sale, advertise it before the day, not on it. The people who’ve already seen you in October are the ones most likely to buy.
December: Christmas proper
Everyone who visited your site or engaged with your ads during Black Friday is now someone you can show ads to again. That’s remarketing, which just means showing ads to people who’ve already shown interest. It’s usually the cheapest sales you’ll make all year.
Boxing Day and New Year
The gift card crowd and the “treat yourself” crowd. Another sale, another reason to come back, and you’ve already got a warm audience from the last two months.
Each stage only works properly if the one before it happened. That’s the whole argument for starting now.
Write your gift guides now
If you do one thing this month, write a gift guide. “Gifts for dog owners under $50.” “What to buy the gardener who has everything.” “Stocking fillers for teenagers who are impossible to buy for.”
Gift guides do three jobs at once:
- They give Google something to show when people search “gifts for…”, which is exactly what they search in November.
- They give you ready-made content for your ads, your emails and your social posts.
- They help a stressed shopper make a decision, which is the whole point.
But they take time to get picked up by Google. A gift guide published on 15 December is mostly decoration. One published in October has a fighting chance of ranking by the time people are looking.
What this looks like in real life
Dog Training Solutions, a Bay of Plenty online store selling dog training gear, ran Google Ads with us from May to July this year. They spent $1,817.77 and got $8,653.84 in sales from it. That’s a 4.8x return on ad spend: every dollar in brought back about $4.80.
That wasn’t Christmas. That was a normal winter. Now imagine that same setup already tuned and running when November hits, instead of starting from scratch in the busiest month of the year.
What to sort this month
- Get your product feed into Google. If you sell online and you’re not showing up in Google Shopping, that’s the first gap to close.
- Start a low-budget awareness campaign on Meta. It doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be running, so the platform starts learning.
- Write two or three gift guides and put them on your site.
- Plan your Black Friday offer now, so the ads, emails and site banners are ready rather than thrown together on the Thursday night.
- Check your site can handle it. Slow checkout, a broken mobile layout, shipping costs that only show up at the last step. All of these kill Christmas sales faster than a bad ad ever could.
The election will sort itself out
Whatever happens on election day, there’ll be presents under trees on 25 December. People will still buy for their mum, their kids, their Secret Santa. Some of them will spend less than last year. That’s fine. You don’t need everyone. You need the ones who are shopping to already know who you are.
The stores that wait to see how things settle will be fighting for attention in December. The ones that started in October will already be in people’s heads. That’s a much better place to be.