Most Christmas marketing ideas are visual: a red logo, a snowy banner, a gift guide. That is exactly why sound works. When every feed, shop window and inbox turns red and gold at the same time, the brand people can actually hear is the one they remember. We make festive audio for stations, podcasters and small businesses every year in our studio, and these are the ideas that earn their keep, each with a real example and how to pull it off.
Why Sound Belongs in Your Christmas Marketing Plan
Holiday marketing ideas usually fight for the same screen space. Audio reaches the places a banner cannot: the caller waiting on hold, the shopper in your aisle, the listener in the car, the person scrolling with the sound on. It also travels well. One festive jingle can become your ad, your phone message, your podcast intro and the last two seconds of every social video.
That is the core idea behind audio branding for business: one recognizable sound, used everywhere, for long enough that people connect it with you. Christmas is the easiest time of year to start, because listeners expect a little extra sparkle.
10 Christmas Marketing Ideas That Use Sound
1. Give Your Brand a Festive Sung Jingle
Example: a garden center has the line "Christmas starts at Hollybrook" sung over sleigh bells, about fifteen seconds long.
How to do it: keep the words to your name plus one warm line. Short beats clever here. Our MRC Holiday Greeting is built for exactly this: the Radio ID version is one cut of around fifteen seconds, one singer, up to eight words. After you order, our team contacts you to pick the singer and finalize the details. If you already have a year-round jingle, ask for a Christmas arrangement of it rather than a brand new melody, so the seasonal version still sounds like you.
2. Run a Christmas Radio or Online Ad With a Sung Hook
Example: a local bakery runs a 30-second spot on community radio and as pre-roll on YouTube, ending on a sung "Fresh for Christmas at Barlow's."
How to do it: one offer, one date, one call to action. The Radio/Online Ad version of the Holiday Greeting gives you one cut of up to thirty seconds, one singer, up to fifteen words. If you are new to buying airtime, our guide to radio advertising cost explains how stations price spots before you commit budget.
3. Update Your On-Hold Message for the Season
Example: "Thanks for holding with Kendall Dental. Our Christmas hours are on our website, and we reopen on Tuesday the 29th of December."
How to do it: swap your usual message in late November and make the useful part practical: holiday hours, last order dates, how to book. A professionally voiced festive version through our On Hold Messages For Business service covers one message of up to forty words. Our post on on hold messages has script templates you can adapt.
4. Record a Holiday Voicemail Greeting
Example: "You have reached Crane and Co. We are closed from Thursday the 24th of December and back on Monday the 4th of January. Merry Christmas."
How to do it: say exact dates, not "next week," and give one alternative contact route for anything urgent. Switch it on the evening you close and off the morning you reopen. Nothing looks worse in January than a Christmas message still playing.
5. Add a Christmas Podcast Intro
Example: a business podcast runs a festive version of its show name, sung with harmonies, for every December episode.
How to do it: the Podcast Intro version of the Holiday Greeting is one cut of up to thirty seconds, with harmonies on your podcast name and up to fifteen words. Use it for your December episodes only, then go back to your normal intro so the festive one still feels special next year. Our guide to the podcast intro maker route covers the year-round version.
6. Refresh Your Station Imaging
Example: an online radio station swaps its daytime sweepers for festive ones from the start of December.
How to do it: stations get the most from a ready-made pack. Christmas Jingles Vol. 12 has eleven music-only and three sung Christmas jingles, every one under twenty seconds, delivered as WAV, with the option to add your station or DJ name read by a real voice artist. Our Christmas jingles guide covers when stations usually start playing them.
7. Put Festive Audio on the Shop Floor
Example: a boutique plays a festive music bed with a short voiced announcement every twenty minutes: "Gift wrapping is on us until Christmas Eve, just ask at the till."
How to do it: build a loop of music with one or two short announcements, and change the announcement weekly so staff do not lose their minds. For the music side, Christmas Music and Sound Effects gives you 113 royalty-free music beds, 100 long and 21 short sound effects, and 14 vocal cuts. Before playing anything in public, read the license terms and check what your local music licensing rules require for your premises.
8. End Every Social Video With the Same Sound
Example: a coffee shop's December Reels all close on the same two-second sung tag from its Christmas jingle.
How to do it: ask for a short cut of your jingle (just the brand name line) and put it at the end of every seasonal clip. Repetition is the point. On the tenth video, people start humming it before it plays.
9. Run a 12 Days of Christmas Audio Countdown
Example: a hair salon posts one short voice note a day for twelve days, each with a tip and a festive sting at the start.
How to do it: record the voice yourself on a phone in a quiet room and add the same festive sting at the top of each clip. This is one idea where DIY is completely fine. The sting does the branding, your voice does the warmth.
10. Send an Audio Christmas Card to Clients
Example: an agency emails clients a 30-second audio thank you from the team, with its holiday jingle at the start and end.
How to do it: host the file on your website or a private link and keep the message personal: what you worked on together, a genuine thanks, your closing dates. It stands out in an inbox full of identical e-cards.
Christmas Advertising Ideas: A Simple Timeline
The biggest mistake we see is ordering festive audio in mid-December, then getting two weeks of use from it. Work backward from when you want it live:
- October: decide which two or three ideas above you will actually use. Write your words and confirm your holiday dates.
- Early November: order custom work such as a sung jingle or on-hold message. This leaves room for singer choice and revisions.
- Mid to late November: festive on-hold message live, ads booked, social sting cut down from your jingle.
- December: station imaging, podcast intro and in-store loop running. Voicemail greeting recorded and ready to switch on.
- First working day of January: everything festive comes off. Phones, website, ads, intros.
Which Ideas Fit Your Business
You do not need all ten. Pick by where your customers actually meet you:
- You get a lot of phone calls: ideas 3 and 4 first. They are the cheapest wins on this list.
- You have a shop or venue: idea 7, plus idea 1 if you want a sound people recognize.
- You run a station or stream: idea 6, then add a custom ID.
- You publish a podcast: idea 5, with idea 8 for your clips.
- You sell mostly online: ideas 1, 2 and 8 working together.
Who should skip the custom route? If you post a handful of seasonal videos and have no phone line or ad budget, a library pack and your own voice will do the job. Custom audio pays off when you will use one sound in many places, ideally year after year. For more on why a short melodic signature sticks, see our producer blog's guide to sonic branding and sonic logos.
Get Your Christmas Jingle Made
Choose the Radio ID, Podcast Intro or Radio/Online Ad version of the MRC Holiday Greeting and our team will help you pick the singer.
