10 Holiday Marketing Strategies to Stand Out in AI Search

10 Holiday Marketing Strategies to Stand Out in AI Search

We've AI-curated your holiday shopping marketing campaign. Let's dig in.

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'Tis the season. Everyone is gearing up for that time of year - holiday shopping. Is your businesses' search engine optimization (SEO) strategy ready for the holidays? If you just broke out into a cold sweat thinking about it, don't worry - we're here to help.

We'll explore tips, strategies, and budget-friendly tricks to make sure your business is found this holiday season (and beyond) - and how you can use your customer relationship management (CRM) tools to turn your top searchers into your top customers.

What you'll learn:

• What is a holiday AI SEO marketing strategy?
• Why is it important for SMBs this holiday season?
• 10 strategies to stand out in AI SEO this holiday season
• Making AI SEO work for your holiday season

What is a holiday AI SEO marketing strategy?

AI search, including Google's AI Overviews, Bing Copilot answers, and other LLM-powered engines, increasingly shapes how shoppers discover products during the holidays.

A holiday AI SEO marketing strategy is a tactic to help small businesses appear in search engines and get seen for the holiday season - any season, really. Good SEO means making sure your digital presence is fully optimized, from your web copy to your store's product descriptions to your opening hours, no matter what season it is. Let's dig into why this is important.

Why is AI SEO important for SMBs this holiday season?

Effective SEO increases your brand's visibility, driving more qualified leads to your website. These leads can then be captured and managed within your CRM system. In the reverse, content optimized for SEO can provide valuable information for your sales and marketing teams, enriching the data within your CRM.

Also, by optimizing your website with the latest in AI-enabled SEO, you can personalize their experience and tailor your CRM efforts to nurture them more effectively. The future of SEO is AI-powered, and small businesses can get in on it too.

10 AI SEO strategies to stand out this holiday season

1. Lean into "shop small" intent

The holidays are one of the few times of year when being small is an advantage. Surveys show 93% of U.S. consumers plan to "shop small" during the holiday season, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports that eight in ten small businesses say Q4 is critical for annual profit.

Modern LLMs are trained to detect and surface businesses that align with high-intent queries like "local gifts near me," "independent bookstores with fast shipping," or "family-owned bakery Christmas pies." To be recognized, SMBs need to make these signals explicit.

Practical steps:

• Add descriptors like "local," "independent," or "family-owned" in page titles, meta descriptions, and on-page copy.
  Use LocalBusiness schema markup language on your website's product and event pages to reinforce your geographic presence, holiday hours, and service area.
• Partner with nearby businesses for joint holiday gift roundup articles, which can be cited by local press and AI summaries alike.

How a CRM can help: A CRM allows you to segment your customer base and understand their past purchases and preferences. This means you can create highly targeted promotions, gift guides, and website copy that resonate with specific customer groups, increasing the likelihood they'll click through from search or answer engine results.

2. Seed local proof points that AI can see

Customer reviews are vital, but they're not the only trust signal that matters in AI search. Answer engines cross-reference multiple sources before including a business in an answer. Local press mentions, chamber of commerce directories, event sponsorships, and nonprofit partnerships are all citations that machines can parse and validate.

Practical steps:

• Pitch a holiday angle to your local paper: "5 unique gifts from [Neighborhood] shops"
• Ensure your chamber of commerce or city business directory listing is up-to-date.
• Add your holiday events (pop-ups, markets) to local calendars that are crawled by search engines.

How a CRM can help: A CRM can help manage these efforts by centralizing contact information, tracking outreach, segmenting customer data, automating reminders for updates, and managing event planning. By proactively managing these diverse trust signals, businesses can improve their visibility and credibility in AI search..

3. Activate voice and multimodal optimization

Shoppers are no longer just typing. The proliferation of voice assistants and visual search tools means your business must be discoverable beyond traditional text queries. In fact, Google Lens reports billions of monthly image searches alone, so SMBs should think beyond text.

Get your website voice-ready:

• When writing FAQs, anticipate conversational phrasing: "Do you have same-day pickup in [City]?" "Are returns extended until January?"
• Publish these answers in an FAQ block, marked up with FAQ Page schema. Clear, concise yes/no and details ("Yes, we offer same-day pickup at our downtown location until 5pm on December 24") is the format most likely to be quoted in AI voice responses.

Make your images findable:

• Optimize product photos with descriptive alt text and file names, like "red-handmade-ceramic-mug.jpg" instead of "mug.jpg."
• Use consistent branding in your imagery so your product can be matched when shoppers upload "find similar" queries.

Multimodal AI discovery isn't hypothetical; it's happening now. A shopper might snap a photo of a candle on TikTok and ask, "Where can I buy this locally?" in search, and land on your store if your assets are properly tagged.

How a CRM can help: By organizing customer data and preferences, a CRM enables businesses to create more targeted and relevant content that can be surfaced through voice and visual searches. Also, CRM data can help businesses keep branding and product information consistent across their online presence.

4. Create micro-gift guides built for AI discovery

Large retailers publish long holiday gift guides on their sites, but SMBs can win by publishing specific guides focused on certain topics or personas. In an AI-first world, specificity wins. AI overviews often surface micro-content that maps tightly to niche intents: "teacher gifts under $25," "last-minute local pickup in Brooklyn," "eco-friendly hostess gifts." These focused guides often map directly to LLM-driven answer boxes, which pull concise, niche content to satisfy specific shopping intents.

For SMBs, creating multiple focused guides is both achievable and impactful. Instead of pouring effort into a 2,000-word omnibus guide, launch three to five smaller landing pages:

• "10 Gifts Under $25 for Teachers in [City]"
• "Last-Minute Gifts Available for Pickup on December 24"
• "Eco-Friendly Holiday Gifts from Independent Makers"

Each page should feature short answer capsules, such as: "Hand-poured soy candle, $22, available for same-day pickup. Perfect for teacher gifts - eco-friendly and long-lasting."

These capsules can be lifted directly into AI summaries, while the pages themselves capture long-tail traffic. Cross-link guides to relevant product pages and vice versa, ensuring both human shoppers and AI systems see the connections.

How a CRM can help: By segmenting customer data, a CRM enables businesses to identify niche intents and create relevant guides that capture long-tail traffic. Additionally, a CRM can help businesses cross-link guides to relevant product pages.

5. E-E-A-T on a budget: humanize the storefront

Google's guidance emphasizes E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. This humanization isn't just about trust; it's a critical differentiator. SMBs have an edge here. While big-box retailers rely on mass-produced descriptions, you can signal authenticity with small touches.

What works:

• A short founder's note on your website about holiday traditions, or where you source your products
• Staff headshots with holiday-relevant fun facts ("Our barista's favorite winter drink")
• Blog posts highlighting "holiday favorites" curated by your team

Research shows consumers increasingly value authenticity: 88% say they're more likely to buy again after a great service experience, according to the latest State of the Connected Customer report. AI raters are trained to look for this, too - pages that show lived experience ("we tested," "our team recommends") are more likely to surface than generic, stock copy.

How a CRM can help: A CRM can help small businesses demonstrate E-E-A-T and authenticity by managing customer interactions and data that inform personalized content, such as customer testimonials, product recommendations, and staff-curated content. Additionally, a CRM can help businesses track customer interactions and feedback, allowing them to refine their content and improve overall customer experience.

6. Tap into social proof where AI is listening

AI engines don't just crawl websites; they also increasingly draw from community conversations on social media. Mentions in Reddit threads, TikTok videos, or Quora answers can seed authority signals that flow back into AI-curated summaries, acting as powerful, unlinked brand mentions.

For example, shoppers often post on Reddit boards like r/Gifts or r/BuyItForLife asking for holiday ideas. If a satisfied customer mentions your handmade product there, it becomes part of the training data that models like Perplexity or ChatGPT may cite. Similarly, TikTok's algorithm surfaces local businesses for trending holiday gift tags, and AI scrapes those public posts.

Practical plays:

• Encourage happy customers to leave reviews on Reddit or TikTok in addition to Google and Yelp.
• Post authentic short videos (15-30 seconds) of your holiday products in use, optimized with hashtags like #ShopSmall or #HolidayGiftIdeas.
• Answer a few niche questions in community forums with your expertise.

AI engines are trained to identify consensus, along with other things. A handful of high-signal mentions in the right community can outweigh dozens of low-quality backlinks. For SMBs, that's a winnable path to visibility.

How a CRM can help: A CRM can track customer mentions, reviews, and feedback, helping businesses to identify opportunities to encourage happy customers to share their experiences and showcase their products in community forums. By integrating social media data, a CRM can also help businesses monitor their authority signals and adjust their marketing strategies accordingly.

7. Be everywhere shoppers look

Cross-platform visibility means your business information is identical, and present, across the digital platforms that AI reconciles: your site, Google Business Profile (GBP), marketplaces (Amazon, Etsy, Walmart), and social shops. AI systems (and people) mistrust mismatches, and guidance from Google stresses consistent, helpful, non-commodity content.

Parity checklist (check weekly during peak holiday times):

• GBP: Update holiday hours post "popular products" images of the week; post fresh Q&A content about parking, pickup times, returns, and more. Publish Special hours in Google Business Profile and add special Opening Hours Specification in Local Business schema so AI sees your holiday schedule.
• Marketplaces: Ensure that all products have the same titles, specs, price, and return information as your site.
• Social: Update your store bio on Instagram and TikTok with top holiday collections and update product tags if needed.
• Perplexity Merchant Program: Consider submitting your catalog, if eligible, for inclusion in Perplexity's Buy with Pro shopping answers.

Why it matters: AI will show fewer options. Brands with coherent facts across touchpoints are safer to include.

How a CRM can help: A CRM centralizes your customer and product data, ensuring consistency across your website, Google Business Profile, marketplaces, and social media platforms. By managing this data in one place, businesses can easily update product information, pricing, and other details across multiple channels, reducing the risk of mismatches and inconsistencies.

8. Capturing shoppers on the go in micro-moments

Google's holiday research highlights how spur-of-the-moment mobile sessions drive decisions; four in five smartphone holiday shoppers use their phone in spare moments, and those micro-moments add up. Here's how to make sure your SMB site is set up for these micro-moments.

90-second purchase checklist:

• Website speed: Compress your hero images and make sure your images render quickly.
• Payments: Enable guest checkout and display payment options like Apple Pay or PayPal above the fold.
• BOPIS: "Buy online, pick up today" badge on list and product detail pages.
• Messaging: Let users sign up for SMS reminders for cutoffs and back-in-stock alerts, plus instant money-off promotions for procrastinators.
• Targeted landing pages: Create collections like "Gifts under $25" and "Arrives by 12/25", with filters first.

How a CRM can help: A CRM can help small businesses capture shoppers on the go by managing detail-heavy customer interactions and data that inform targeted marketing efforts, such as SMS reminders and instant promotions.

9. Use Small Business Saturday as a visibility booster

Small Business Saturday, taking place every fall, is a moment to compound visibility: spikes in local search, social shares, and reviews build authority that carries into December. The SBA cites long-running consumer participation and cumulative spend; Constant Contact found one-third of annual revenue can hinge on the holiday season for many SMBs.

Here's how you can get it on the Small Business Saturday traffic in the week leading up to November 5:

• 7 days to go: Publish "Where to Shop Small in [City] on Small Business Saturday" (include partners; swap backlinks).
• 5 days to go: Post an event to your Google Profile with hours, parking, and offers, and answer questions about shipping and returns.
• 3 days to go: Post photos on Instagram or TikTok of staff picks; pin to profiles; cross-tag neighboring shops.
• 1 day to go: Email and SMS "Last-chance before cutoffs" and instant gift cards.
• Day of: Send a "Thank you and review request" email or SMS with photo prompts to customers.

How a CRM can help: With a CRM, you can automate and personalize your marketing efforts, such as sending targeted emails and SMS messages, and track customer behavior and preferences for future marketing strategies. Additionally, a CRM can help you manage your business's online presence by storing customer data, preferences, and interactions in one place, making it easier to execute any Small Business Saturday marketing plans.

10. Automate where it matters most

The biggest SMB constraint isn't strategy; it's time. That's why automation should be targeted at the areas where consistency matters most to AI: feeds, inventory, and customer communication.

Automation frees you to focus on building trust (content, reviews, partnerships). For many SMBs, platforms like Salesforce Starter Suite and Pro Suite make this achievable - unifying storefront, CRM, and simple marketing automation in one place.

Automation priorities:

• Feeds: Update Google Merchant Center multiple times a day in peak season any pertinent information, and use APIs to sync price or stock across platforms. AI punishes mismatches.
• Inventory: Automate "out of stock" updates so you don't get cited with wrong availability in AI answers.
• Reminders: Schedule SMS and email alerts for shipping cutoffs.

How a CRM can help: By unifying storefront, CRM, and marketing automation in one place, a CRM enables businesses to refresh product feeds multiple times a day, automate "out of stock" updates, and schedule timely reminders for shipping cutoffs. By taking this busy work off your plate, a CRM lets you focus on the bigger picture.

Making AI SEO work for your holiday season

Holidays don't just test large retailers; they reveal how small businesses can carve out visibility in AI-powered shopping flows. For SMBs, the differentiator is agility: being clear, consistent, and credible across local and digital touchpoints. A CRM system plays a crucial role in this agility by unifying customer data, product information, and marketing efforts in one place.

Small businesses that invest in structured data, authentic content, and cross-platform consistency-made easier through a CRM-will get their products surfaced in AI-curated answers at the very moment shoppers are ready to buy. And by using a CRM, SMBs can ensure that their customer interactions, product feeds, and marketing communications are consistent and accurate across all platforms, which is critical for AI visibility.

Start your journey with a free trial of Starter Suite today. Looking for more customization? Explore Pro Suite. Already a Salesforce customer? Activate Foundations to try out Agentforce today.

AI supported the writers and editors who created this article.

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Mahvish Khan is the Director of SEO Growth Marketing at Salesforce, with more than a decade of experience driving search visibility and business growth for organizations ranging from fast-moving startups to global enterprises. She works at the intersection of search strategy, growth, and product...Read More marketing - using data, market insights, and customer behavior patterns to design search experiences that make a measurable impact.