8 Money-Making Digital Marketing Tips for the Holiday Season

Written on 19 September, 2017 by Vincent Corneille
Categories Marketing

For many businesses, the revenue made leading up to the holiday season is the lifeblood — a much-needed drenching of cash after the long drought of winter. In the online space, this is no different, and year on year we are seeing record numbers of people opting for online retailers over traditional brick-and-mortar stores. For anyone who has been to Chadstone in December, it makes perfect sense to take advantages of the many benefits online shopping gives customers, such as competitive pricing, after-hours shopping, and avoiding a public meltdown after spending two hours looking for a car park.

So, what can you do for your business to make sure you maximise your sales over this period and aren’t missing out on this bonanza of online revenue? Fear not, we have you covered with eight essential tips to make sure your online shop goes into hyper-drive this holiday season.

1. Get started now!

The second-best time to start your campaigns is today, the best time was yesterday. I can’t stress this enough; you need to get everything started now. Pushing digital marketing campaigns to their limit requires performance data to work with, and by leaving your campaigns until the last minute, you will never know what the full potential was. Get your campaigns live ASAP so that you can learn what works best for your market, then when the time is right to ramp up your efforts, you can rest assured that your money is in the right place.

2. Diversify your strategy

This is the best time of the year to bring new marketing efforts into the mix. With the increased traffic and purchase intent, you can’t go wrong by jumping into new segments and expanding your efforts. Make a checklist and ensure you have considered the following:

  • Google AdWords
  • Google Shopping ads
  • Facebook advertising
  • Outreach and native advertising
  • Instagram advertising
  • Email marketing
  • Social media posting/strategy
  • Remarketing

These are all platforms that can be set up reasonably quickly and have a direct impact on your web traffic relevant to the amount of time and money you are willing to invest. Individually, each platform has its strengths/weaknesses, but with everything working together, you can create a masterful sales funnel and really push things to the limit.

 

3. Think about your customer’s journey

It is becoming more widely known that the typical customer journey involves multiple visits to your website before a purchase is made. Put yourself in a consumer’s shoes for a moment: would you purchase from a website straight away? Or would you try and price match somewhere else? Maybe you are just browsing on your mobile device on the way home from work and might look at completing the transaction later. It can be confusing, but the good news is that most of this information is readily available in Google Analytics.

There are a number of things you can do to help your customers complete their journey:

  • Display remarketing
  • Abandon cart emails
  • Offer free shipping
  • Other promotional codes/offers

When you find out why/when your customers are dropping off, then you can take the necessary steps to make their customer journey easier. Easier journey equals more sales.

 

Business a bit slow AdWords audit

 

4. Set goals and forecast

How are you going to smash your goals if you haven’t set them? Take a moment to think about what sales figures would make you really happy to see once the year wraps up. Got it? Now, let’s backtrack and work out how many people you need to get to your site to make this a reality. Time for some algebra:

website traffic needed = (target revenue)/(conv. rate * average transaction value).

Once you have this worked out, you can forecast how much you need to spend on advertising to get the required traffic to your site over this period. If math isn’t your forte, drop us a line and we will happily work this out for you.

5. Reach out to last year’s customers

People are creatures of habit. Reach out to last year’s customers through email marketing or Facebook custom audience campaigns to win them back for a second year in a row. If they liked your products last year, then they will be likely to buy from you again. Just make sure to show off your new products and consider sweetening the deal with a great offer.

6. Promotions

Let’s be honest: with all the competition fighting for customers, it’s going to get ugly out there. What are you going to do to differentiate yourself? A promotion should be designed to address a potential issue that your customer is facing. For example, consider running a free express postage campaign in the final fortnight before Christmas so your customers are confident their gift will arrive on time. A limited or exclusive offer will work best to create a sense of urgency.

7. Be seen on social

Don’t just rely on people coming to you. Now is the time to be seen and start getting in front of your potential customers. A great way to get in front of your target demographic is through social media; particularly paid advertising. Your business can be shown to people based upon many specific targeting methods such as:

  • Parental status
  • Affluence
  • Interests

It will often take five to six impressions for a potential customer to start recognising your brand, so apply marketing liberally. Some of the most successful campaigns in recent years turned unknown brands into household names by relentlessly pursuing reach across social networks.

8. Gift cards

Some people are really hard to shop for, and you know they are just faking enthusiasm when they open your hard-thought gift every year. You know the type: incredibly picky, has everything. Take the stress away and make both parties happy by offering gift cards on your website!

But wait, there’s more! Just when you think all the craziness is over, the biggest online shopping day of the year rears its ugly head: Boxing Day. Advice: have a rock-solid plan in place, keep hydrated and hang on for dear life. If you end up implementing some tips from this list, you should do fine, but if you really want to step-up your game then refer to point #1 and get started now!

 

Make sure your business is ready for Christmas (1)

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