Everybody knows that the holiday season is the busiest time of the year when it comes to consumer spending.
It’s no big secret that the holiday season equates to the “gift giving” season, and most people need little prompting to break out their credit cards during this merry time. The average U.S. consumer expects to spend $625 on gifts while celebrating the holidays.
Unfortunately, statistics like these have a habit of filling marketers with a cozy sense of complacency.
It may seem that cashing in on the holiday rush should be as easy as collecting rain in a bucket during a thunderstorm, right?
Wrong.
You need to strategize in order to maximize your revenues during the holiday, and you shouldn’t—in fact, you can’t wait until December to start.
Your holiday marketing plan should begin rolling out early in the season, earlier than you might think. In fact, any business owner or marketer who is reading this blog should have already started their holiday campaigns.
We know, this may seem premature to some marketers out there.
What’s the point of targeting holiday shoppers so early?
Well, it’s simple—you need to capture the early crowd, the people who want to get their holiday obligations out of the way so they don’t have to rush around at the last minute. There is a significant number of consumers who begin holiday shopping in September. That means you should get started before they do.
If you haven’t yet gotten prepared for those end-of-the-year shoppers, fear not—we’re here with some e-commerce tips that will help you capitalize on the holiday festivities that are just around the corner.
Dress Your Site Up for The Holiday Season
Consider giving your e-commerce site a facelift as we head into the holiday season. This will provide your customers with visual cues that get them into a gift-buying frame of mind.
Inform them that the holiday shopping season has begun!
And the best part about this tip? It doesn’t really take a lot of effort to upgrade your website design in this manner.
Giving your website some holiday pizzazz is largely a matter of introducing some season-appropriate graphics and color schemes to your existing design. In early fall, you want autumnal colors and graphics, such as harvest colored leaves and trees.
Later in the year, consider winter and holiday season-related themes.
PRO TIP: Don’t neglect your exit popups—they too should reflect the holiday spirit.
However, your site upgrades should be more than just cosmetic. Because you will probably see a spike in online traffic, you need to ensure that your site can handle the extra attention. Good website speed is immensely important this time of year. Slow-loading pages are conversion killers. So, take your preparations one step further and optimize your images to keep them from slowing down your site and scaring off impatient shoppers.
Who’s Ready to Make a Deal?
Of course, most shoppers are on the lookout for deals all year round, but it’s the holiday season when they tend to be especially susceptible to the lure of “50% Off” banners and the like.
As it happens, the holiday season provides multiple opportunities to dangle some amazing deals before their eyes.
Black Friday and the week leading up to Christmas are prime opportunities for boosting your sales figures, but there are other notable days that shouldn’t be overlooked.
Cyber Monday and Small Business Saturday (both of which take place in the week after Thanksgiving) provide all the reason you need to launch a few appropriate limited time offers.
Keep in mind that all this deal-making frenzy doesn’t stop after all the gifts are opened.
The week leading up to New Year’s Day—called “Cyber Week II” by some—offers a huge opportunity to cash in on one last consumer shopping spree for the year.
Why is this, you ask?
Isn’t everyone tired of shopping by that point?
Not when your friends and family gave you a bunch of gift cards throughout the holiday season!
These days, most people (69% of women & 53% of men, according to one survey) prefer to get gift cards rather than traditional presents.
A lot of those holiday gift card recipients get on the Internet at the earliest opportunity and spend, spend, spend on “presents” for themselves. So, you want to be ready for them.
Be Everywhere
It may be a familiar refrain by this point, but you really need to use the full power of social media to ensure the best results during the holiday season. Among other things, this means your site needs to be as mobile-friendly as possible.
Remember that there is a lot of on-the-go shopping this time of year, so you need to be able to accommodate these harried consumers by giving them easy mobile access to your services.
“Social commerce”—the use of social media and networks to promote e-commerce—will become increasingly important in the coming years, especially for holiday shoppers. Facebook and Instagram are valuable social media marketing tools that allow shoppers to “like” your products and help you build up your social proof.
Instagram’s 24-hour Stories feature also gives you the ideal way to unveil a few time-sensitive holiday deals.
Remember Last Year?
Unless you’re really new to the biz, you should have a reasonable number of former customers who—potentially—can be lured back for this year’s festivities. One study has found that repeat customers buy about 40% more goods than new customers, so this is a potentially rich vein for marketers.
Former customers also share one particularly attractive characteristic: you know where to find them.
You already have their email and maybe even their phone number on file. The holiday season is the perfect opportunity to remind them of the good times you shared together last year and present them with a few attractive holiday offers.
Remarket, Remarket, and Remarket Some More
The effectiveness of remarketing lists is quickly becoming impossible to ignore—so don’t do it! That is, if you want to make the most of your holiday season.
Remarketing lists are composed of former visitors to your website or users of your app. This information, which is automatically collected by specialized code on your site or app that detects when a visitor arrives, is used to deliver Google Ads aimed at these individuals.
But that’s not all you get from remarketing lists. Google’s Similar Audiences feature also allows you to target people with interests closely related to your visitors—in order words, you can reach out to people who have never interacted with your site or app at all. This is a fantastic way to capture busy holiday shoppers.
It’s Go Time
There’s no time to waste—and so much to do.
When it comes to preparing for the holiday shopping season, even putting one or two of these strategies into play can give you a leg up on the competition.
Before you know it, the season will be over, so you need to do the legwork to ensure that that you’re in position to take full advantage of the holiday season.
For even more ways to get holiday-ready, contact National Positions today. We’ll create a custom strategy for your brand—after a free site analysis—our holiday gift to you!