If you are in the retail space – whether you have a physical location, an ecommerce site, or both – you likely need to make a big splash during the holiday season in order to have a successful year.
Without a doubt, retailers feel the pressure when the holiday season rolls around.
Without a strong showing during November and December, sales numbers for the year are almost certain to fall short of expectations.
So, with that in mind, what’s your plan for holiday marketing 2019?
A focused marketing plan is important throughout the year, but it is particularly crucial during this competitive season. With every retailer out to fight for their share of the holiday dollars, you need a well-crafted plan that is going to impress your target market.
Let’s take a look at some of the key methods that are sure to drive sales this holiday season.
Social Media Marketing
It’s hard to imagine that you need any introduction to social media marketing.
Businesses of all shapes, sizes, and types have been using social media marketing for years to great effect.
After all, the challenge when marketing is to find your audience, and audiences of all kinds hang out in the various corners of social media.
Learn how to use social media to your advantage, and your business can grow significantly.
But what about around the holidays? Is there anything you need to do differently to utilize social media as the holidays approach?
Let’s take a look at some quick tips.
- Plan your posts. When using Facebook, for example, you don’t want to let the holidays sneak up before suddenly bombarding your audience with a flood of holiday-related content. The better plan is to think ahead and develop a content calendar that will allow you to stay on your customers’ mind throughout the season.
- Change up the visual. The holidays are a perfect time to make changes to the look of your social media accounts. Consider changing your featured images frequently, or at least try to make a new one that has a holiday theme. You want to give your audience the clear impression that you are welcoming the holidays with open arms.
- Make a goal. It’s not good enough to just decide that you want to ‘make more sales’ during the holiday season. Every business wants that – but how do you want to make it happen? By having very specific goals, you will find it easier to develop a social media marketing plan that will move you in the right direction.
While people use social media all throughout the year, the holidays are a particularly busy time thanks to the many gatherings and get-togethers taking place with family and friends.
Present your brand in the right way on social media and close the year out with a bang.
Pay-Per-Click Campaigns
Like social media marketing, pay-per-click campaigns are something that you may be engaged with all year long.
Do you really need to make any changes to your PPC strategy just because the holidays are approaching?
Well, you might not need to completely overhaul your ecommerce marketing campaigns, but a few tweaks are likely in order.
To make it all the way through the holidays feeling good about your PPC efforts, consider the following points.
1. Pace Yourself
It is likely that you’ll be receiving more clicks on your ads during the holiday season, especially if your products are likely to be given as gifts.
That being the case, it’s possible that you will burn through your budget faster than usual for the next couple of months.
Plan out how much money you are willing to invest in PPC during the holidays and set your daily spend accordingly.
It would be a shame to race through your budget in November and have to sit out of the PPC game during December.
2. Use Last Year’s Performance Data
Assuming you have been in business for at least a year, one good strategy is to look back on your PPC campaigns from last holiday season to see what was working, and what wasn’t – this could include designs, promotions, budgets and much more.
Learn from the past and tweak your approach for this year to optimize results. It would be a shame to race through your budget too early or use an underperforming design that may have been used previously.
3. Watch Your Competition
Okay – so this isn’t really a holiday-specific strategy, as you should always be watching what your competitors are doing in the PPC world.
Taking this step is particularly important during the holidays, however, as you’ll want to be able to match or beat special offers and promotions from your competitors.
There are dollars on the line each time you activate a PPC campaign, so you really can’t afford to get it wrong.
Think through your approach to paid search during the holidays and carefully track results as you go.
Special Holiday Promotions
When talking about special holiday promotions, we are talking about a decidedly old-school approach to making sales during the holiday season.
Our first two topics – social media marketing and pay-per-click ads – are more recent additions to the marketing world.
But applying holiday promotions to your digital ad strategies can let you put a new spin on an old marketing tactic.
The idea here is simple – offer something special for the holiday season that is not available during other times of the year.
Maybe it is a new, limited-time product, or maybe it is a great price on your best-seller.
Run a hashtag contest on Instagram, add a promo codeword for an ecommerce discount, advertise a “mobile only” promotion perhaps.
Whatever the case, you need to give shoppers a reason to act and choose you over your competition.
Design Considerations
Finally, we want to talk briefly about design considerations for the holiday season.
Everything you do from a promotional aspect regarding the holidays should be styled and branded properly.
Landing pages are a great example of this concept.
If you route traffic to your site through holiday-specific PPC ads, take the time to develop a unique landing page for your holiday campaigns, and use that to keep your marketing consistent from start to finish.
Running holiday ads on Facebook?
Try an autumn or festive color theme to capture that audience who may be pondering their holiday shopping plans.
The same could apply to video ad content as well as the actual copy (messaging) on your ad.
Finally – Don’t Wait!
Going into the holiday season without a detailed marketing recipe could leave you with half-baked results.
Sure, we still have a few weeks before the holiday shopping season really starts to pick up – which is why now is the perfect time to get started. Start building your plan now and be ready to put it into action when the time comes.
Good luck and happy holidays!