From Black Friday to Super Saturday, the holiday season has no shortage of shopping days. Throw in the traditional increases in consumer spending that happens during the buildup to the holidays, and you have the perfect opportunity for a record-shattering sales quarter.
That said, these holiday boosts do not happen on their own; they are the result of a thoughtful, smartly-crafted digital marketing strategy. Hence, in this blog, we will discuss the top marketing tips that will help you leverage the festive season to its max.
9 Holiday Marketing Strategies to Skyrocket Your Sales
1) Holiday-Themed Website
Online shopping is convenient, economical and a good way to pass the time. Almost every company, big or small, has an e-commerce website because marketers are aware of the profits that online shopping can offer, particularly during the holidays.
But having a visually appealing website is not enough; it must provide an excellent user experience. The ideal way to achieve this over the holidays is by instilling a festive mood in your website’s visitors by carrying trying out some of the following tactics:
- Teasing your audience with what they can expect this holiday. You can experiment with a countdown timer, specify the % discount you’re providing, or highlight specific items that are on sale on the website homepage.
- Because the holiday season is all about spreading and sharing joy, add a gift section to inspire ideas. Categorize by popular demographics – “gifts for dad”, for example – to make it a pleasant experience for the audience.
- Create a pop-up that mentions a discount. By doing so, you may provide your site visitors a service, encourage them to make a purchase, and even collect their contact information for subsequent releases, special offers, and newsletters.
2) Host Contests
Holidays are synonymous with gifts, so why not get into the holiday spirit by conducting a giveaway contest?
Alongside giving back to customers, such competitions allow you to raise brand exposure, expand your social media following, and grow your email list. You could even use the competition to share teasers about upcoming offers and discounts.
Online contests are quick, simple, and inexpensive to start up, and you don’t even need to give away something pricey.
3) Email Marketing
Holiday email marketing is used by marketers to reach out to their target market with holiday offers or announce new products. Your emails must be brief, well-written, and personalized.
When creating holiday emails, make sure to:
- Be welcoming
- Provide value
- Make emails mobile-friendly
- Monitor deliverability (the number of emails you send per day and the average length of each email, for example)
4) Focus on Your Star Products
Your best-selling product achieved that status by becoming a customer favorite. If you showcase this product to your customers throughout the holidays, you have a strong possibility of not just making a sale but also fostering brand loyalty.
Here is how to market your top-sellers during the holidays:
- Place them in a key location on your website’s home page.
- For better user navigation, design a separate landing page for each of your best-selling products.
- Include your best-selling items in the featured portions of emails you create and send.
- Make content for your best-selling items, such as posters, videos, ads, and blogs.
5) Try New Platforms
Even though sticking with the usual channels can be tempting, there is no guarantee they will continue to be as effective. Particularly, the shift away from Facebook’s app portfolio and toward newer platforms is well-documented.
Campaigning on new platforms may feel intimidating, but if you approach it as an experiment, it won’t matter if you fail. Better yet, there’s a good chance you’ll hit the jackpot and find a successful platform you can promote in the future.
6) Create Marketing Videos
Videos, compared to written content, are more capable of captivating your viewers. They stimulate direct customer contact with your business and entice them to know more about you and your offerings.
Besides, videos are also 1,000% more likely to be shared, which is why a holiday video ad is a great way to grab your clients’ attention and instill a sense of urgency.
We recommend creating a number of holiday video advertisements and posting them on all your social media accounts/pages.
7) Offer Free Shipping
Nobody enjoys paying for shipping, especially when it’s frequently free with purchase thresholds or from larger businesses. Simply because the thought of having to pay shipping fees makes us uncomfortable, many of us second-guess our decision to complete the purchase.
As per Silverback, products with free shipping are perceived to be 30% more valuable, and the primary motivator for 90% of consumers to make larger purchases.
So, consider offering free shipping – at least during the holidays.
8) Encourage Impulse Buying
Have you entered a grocery store with a specific buying list and ended up buying additional items that weren’t a part of it? That can also happen with online shoppers, particularly during the holiday season.
This is called impulse buying, and even the most resolute of us are not immune to it.
Marketers can capitalize on this behavior and boost sales. By being aware of their propensity for impulse buying, you can successfully up-sell and cross-sell to your customers.
Upselling is when you offer a better version of something your customer is about to buy. For instance, if the buyer is considering buying a regular set of headphones, you can convince them into buying the latest model with added features. Customer wanting to buy a burger? Why not offer them a whole meal full with fries and soft-drink? You get the point.
Cross-selling is the practice of promoting related goods that enhance the value of the primary item your consumer wants to purchase. Introducing a phone case when their shopping cart has a smartphone, for example. Purchasing coffee? Why not invest in an insulated mug to keep your the coffee warmer for longer?
9) Plan for the Future
The final holiday marketing tip does not involve the festive season at all. Instead, it is about getting the most value out of the money you spend on holiday marketing for the rest of the year.
If your promotional methods work, many more people will be checking out your site out of which, a large percentage will hopefully make a purchase. But, if they don’t, you want to find a way to target them during the whole year so that your holiday marketing investment does not go to waste.
Retargeting ads is one of the best ways to accomplish this without encouraging people to join a mailing list.
Retargeting ad networks, like those on Google and Facebook, allow you to show your ads to people who have already visited your website. A highly cost-effective tactic, ad retargeting allows you to keep your brand at the forefront of the consumers’ minds.
Wrapping Up
When it comes to holiday marketing, there is no one size fits all. Since every e-commerce company is unique in terms of product, target audience, and size, they will need a mix of different approaches to obtain the best results.
However, we can safely claim that, as long as you implement the aforementioned tips, you will be able to maximize your conversion rates and profits across the holiday season.
