The holidays are upon us. As is often the case, it is the seasonal greetings, promotions, and advertisements that alert you to the arrival of this part of the year.
It is an exciting time for someone with an online business platform because of the vast business opportunities available. Even before the pandemic, e-Commerce sales were growing rapidly due to the shopping convenience offered.
Once the pandemic came around, the platform became the most practical and safest way to do shopping.
Even with the worst of the virus impact easing up globally, e-Commerce is still set to grow even further, becoming the most preferred way of shopping for many.
Deloitte projects that ecommerce sales will increase 11% to 15% year on year, reaching values from $210 billion to $218 billion.
Therefore, investing resources in seasonal marketing strategies is inevitable, lest you miss out on the vast potential to increase your business’ revenue. This guide shows you the why and how of seasonal marketing strategies.
Why is It Important to Change e-Commerce Marketing Strategies During the Holidays?
It is essential to change e-Commerce marketing strategies during the holidays as it is the only way to maximize the benefits unique to this period. Let’s check out the main benefits for seasonal marketing strategies.
Helps Set Your Brand Apart
The holiday season is a perfect time to differentiate your brand from others in your niche. Customers are looking for brands that can respond to their needs, and changing your marketing strategy to suit the holidays does that.
It allows you to be relevant and valuable to potential customers when they seek such solutions most. In aligning your online marketing strategies to the current sentiments of your customers, you humanize your brand, setting yourself apart as creative and flexible.
It also offers you the chance to create an emotional connection with potential customers, which studies show boosts your brand awareness, especially by word of mouth.
Boosts Your Traffic
There is a chance to boost traffic to your website or online store during the holiday seasons. This is thanks to the general conversations and common hot topics around this time. For example, most people are looking for the best gifts and exciting ways to add fun and cheer to their holiday moments.
If you can tap into this psyche and show potential customers how your business or products will help them achieve this goal, you will see an increase in traffic. Adapting effective ecommerce holiday marketing strategies offers you the chance to take advantage of the hot keywords of the season that will bring people to your site.
Increases Your Sales Potential
The holidays offer a perfect time to boost your sales potential in several ways. First, by targeting the seasonal needs of your customer, your marketing strategies benefit from the urgency that comes with the limited time of the season.
The urgency means your customers will not want to miss out on offers relevant to them. At the same time, people are likely to spend more during the holidays because it is a time for celebrations, so with a well-timed marketing promotion during the holidays, you will get people spending more on your products.
e-Commerce Marketing Strategies For the Holidays
There are numerous strategies you can implement for the holidays, and here are some ideas to start you off.
Demonstrate Gratitude to Shoppers
The holiday season is a time when shoppers look at the best options for getting gifts. Thus, even loyal customers may go elsewhere to stores they perceive offers the best deal.
You can prevent this while ensuring you get newer customers by having a holiday promotion that expresses your gratitude to these customers. Make it personal and show them how valuable they are through gifts, discounts, and well-thought-out messages.
Provide the Top Customer Experience
Shopping for holidays is a hectic activity, and customers are looking for easy tips and advice on hacks and the best products.
You can create your campaign around this, providing relevant and helpful content while showing how your product can help. At the same time, make the navigation, access to customer care, and shopping process fast and easier for site visitors.
Start Your Marketing Campaign Early
Do not procrastinate when developing your holiday marketing strategy, as you will miss out on the many early shoppers.
As early as September, you should be building awareness of your seasonal offers through various channels and advertisements. Your early approach motivates the audience to pick your products and keeps your brand in their minds when they start shopping.
Create a Web Room For Your Products
A webroom is the equivalent of a showroom on the internet. It is an effective marketing strategy that allows shoppers to view a product from all angles, which helps with their decision-making.
This showroom-like experience works best for expensive products, which most customers tend to buy during the holidays. It also sets you apart from other brands just offering one-sided pictures.
Promote Engagements and Discussions
Engage your audience all year round, but especially during the holiday season. Through your social media comments on blog posts and websites, let the users know your holiday plans and collect their feedback. It is an interactive way to get feedback on your plans as well as set your customers’ expectations. You can also use it to generate interest in your holiday promotions.
Create Holiday-Themed Ads and Content
Your holiday marketing messaging should have a touch of the relevant theme. For example, ads could contain gift messages or use posts on social media that engage the users on the holiday themes. If relevant to your business, you can provide content on recipes and decorations to match the holiday themes.
Appeal to the Emotions of Your Shoppers
The holidays are always a mix of different emotions for the shoppers. People are excited and nostalgic at the same time. Your marketing should appeal to these feelings to create a connection with your shoppers.
You want your messages to inspire and evoke powerful feelings to connect with your current and new customers. It is why you should create stories around your promotions. These stories should connect the holiday spirit with your brand, products, and promotion.
Market Your Brand Too
It is easy to forget your brand and market your products more. However, effective marketing aims to have the target market connect with the brand first. Once they associate your brand with certain qualities, it is easy to trust your product.
Focus on the USP of your brand, whether it is eco-friendly products, unmatched customer experience, and care or affordability. Branding should start well before the holiday promotions so that when framing it, you have a clear and consistent message you are giving to your market.
Successfully marketing your brand during the holidays will leave a lasting impression that serves you well long after the holidays.
Use Social Media Hashtags
Over 80% of people have a social media profile. It makes sense to include the various channels in your marketing efforts. Use hashtags on these platforms, especially Instagram and Twitter, to drive awareness for your promotions.
They are excellent in generating relevant buzz and also in connecting with your targeted audience. Hashtags are easy to remember and enable you to reach new customers looking for information on a subject your hashtag covers.
How to Implement your Holiday Marketing Strategy
Any marketing strategy relies on proper execution for it to bear fruit. In order to guide you with the process and help you maximize the potential of each of the above strategies, here are some essential pointers to follow.
Examine Last Year’s Performance
You need a starting point, and that should be how you performed last year. Evaluate data from the preceding year to identify the best-performing pages and keywords.
Look at the traffic and conversion rates to see which keywords and pages brought the most traffic and conversions to your site. You want to identify which pages best meet the needs of your customers during the holidays.
As such, you will gain insights into the content most relevant to your customers at this time of the year, as well as what they are looking for. These insights provide you with the right guidance for your content. You will also know which areas to improve and which ones to maximize in your new strategy.
Identify Patterns in Your Industry
Your business does not operate in a vacuum. It helps to get industry-wide insights. These include the trends in your specific niche and secondary or related niches.
The data from this research will also help you identify what customers are looking for and how the industry, in general, is responding to the holidays. You do not want to adapt to trends late after others have set the conversations and paths to follow.
It will help to use several tools that will aid you in identifying patterns early enough so you can craft engaging content early on. As keywords become more competitive, you will already be ranking highly and will have set a tone connecting with the market.
Research Holiday-Themed Keywords
In addition to the general trends, you want specific keywords that drive traffic and conversions in your niche.
Your potential customers are looking for products matching the holidays. These include discount offers around the holidays and other holiday-themed information. The data from last year will provide you with a starting point, but there is the likelihood you missed out on other best-performing ones.
Search for keywords, long-tail keywords, and other similar sets of keywords that will feature in most search queries during this time. The keywords you use should be relevant to your industry, business, and the holidays to lead to high conversion rates.
Integrate the Mobile Platform Into Your Strategy
The present e-Commerce industry is heavily reliant on mobile devices. People are now used to shopping on-the-go. They also consume much of their content on mobile.
It is vital that your marketing content is responsive and compatible on all mobile devices. Make it convenient for your users to scroll through your pages and even make an order. Mobile also works well to expand your targeting of local searches.
You can tap into the various social media apps already adaptive to mobile devices to connect with the mobile audience. Wherever possible, have ads that specifically target people on these devices to increase your reach.
Implement Your Marketing Strategies Early Enough
People do not start shopping during the holiday season. Many start their research months before, and your strategies should match this need.
Implementing them late will leave you chasing after others, and your target market may be aware of what you are offering. It helps to start early to generate excitement and awareness of your products and offers for the holiday season.
Use all your channels – from blogs to social media platforms – to let people know of any new product launches for the holidays or the start of promotions.
For blog content, you can use how-to guides, product comparisons, and demonstrations to generate interest. You can use contests, engaging images, and videos on social channels to create the necessary excitement around your holiday offerings.
Measure Your Success
Keep track of your campaign as it unfolds by measuring the key metrics. Doing so not only helps you guide your current holiday campaign but helps you prepare for the next year’s holidays.
This year, your challenges and wins will strongly influence your future campaigns, and you do not want to lose any valuable data.
You can measure metrics like how your holiday conversion rates measure up with the rest of the year, your holiday’s revenue, and the rest of the year’s revenue.
You also want to keep track of how people are engaging with your content and promotions. Finally, you should track the effectiveness of the promotion for sales and new products through the number of conversions achieved.
Prepare Your Holiday Marketing Strategy Early
Holidays present an excellent opportunity for e-Commerce businesses to get new customers and boost their sales.
In order to maximize this potential, your business has to have a marketing strategy tailored for the seasonal holidays. Specifically targeting the holidays with the right content and products differentiates you from other brands.
Customers see your business as being responsive and flexible to their needs. Use the different strategies to jump ahead of the competition and execute an effective holiday marketing campaign.
Finally, remember that the holiday feeling starts as the “ber” months roll around. This means that you should prepare your holiday marketing strategy this early as well.
Make sure to prepare your holiday marketing early so you can stay ahead of the competition and capitalize on the potential revenue the holidays bring.