The Holiday Promotions And Campaigns for Online Retailers
The holiday season is just around the corner, so if you haven’t started to plan your holiday campaigns yet, now is the time to get started, as the winter holidays are the busiest time of year, especially for ecommerce store owners and ecommerce marketers.
Check out 20 ideas and get ready for the most blooming holiday season!
General tips
Pose questions
The first step to a successful online campaign over the holidays is to make the right questions.
- What is the idea or concept behind your holiday marketing campaign this year?
- What is the focus of your holiday marketing strategy?
- On what products or services will your holiday marketing primarily be focused on?
Table of Contents
Take advantage of your social media
Social media emerges as one of the top and most used marketing channels that retailers are employing to reach the target audience for holiday promotions; it also delivered the most return on investment (ROI) for recent marketing campaigns.
Focus on email marketing
Email marketing comes in as a close second in terms of the most used channel and the channel that delivers the highest ROI. This is followed by in-store flyers and targeted online ads as ways that retailers are reaching out for their holiday promotions.
Offer discounts
It remains the top incentive to increase sales during the holidays, followed by coupons and deals on their most popular products.
Make your delivery free
When it comes to delivery of products, free delivery is the most offered tactic that retailers deploy over the holidays, followed by free returns and two-day delivery.
#1 Decide on your creative concept and create targeted content
Be creative with your promotion campaign. What makes them choose you instead of others might simply be the creativity and effort you put into your marketing campaigns, which helps you stand out from the crowd.
Create your photo and video assets
When it comes to holiday marketing campaigns, it’s a good idea to invest in creating original content. Create a Pinterest board that represents the aesthetic of your holiday marketing campaign. Brief your team, photographers, and influencers about the aesthetic and visual qualities that you’re going for. You may hire a photographer and/or videographer to assist with content creation for your holiday campaign.
Think about your props, location, lighting, and even your models. And yes, you can model your own products if you need to! If you need some help with prop inspiration, try referring back to the Pinterest board you created earlier! Next, you need to create your shot list and plan your storyboard for the whole holiday season. Start by making a specific list of the products that you want to feature in each shot, and an overall description of the “scenes” you want to create, including venue, props, and shot selection.
Film a holiday video
Create a holiday focused themed video about your business. Share it using your social media channels, post it on your “About” page, use it in your signature, and show your customers how fun and trustable your business is. By building trust, you’ve opened the way to a higher conversion rate and higher revenue naturally.
This week, KP Nuts will launch a festive campaign in partnership with @savechildrenuk . In the run-up to Christmas Jumper Day, we’re giving you the chance to win the ultimate Christmas jumper. Take a look at our KP Nuts' Facebook page to find out more #KPChristmasJumper pic.twitter.com/2O63OF6HXn
— KP Snacks (@KPSnacks) December 13, 2018
#2 Collect and schedule your social content
Taking the time to schedule your posts will leave you more time to actually engage with your community. Start by organizing your photos and videos for your holiday marketing campaign. When you have all your holiday content mapped out, you can set an Auto Publish plugin that will do all the hard work for you. Your posts will be shared exactly when you want!
#3 Prepare your social media ads
With the right social media ad strategy, you can build your following, get website clicks, and drive sales for your brand or business. Every platform has its own set of advertising options. Whatever your target is, there’s an ad platform that will work for your brand!
#4 Holiday marketing tips for Facebook & Google Ads
Many shoppers see Facebook and Instagram as sources of inspiration for gifts they can buy for their loved ones.
Appease the algorithm by slowly upping your budget
According to Facebook, the learning phase resets every time you make a “significant edit” to your ad set—and that includes changes to your budget. In order to keep up with your competitors during the holiday season, you’ll most certainly have to increase your ad sets’ budgets. However, if you abruptly make these changes all at once, all of your ad sets will re-enter the learning phase – thus diminishing your performance at a time when you need performance to be better than ever. Here’s what you do: Increase your ad sets’ budgets little by little over time. Small changes to your budgets won’t restart the learning phase. That way, when the competition really ramps up, you’ll be spending only the needed amount without worrying about temporarily falling behind.
Tips for Google Ads
When the time comes to find gifts, a ton of your prospects are going to turn to Google for help. Meeting prospects in the search results—both with text ads and Shopping ads—is absolutely essential. Elsewhere, using display ads to stay top-of-mind is an effective tactic as well.
Attract more clicks with Merchant Promotions as it’s a free feature that enables Google Shopping advertisers to make their Shopping ads more compelling by adding special offers like discounted prices, free gifts, and shipping benefits. Once you’ve submitted a product data feed in Google Merchant Center and it’s gotten a Thumbs up, you can start creating promotions. Use the promotions tool (creates specific offers for individual products) or upload a designated promotions feed (bulk upload a high volume of promotions at one time).
Connect with your prospects on the Google Display Network! There are two key tactics you can use to drive value out of your display ads.
Give Google a collection of keywords and website URLs related to the offer you want to promote with your display ads. Then, Google will create an audience of users actively looking to make a purchase related to those keywords and URLs and serve them your ads. Generally, this is more effective than using one of the in-market audiences Google provides.
Google takes your marketing assets —images, videos, logos, headlines, copy, etc.— and dynamically creates display ads that fit the various pages and devices they’re showing on. Υοu can also add promotional text to your responsive display ads. If you’re using the display network to remarket to your holiday season prospects, sweeten the deal with a promotion like free shipping or a discounted price!
If you’re going to run holiday season display ads, get your creative assets ready to go as soon as possible!
Measure Your Results
In order to run a successful social media campaign over the holidays, you should have a clear idea of what success means, as well as a way of measuring it! Use Google UTM parameters to track your success on social. They are simply tags you add to a URL. When your link is clicked, the tags are sent back to Google Analytics and tracked.
#5 Explore the numerous abilities of your Instagram
Feed posts
You can tag up to 5 products! So every time you post to your feed, you can create a shopping experience for your followers and start showcasing your product line!
Shopping carousel posts
Every time you tag a post on Instagram with your products, that post will appear in its own dedicated shopping feed on your profile! When your viewers tap the shopping bag icon on your profile, they’ll be directed to all of your tagged products, making it even easier for them to shop your feed.
Stories with tagged products
When watching your story, followers can now tap on a product sticker to learn more about the product and, ultimately, make a purchase. Tagging products in Instagram Stories can be a more organic way to promote shopping on stories and allows you to share your product details in a more subtle way.
New AR filters with tagged products
This groundbreaking new feature allows consumers to “try on” products digitally before buying them — opening up a world of opportunities for retailers.
Instagram live with tagged products
It allows businesses to share direct links to products during their Instagram Live broadcasts! Product links will be shown at the bottom of the video stream, so people can easily tap to learn more or “Add to Bag.”
Instagram bio
Using Linkin.bio makes it extremely easy to redirect visitors to the specific products or pages that you reference in your individual posts.
Tip: Each of the “big days” of your holiday marketing campaign should have a dedicated Instagram story to support and enhance your other Instagram content. You can also tease your holiday campaign by sharing behind-the-scenes photos and videos on Instagram Stories.
Extra Tip: Don’t forget the promos everyone will be on the lookout for. Use the tags on social networks during those mad rush days, and let your social media followers know what to expect from you ahead of time so they can plan accordingly.
#6 Pinterest
When used right, Pinterest is one of the most powerful tools to sell online and in-store. Major brands are using Pinterest by hosting contests, using rich pins, and even going cross-channel by including tags of most-pinned items in-store.
#7 Create holiday-themed landing pages and holiday content for your online shop
Decorate your online store with holiday themes and create holiday content to boost engagement. With a special landing page for festive offers, it’s your chance to introduce all holiday-hot-sales items with good deals and delight customers. This way, you additionally pick up SEO benefits when people search for hot-trend keywords these days: holiday, sales, deals, offers, discounts, coupons, etc. Moreover, creating valuable content around the products you’re selling is super effective. You can encourage your customers to share posts, articles, videos, photos, etc. by sending them a small gift or discount.
#8 Run holiday email campaigns
It’s time to take the most advantage of your existing customers and turn them into revenue by targeted email campaigns. Segment your customers into groups based on their interests and buying behaviors to send targeted discounts and recommend the most relevant items. By classifying customers based on their purchase behaviors, you can fire out the right content to the right customer, which increases conversion rates as a result.
#9 Deal with influencer marketing
Partner with niche influencers who fit your target market and have the right audience demographics for your brand. Create a shortlist of influencers you’d like to work with. Once you’ve created the shortlist, you need to create an influencer brief using your brand guidelines and holiday campaign Pinterest board. Outline your campaign dates, delivery dates, content expectations, and payment details. Make sure to get permission to post your influencer-created assets wherever you need to, on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or your website. Now, with your brief ready, reach out to the influencers on your shortlist. Send them an email! If you have a great product, a friendly attitude, and the right influencer, you’ll find something that works for both of you.
#10 Build your own mobile shopping app with exclusive holiday treats
Have you ever thought of creating your own mobile app to send exclusive discounts directly to customers’ phones? A mobile phone is a must-have item that sticks with you all day long. There’s no better way of communication than a push notification to their phones.
#11 Give to get
Offer a gift certificate or coupon for all orders purchased during a certain period of time. That way you’ll give buyers the chance to buy gifts for their loved ones, or get themselves a gift with the coupon after the holidays.
Extra Tip: Host a secret Christmas sale for only your email list, or only an e-commerce Facebook group you’re a member of, or only your Twitter followers. Exclusiveness creates curiosity, which may lead to a higher impression than your normal promotion campaigns.
To ensure high conversion rates, consider offering free gifts with each purchase. It’s a great way to join in on the holiday spirit and give away stuff for free. It makes your shoppers happy and gets them into the buying mood.
#12 Close all the deals with offer ads
Use offer ads! With this ad type, you can retarget your most engaged prospects with a discount code. If you’re using offer ads to drive online sales, interested users will be sent to your website; if you’re using them to drive offline sales, they’ll be given a QR code that they can use at checkout.
#13 Generate hype by getting the word out early
If someone is perusing a product page or finalizing a purchase, why not let them know that they can come back in a couple of weeks and enjoy your lowest prices of the year? Give yourself a better chance of winning their wallets when the time comes for them to hunt for deals.
#14 Own organic search by creating gift-specific pages
Holiday shoppers don’t always head to Google with a specific product or brand in mind. From an SEO perspective, this presents an amazing opportunity. By creating new, dedicated pages on your site that are optimized for keywords like “gifts for mum” and “gifts for him,” you improve your chances of ranking highly in the organic search results and getting your products in front of eager shoppers.
#15 Partner up with a global brand
Creating a strategic partnership with a global brand will boost exposure for both brands. When you cross-promote each other, you both reap the benefit of the partnership.
#16 Reward with early access deals your VIP customers
Your subscribers will feel special if they can get a good discount before everyone else. Plus, people haven’t spent any money on holiday shopping yet, so they have more to spend in your store. Early access VIP campaigns help you retain your best customers with exclusive deals. Make VIP customers happy and keep them buying for a long time to come.
#17 Keep customers coming back with a different deal every hour/day
In a nutshell, to keep customers coming back, create a campaign that offers different deals every hour or every day. Each day, customers get a chance to buy what they want at huge discounts before it sells out.
#18 BOGO with a twist
“Buy one and get one free” (BOGO) is a way of encouraging more sales of a product by offering shoppers another item of the same type for free. Now, give it a twist. Offer customers to buy one item and get another one half-price. Win over new customers and get them to spend more. Even though the second item isn’t free, it’s still a compelling offer that customers will perceive as a good deal. And you won’t have to completely subsidize the second item. Work out the math and find the best deal structure that fits your online store. In general, BOGO with the second item half-off works great if your profit margins are over 50%.
#19 Stir up a sense of urgency
Draw on people’s fear of missing out (FOMO) by creating a sense of urgency. Add countdown timers, badges, and other FOMO sales triggers and to get even sneakier, limit the stock of your most popular items and have them sell out. Making something rare increases its perceived value and makes it even more desirable. Announce a restocking alert and customers will come racing in to get a piece for themselves.
#20 Give last-minute gift shoppers a chance
The biggest concern of the last-minute shoppers is if the gifts will arrive on time for Boxing Day. The main focus is on the delivery, which is why the brand guarantees the gifts will be under the tree in time. Otherwise, once your shipping cut-off has passed, shoppers will be grateful for the option of buying a gift card for their loved ones.
Conclusion
The holiday season is a great chance for you to raise your sales, so take the most advantage of it. Now that you have all the holiday marketing tips and tricks, there is no doubt that you’ll be prepared to have the best holiday season yet!
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