Holidays are the perfect time for marketing. Most people are in the buying mood and fairly impulsive with their spending. This gives you a great opportunity to earn additional revenue and gain brand recognition.
During November, online shopping generated around $58.52 billion in the US alone. December is predicted to surpass this number by around $7 billion and bring in $65.5 billion.
If you want a piece of this pie, you need to have a good marketing strategy in place. This article will help you with some of the last-minute marketing strategies that could help.
Change the Look of Your Website and Social Media
The design and feel of your website or social media can have a big impact on your customer’s buying decision. That’s why it is important to make sure it has a festive design. You don’t have to change much, just switch the website banners and headers with more festive graphics.
You can also add some page animations like falling snow or stars to create a festive feel. These animations and banners are easily available online and don’t require much technical skill.
Send out Personalized Holiday Greetings
Personalized holiday greetings are a good way to deepen your relationship with your existing customers. It is important to retain customers during the holiday season because they are your primary source of consistent revenue.
According to research by Epsilon, 80% of customers are more inclined to make a purchase if a business offers a personalized experience.
You can encourage these individuals to make a purchase by offering a special discount or even a small gift card. Holiday shoppers are always looking to save money so discounts or gift cards will encourage them to spend money.
Maintain a Good Email Marketing Strategy
Email marketing is a highly lucrative marketing strategy, especially during the holiday season. Around 59% of B2B marketers consider it their most reliable strategy.
This campaign doesn’t require much effort. You just need to design a special holiday newsletter, offer some product suggestions and include some form of coupon code or discount. Such emails have a relatively high conversion rate.
Gift Cards Are Ideal for Last Minute Shoppers
Last minute shoppers are always in a hurry. They don’t really want to waste time browsing through different products and looking for fast shipping. Gift cards are a quick and convenient solution. One in four gift cards is sold, which means you have a higher chance of selling them than any other products on your website.
Digital gift cards are easy to use and implement. You can offer special holiday cards and make it easy to send them to the recipients. For example, Amazon online requires you to provide the destination email address. You can implement something similar.
Make Sure Your Website is Zippy
Holiday shoppers are impatient. They’re not going to wait several seconds for your website to load. Most shoppers expect a website to load in around 3 seconds. The site abandonment percentage rises with every second that passes after that.
In fact, 53% of respondents of one Google survey say they abandon sites that take longer than 4 seconds.
This means it is important to make sure your website loads quickly on both desktop and mobile platforms. Make sure you have a good hosting plan and a reliable server. That last thing you want is for your website to crash during the holiday rush.
Invest in PPC Ads
PPC ads are a great way to reach new audiences. Most begin their online journey on Google and find the items they need to search. PPC ads are placed at the top of the search engine result page, which means they are highly visible to your target audience.
Make sure your ad copy is optimized for the holidays by offering special discounts and coupon codes. Ads without some holiday offer won’t perform well during this season.
Holiday Content like Gift Guides
Content marketing isn’t really a last-minute strategy, but it is still a good idea to add a few new content pieces to your website or social media. Things like holiday gift guides are very popular during this season.
Make sure all of your holiday articles are detailed but easy to read. Most people don’t have enough time to read a full article. They will skim the content to understand the most relevant points and not go beyond that.
Offer Discounts and Coupon Codes
No holiday season is complete without discounts, sales, and other such offers. Shoppers will be looking for the most attractive deals in order to save some money. There are many ways in which you can offer discounts without harming your bottom line, including:
- Offering a free gift along with purchase instead of discounts.
- Providing free shipping on a specific shopping cart value.
- Offering free gift wrapping on items of above a specific value.
Customers will naturally gravitate towards companies that offer free shipping, even if the product value is slightly higher. In fact, 93% of customers prefer free shipping over good discounts. Offering it is an excellent way to get more customers.
Promote and Engage on Social Media
Social media is a great platform to spread awareness and connect with the audience. Holidays are busy times so most businesses owners don’t spend much time these platforms. That can be a mistake because it is easy to reach a large audience through Facebook or Instagram.
Run promotion campaigns and contests on this platform. You can take advantage of user-generated content like pictures and tweets mentioning your products or brands. This will help keep your brand at the forefront of everyone’s mind, which can help during the holiday season.
Be active on social media platforms that are most popular with your target audience for the best results.
These tips will help you create a great last-minute marketing campaign. It is better late than ever when it comes to holiday marketing because there are always some lingering last-minute customers.
