It’s the money time of year for e-commerce businesses, as Christmas, Hanukkah and other holidays come upon us. For businesses that sell services rather than physical products (i.e., law offices), it might be a slower time. In either case, it’s a unique time of year in the sales cycle and that calls for tweaks to your marketing strategy. Here are some holiday digital marketing tips to help you get the most from this time…
Email Campaigns
Now is a good time to increase your email marketing activity. Studies have shown that email campaigns generate over one-quarter of holiday spending and that up to a third of those purchases were driven by reaction to a specific promotion.
Landing Page Urgency
Your landing page should always coordinate precisely with the content of the email that’s promoting it, but with holiday marketing, you need to look carefully at the tone of the page. You’re aiming for urgency without “shouting” at the prospect.
Limited time offers are the most common tactic to drive urgency, but in this case you have one big thing on your side—everyone already feels the pressure. They know they have gatherings coming up that gifts need to be purchased for. All you need to do is gently remind them of that fact.
A “countdown clock” showing the days, hours and minutes remaining until Christmas is a way of doing that. Another method is to offer free shipping with a guaranteed arrival date. This is especially powerful with last-minute shoppers and if it’s financially feasible for you, a great way to close the sale.
Host An Event
In this COVID-19 winter, this one might not be as practical as it typically would, but hosting an event can be used to further your online marketing, as well as off-line. An event can be a boon to your local SEO campaign if properly implemented on your website.
That means using the right tools (structured data, etc) that have important information like zip code and phone number accurately entered. These are signals to search engine algorithms of your relevance on the local scene and will have a ripple effect on your entire digital strategy.
Ad Extensions Are Your Friend
Are you running a pay-per-click campaign with Google Ads? Using ad extensions always boosts the effectiveness of these campaigns, but the effect can be even more noticeable during the holidays. Set up special landing pages with your holiday promotions (being sure to mark them as “noindex, no follow” so you don’t get penalized for duplicate content) and use them as the extensions. It will strengthen the presentation of your ads and highlight your best holiday deals.
Evaluate Keywords
People search differently when they’re shopping online at this time of year and you want to be sure your keyword strategy reflects that. This means more than just changing your keyword by adding something about Christmas or the holidays. It means using a tool like Google Trends to dig a little deeper and find out precisely how people are searching in your particular space. You can use what you find to craft the keywords for your landing page and ad campaigns.
A strategy of “set it and forget it” never works with digital marketing under any circumstances at any time of year. It certainly doesn’t work during what is the most lucrative and competitive time of year for many businesses. Make sure you adjust accordingly.
Want to get the most out of your holiday digital marketing campaign? We can help. Call 443.475.0787
