Digital Marketing guide to capitalize during holidays

For some people holiday means glorious couple of weeks of less traffic on the roads every morning. While many business owners fall into one of those categories, what you might not realise is that these holidays open up a range of juicy marketing opportunities for your business. With many people turning to Google searches for holiday planning, you can help your business gain more sales if you target the right online marketing campaign.

Here are few steps to enable your business capitalize and engage holiday shoppers:

  • According to statistics 39% of the audience will start shopping before thanksgiving.
  • 44% of the audience will start shopping after thanksgiving but not wait until the last minute.
  • 17% of the audience will shop at the last minute.
  • 92% of the holiday shoppers go online in some capacity to search for gifts and/or make purchases.
  • Shoppers use mobile devices to explore products by accessing may apps like Amazon and other shopping apps

How to capitalize during holiday season on Digital Platform? Here are some quick pointers:

  1. Know your Target Audience

target-audience-marketingThe first step for any new online marketing campaign is to ask yourself: What is my End Goal? A marketing campaign without a defined goal is like an envelope with no postal address – it might go somewhere, but chances are it won’t end up where you want it to.

To get started, here are a few of the most common goals for seasonal campaigns:

  • Increased sales of a specific product
  • More traffic to your site
  • Sign-ups to a newsletter or other service
  • Improved social media following
  • Conversion through a certain aspect of your site (such as clicking for more information, sending an inquiry, or downloading a certain piece of content)
  • Increased foot traffic in your store
  1. Set up your Game plan

Get out your whiteboard, get to work and make notes. You’ll need to come up with ideas that can relate your products to the holiday season.

Some businesses will be able to target kids, womens while others (liquor stores, for example) will need to focus on selling to the men, parents, commercial audience.

Once you’ve chosen your target audience, think about what they are most likely to be looking at, reading, watching and engaging with.

If you’re targeting younger people, then paid Facebook Campaigns may be most effective.

If you’re looking to get the attention of mature audience like parents, then publishing keyword-rich blog posts targeting the right keyword for the product or service may be a better method.

It’s always best to reflect any digital marketing campaign on your own site. This may mean generating blog content or landing pages around the phrases and words you are targeting, or sending out a series of emails on the subject to your mailing list.

  1. Discount on Products

Everyone loves discounts specially during holidays. A discount, freebie, special deal, free trial, or another value-driven offer can help you convert your audience into a sale.

No matter what type of campaign you are running, offering some sort of incentive to your audience on top of your additional spend on advertising can make a big difference. Get creative and draw attention of  your intended audience.

  1. Automate your campaign well in advance

Got everything ready to go? One of the benefits of planning ahead is that you can automate much of your campaigns, so that you yourself can enjoy the school holidays (even if you don’t have youngsters at home).

You can schedule your Products blog posts and social media content in advance – many website management tools have calendars and schedules for the same task, while platforms like Hootsuite and Sprout Social allow you to schedule social media posts.

  1. Follow up

What good is a campaign if you don’t learn something from it? Ask Yourself the following:

  • How close did you come to your target?
  • Which areas of the campaign were successful? Which were not?
  • Did you end up engaging with the right audience?
  • What sort of feedback did you receive on this campaign?
  • What would you do differently if you could go back?

Need a marketing plan for your business in place during holiday season, feel free to drop us a email.