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An E-commerce store has to be on its toes all the time. It is a fast pacing industry that will need a lot of attention at any given time. You can imagine what it would be like during the holiday seasons.
Customers are in a rush during holiday seasons. They are looking for the best products with the best deals. Any store that can accommodate their needs will win their hearts.
It is essential to carefully pan out your marketing strategies for the holiday seasons that are not only customer-centric but able to survive in a highly competitive time.
In this article, we will look into some of the best e-commerce marketing strategies for the holiday seasons to boost sales.
Holiday Marketing Strategies for E-commerce
Marketing is not the same in the holiday season. There is a lot of competition and everyone wants people to spend more time in their store. So, here are some important strategies to implement during holiday seasons that will help you in sales conversions.
Be early
Do not ever wait for the holiday seasons to arrive to start planning your marketing strategies.
Not only will that be too messy, but you will be way behind your competitors.
Strategizing your marketing plans for festive seasons cannot be done in a short amount of time. It takes detailed planning among your team, such as designers, content creators, managers, etc.
You need to research the market trends, plan the website theme, festive season promotions and offers, marketing campaigns, sort out the inventories, etc. These will take a lot of time to do.
So start brainstorming well in advance and try to stay ahead of the game because the early bird gets the worm!
Be in the holiday spirit
There is nothing more boring than having the same visuals and layout for your store even during holiday seasons. Festive seasons are the time you can customize the look and feel of the website according to the occasion. You can add theme-based headers and footers and attractive visuals.
Interactive visuals and ads could decrease the bounce rate of your store.
Not only the homepage, but you could also look into incorporating theme-based designs on other pages, such as product pages, and checkout.
Another way to entice customers is festive-themed packaging. It shows that you care for your customers and also imagine the joy in receiving the products in such lovely packaging. It certainly will lift the holiday spirits.
Here is how the women retail brand Free People prepared for the festive season:
Optimize content with the right keywords
Optimize the content of your e-commerce store with the right intent keywords.
Look around for what holiday-based keywords have high search volumes and less difficulty. This will help in improving your page’s rankings in search engines during the holiday season. You could start by searching for products that sell the most around holiday seasons, their features, deals on them, etc. to get relevant keywords.
Besides ranking, this will also help you in gaining new customers who are looking for their favorite products for the season.
If you want to learn more about keyword research, read this guide by Yoast.
Study the market
It is always wise to keep a watch on market trends.
Learn how others are prepping for holiday seasons and their strategies for marketing. Analyze the current trends around the season and try to understand and incorporate what works for your store.
You could also study the marketing strategies adopted by your competitors, and try to be one step ahead of them.
Exclusive holiday sales and deals
There is nothing more joyous than getting exclusive offers and giveaways during holiday shopping.
Implement attractive offers and sales discounts in all or selected products. Place these promotional ads on all the important places on the website so that it is hard to miss.
For example, American retail brand REI offered a deal to save money for Black Friday:
Another strategy that could win your store conversions is giveaways. Offer free rewards or products with a purchase of a certain amount and above. It would encourage them to spend more and boost your sales.
You could also give away personalized coupons that the customers can apply at the checkout point to avail discounts. Checkout WebToffee’s smart coupon plugin (for WooCommerce).
Create a sense of (genuine) urgency
Another strategy to boost sales, especially the holiday season, is the scarcity tactic. Create a sense of urgency that the products in demand or on sale could become unavailable soon, or the ongoing offer/discount will expire soon. This will urge them to buy the products.
Make sure that whatever urgency you create, however, is genuine. Customers are smart enough to identify if it is fake. Put a deadline for the offers so that you have valid reasons to urge them to buy before it is too late.
False urgency could create a rift in customers’ trust in you. Do not lose sales and loyal customers over something that could have been easily avoided.
Email marketing
Email marketing campaigning is one of the best marketing strategies for your products for the holiday season.
Entice your customers with emails about your holiday sales, deals, and other promotional content, and make it as personalized as you can.
Make sure to send emails well in advance before the holiday season starts so that they are aware by the right time, and they do not miss out on the promotional offers you have.
ASOS sent this attractive email to its customers for Christmas:
Social media influencing
Just like email marketing, social media marketing is the best way to reach out to people.
You can plan the content for your social platform before the holidays start to build up excitement and curiosity among potential customers. You can also include fun holiday-themed competitions and giveaways in these platforms to engage them more.
Make sure your posts are engaging and visually appealing with holiday themes.
Amazon nailed it with their Christmas-themed YouTube video in 2018:
On platforms like Instagram, you can collaborate with influencers who have a large following to promote your products and deals.
Take all the advantages of social media to promote your store.
Express and free shipping
The holiday season does not last for long. It is there for a limited time. So people shopping for gifts for others would want the products as soon as possible before the season ends. What use will it be if they receive it after the holiday season ends? That would be embarrassing.
You must offer express shipping during festive seasons so that your customers get products on time. Even better if you can make it free!
Fast and free shipping will definitely win the hearts of your customers.
Right return policy
Just like shipping, having faster returns and exchanges is a must during the holiday season for the same reason discussed earlier.
There is not a lot of time during such time to wait for a product to be picked up for returns and exchange it for another. You must make every effort to fast track the return process during the season so that customers can still have the desired products in time.
And, like shipping, free and easy returns is also one of the keys to successful sales conversions.
Read more about how to get the return policy right here.
Live customer support
Holiday seasons are hectic, and e-commerce stores have to move in haste to manage everything.
At the same time, people are also in a hurry. They want to grab the best deal you offer. Therefore, any questions they have about the products or sales must be answered quickly.
Live chat is a necessity for e-commerce sites during this time. Customers must be able to find answers or solutions to any problem they face while shopping quickly. Providing real-time support will win you a lot of brownie points.
Make sure the chat window is available on every page so that customers do not have to go looking for it.
If you are unable to respond in real-time, make sure to attend to them as soon as possible without any undue delay that may result in losing sales.
Don’t forget the existing customers
Acquiring new customers is exciting. Who does not like expanding their audience and generating more revenues? However, you must not forget about your current customers who did contribute to the revenue in the past.
Returning customers are often loyal, and they trust you. They could be great promoters of your store. Therefore, it is your responsibility to cater to their requirements and also keep them in mind while strategizing your marketing for the holiday seasons.
Send the existing customers personalized emails and offers based on their past purchases. It will make them happy, and they will return for more shopping in the future. Show them that you care.
Wrapping Up
These were some of the best tips for amping up your sales for the holiday season. The holiday season could affect your store’s sales and reputation. One small mistake can drastically impact them. Therefore, you need to be very smart about panning out the holiday marketing strategies.
We hope you will find these tips useful. Or do you have any other strategies that worked for your store? Let us know what you think in the comments below and we can discuss.
