Winter is coming, which means something very different to marketers and businesses than it does for Game Of Thrones Fans. It’s time to plan your Christmas sales and marketing strategies.
It’s important to prepare for the festive season early, the most successful campaigns start in September or early October. Your competitors will be eagerly planning their campaigns and may even have them organised already which is why you need to act fast.
Christmas marketing is fun and for us marketers it can be a great time to think of those creative ideas to bring those warm, fuzzy feelings of Christmas into marketing strategies but is also a very competitive time. Last year, people in the UK spent £27 billion online for Christmas and eCommerce sales have increased each year. With the internet becoming the top source for finding inspiration for gifts, platforms like social media play a significant role in influencing how people buy gifts online.
In the UK, Black Friday is the starting point for Christmas shopping, especially for parents who get 80% of their Christmas shopping during Black Friday. So it is important to think of the build up towards Christmas which can start from Halloween through the beginning of December, these three months are the most crucial time for sales.
A lot of businesses struggle to gain sales at the most important time of the year, when consumers are buying more online than any other time throughout the year. Add these tips to your marketing strategy for a successful Q4.
Build up to campaigns
It is so important to start building your campaigns now, not only because of competitors but because Halloween is a great build up to the Christmas period. You can test campaigns and audiences and get a better idea of how they will work when you then come to use them for your Black Friday sales. It also gets your customers excited when you post teasers around sales of ‘something coming soon’, so they look out for them. This is a great way to tease big offers like a pre-Black Friday sale.
Relevancy
Think about which of your products are relevant right now for the upcoming holidays.
Think of products relevant for Halloween, great products to put on offer for Black Friday and products on trend for Christmas. Do you sell lights that could be used for Christmas decorations? Do you have products to create the perfect gift guide? Whatever they may be, think about how you can use them to make them relevant to your customers buying habits.
Create a gift guide
Gift guides are a perfect way to promote products, they look visually pleasing and it is a good way to showcase products. Gift guides can be promoted through social ads as a collection ad or through GIFs. They can also be categorised as ‘Gift Guide for her’ and targeted to men in relationships, personalise your content towards your target audience. A blog around gift guides is also a good way to promote products as customers will be searching for ideas leading up to Christmas.
Discount codes and offers
The holiday season is a great time to give your customers offers, as it entices them to buy from you over competitors. Put an end date to your offers so people are quicker to buy and offer VIP discounts to current customers through email and social campaigns etc to increase customer loyalty, while also creating separate offers to new customers. You can create fun campaigns around discounts like the example below of a snow globe with a discount inside.
Delivery dates
Tell your customers the last delivery dates for your business, so they know in advance how long they have left to order products. People also don’t want to feel like they’re missing out on something special, so if you give offers alongside your last delivery dates, they are more likely to urgently buy.
Remarketing
Don’t let those customers who leave your website after browsing get away. They have shown an interest, so they are potential customers. You can target this audience through campaigns to bring them back to the website. You can also show them products they have already looked at and can even include offers over Christmas to bring them back.
Do you need more help with your online sales this festive season? Get in touch and we’ll be more than happy to help!
