The Early Bird Catches The Sale! (3 minute read)

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Holiday marketing is an ongoing process, which starts long before December comes around! Last-minute shopping is going out of style, with more and more New Zealanders are taking advantage of Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales to get Christmas gifts.

Holiday shopping starts gaining momentum at the end of November and continues all the way through Boxing Day and beyond. To take full advantage of the holiday season, e-commerce businesses must make early marketing plans.

How Is Holiday DIGITAL Marketing Different?

Regardless of the success of your year-round campaign, holiday marketing requires a few adjustments. It's imperative to intensify your effort, take advantage of all available channels, and introduce new tactics!

Here is why holiday marketing demands more of your attention:

  • Expectations — consumers are used to intense promotional measures during holidays. They expect their favourite brands to go an extra mile, from sending e-mail greetings to arranging special promotions. If your marketing efforts remain the same, consumers may simply ignore your offer :(

  • Competition — many companies make 30% of their annual revenue on Christmas. That's why they work extra hard to market their products in advance. With the competition on the rise, maintaining your normal marketing routine is out of the question.

  • Creativity — to handle the rising competition, brands are pressed to come up with creative tactics. This creativity takes time and careful planning.

Charles Darwin once said, "It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change."

This applies to holiday marketing perfectly. No matter how successful you are all year round, if you don't respond to the changes during the holidays, you could miss out on substantial profits while losing your existing customers.

With the right marketing strategy at hand, Christmas could be the perfect time to entice your competitor's audience and acquire new loyal shoppers.

COVID-Related Issues   

This entire year, Kiwi retailers have been adjusting to the ‘new normal’. Millions of consumers turned to online shopping to abide by social distancing rules. Even when strict limitations were lifted, many shoppers preferred to avoid unnecessary contacts. And who could blame them?

  • During the holiday season, online stores should expect an influx of Christmas buyers. Hundreds of thousand of New Zealanders are likely to shop from home this season.

  • Multiple COVID-related problems with supply chains could lead to product availability problems.

That's why it's imperative to start marketing early to avoid last-minute order management issues. Timely marketing can distribute the shopping process over several weeks, thus avoiding supply problems.  

Holiday Marketing: What You Can Do Right Now?

Smart holiday marketing starts with a good marketing plan. It should be different from the rest of the year's marketing efforts since shopping habits change drastically. A marketing plan should include:

  • Content planning — sharing holiday-related content to grab your audience's attention!!

  • Marketing automation — planning how you can take advantage of marketing automation (scheduled social media posts, automatic cart abandonment emails, confirmation messages, etc) to free up your team's time for other tactics while providing 24/7 assistance to consumers.

  • Website adjustments — tweaking your landing pages to be in line with your Christmas offers. Depending on the budget, you can adjust the entire website's design to communicate the holiday spirit.

  • Influencer planning — to take advantage of influencer marketing, which works well during the holiday season, you need to book influencers early.

By the time 25th of December arrives, your marketing strategy should be in full swing!

Early Information Gathering

Gathering as much data as possible about the target audience in advance can help you create personalised messages during the season. Additionally, you can collect information to drive a powerful remarketing campaign.

By interacting with customers before the season starts, you can create highly comprehensive lists for your list-based marketing efforts. By the time holidays come around, you'll know which shoppers have the highest buying potential and aim your efforts at converting them on the spot.  

Promote Your In-Store Inventory

While many consumers plan to do Christmas shopping online, some of them aren't ready to abandon the long-standing traditions of in-store shopping sprees. So if you run an e-commerce business with a physical store/s, you’ll need to double your efforts! Thankfully, it's possible to do it online.

By taking advantage of Google's Local Inventory Ads, you can promote both online and in-store products. These ads show consumers your product feed when they search for related terms while being in the close vicinity of your physical store.

Local Inventory Ads are a bridge between online and in-store shopping. They help you mitigate supply COVID-related supply chain problems and avoid last-minute order management crises.

Take Advantage of Proven Sale-Driving Strategies   

When planning your holiday marketing, it's imperative to consider time-proven sale-driving tools and strategies even if you've never used them before.

  • Google's Custom Intent Audience — when setting up your holiday ads, segment your audiences with this highly efficient tool. It allows you to show ads to consumers depending on their history of searches, website browsing, and app usage.

  • Google's Smart Shopping Campaign — an AI-driven tool that shows a combination of your products' images, titles, and descriptions to your target audience across multiple Google networks

  • Google Shopping Campaign — even if you already have this one set up, the campaign requires holiday-related adjustments like rating enablement, image tweaking, and more.

Additionally, pay special attention to marketing automation options to streamline your social media and email marketing campaigns during the holiday season.

The Takeaway

Holiday shopping starts earlier every year. With COVID-19 landing millions of people at home, the majority of 2020 holiday shoppers are likely to buy online. That's why e-commerce companies need to work hard on their holiday marketing strategies, adjusting them to the new needs.

To make the most of the holiday season, it's imperative to start running your ad campaign immediately. The earlier you start working on holiday marketing, the faster you'll be reaping its benefits!

Is your holiday marketing campaign in full swing? If not, there is still time. Give us a call today! We’re here to help.

Steve Crowe