Is your business ready for the most wonderful time of the year, when people are scrambling to fill their carts at the last minute and shops are competing with each other to make the most money? Check out our last minute Christmas online marketing tips to get started now!
For a marketer or entrepreneur, this time of year is one of increasing competition and pressure. It’s no coincidence, as many segments are now realising a significant share of traffic and revenue, so you need to be very aware. With 61% of shoppers still buying gifts in the last week before Christmas, there’s still a chance of a last minute sale. (If you’re in a deep freeze, read our 33 online marketing tips for Christmas article.)
It’s important to keep up with online platforms: store traffic is down, and shopping from a mobile device is the trend today. According to a study in the US, sales in retail stores are down 7.5% this year compared to previous years. However, for retailers that offer online shopping, more than 50% of transactions come from a web interface.
So here are some last minute Christmas online marketing tips you should implement now!
We’ve put together a few tips to help you if you’ve switched at the last minute and didn’t have a Christmas campaign strategy (but surely you’ll take the time to plan your annual online marketing strategy next year?)
So here are 6+1 tips you can throw in now for the Christmas period:
1. Focus your online marketing on the right target audience!
It may seem obvious, but it’s important to think about what remarketing lists you’ve been building up to now, and which of these are the ones you can use this season.
What lists might be worth pulling out at this time? Here are some examples:
- Past customer lists- Which can be further broken down by how many times a person has made a purchase, or even how much revenue they generated from the transaction.
- It’s worth targeting friends who like our Facebook page, as they may be the ones looking for a gift idea.
- You can also create a social audience based on a list of your previous customers.
- Specially target people who have visited certain products.
- Separate targeting of those who have visited certain product categories.
- They have added a product to their basket but have not made a purchase.
It’s worth reviewing your audience report in Google Analytics to get a more relevant picture of your target audience. Here you’ll see data on users who have already visited your website, but it may be important to see how results have evolved over the previous holiday period, who was more active.
2. Use as many marketing channels as possible!
This time of year, when people are looking for gift ideas, they will be browsing more channels than average at once to find the perfect surprise. So it’s sensible to think about the route you can take to reach the most relevant people: run your campaigns here!
Review your Google Analytics data to see what the best channels are for your website. Also browse through the multichannel routes to make sure you’re not missing anything that could help conversions.
You also need to remember that at this time of year, people who don’t normally shop with you (for gifts) may also buy from you, so it’s definitely worth targeting search campaigns to reach cold audiences.
Statistics show that the 2018 holiday season saw an increase in multichannel shopping, with 54% of shoppers searching and buying both online and in-store.
3. Have something extra in your creative!
With Christmas approaching, everything gets festive, so it’s worth adapting your social media communications accordingly. Remember, less is sometimes more!:) So, you don’t have to clutter your graphics with rainbow-coloured unicorns on sleighs, flying elves and unicorns to signal Christmas spirit and action.
Some tips:
- Make one message stand out
- Focus on impressions, not clicks
- Everyone should know who the sender of the message is
- Be unique, don’t just follow the template (message, graphics, offer: don’t copy the competition)
4. Look at last year’s results
As mentioned above, it’s worth going through the digital marketing campaigns you ran last year and the year before Christmas to see which messages, promotional strategies and creatives performed best: upgrade them this year!
Of course, it’s also worth looking at the negative results and what might have been the reason you didn’t get the impact you wanted. Was the offer too complicated? Long delivery time? Small marketing budget? If you find the answer, fix it as soon as possible. And where you can’t figure out what the problem was, you’ll need to come up with new tactics.
Even if you don’t have this data from past years, it’s worth starting to collect this information, because it can help you achieve your goals in the future.
5. Budget wisely
During the holiday season, online competition intensifies. If you don’t want to be left behind, you need to keep up with the rest of the market! Increase your online marketing budgets and offers.
Think about the relevance of your product or service during this period and only enter the race if you can really recoup the extra cost.
You should also factor in the last quarter of the year when allocating your annual budget, when you expect higher sales than the rest of the year. If you think carefully about these budget allocations and apply them sensibly, they will certainly deliver the expected results.
6. Keep people informed
For last minute shoppers, delivery and opening times are very important information. Take the time to inform people properly, as this can prevent a lot of inconvenience later on. People are much more likely to share their negative experiences online than their positive ones. So this is something you should make a point of paying attention to.
47% of online shoppers don’t want to pay for delivery! Therefore if your budget allows, be sure to offer free delivery or a discount. Or simply include delivery in the price of the product if possible. Neuromarketing research shows that it makes the customer feel much less painful.
Include all the information on your website, in your advertising and in your newsletters. Don’t forget to promote the last day you commit to getting the gift under the Christmas tree on time.
+1 Chatbot
You can save your company a lot of work by setting up automated responses to all potential customer questions. If you use the power of a chatbot in a professional way, you can stand out from the crowd very quickly. Plus, you can open up a new channel to amplify the others.
What makes it more difficult for you is to think carefully about building a chatbot to make it a really usable tool. Allow time for planning and execution, so if you don’t already have one, don’t rush to build it. But you can prepare now for the January promotions and offers, for example.
So get to work, hang in there and work out the above solutions in a few hours: between two holidays, you’ll be thankful you didn’t let the festive campaigning go ahead of schedule!
If you want to be ready in time for next year and need a fully built Christmas campaign strategy, contact us!
Literature used:
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/holiday-marketing/holiday-ppc-strategy/#close
https://www.mediaworks.co.uk/insights/news/pay-per-click-strategy-christmas/
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6167153?hl=en-AU
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7047518?hl=en-AU&ref_topic=7343253
https://www.cloudways.com/blog/holiday-spending-statistics/
https://websitesetup.org/holiday-ecommerce-marketing-statistics/
https://chatbotize.me/webshop-chatbot-karacsony/?lang=hu
