The 2016 holiday season starts with Halloween. Then, we’ll celebrate Thanksgiving Day, Christmas, New Year, and St. Valentine’s Day. It’s time to make purchases and spend money, so businesses should get ready. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are also worth attention of company owners and their marketing departments as they provide great opportunities for growing sales.
So, Halloween is first in the line. Parades, family activities, and social events – everything requires preparation and holiday shopping. Even if your marketing budget isn’t that big, you can still get the profit during this holiday season. So, stay creative, use the proven tricks, and get inspired by the suggestions selected by the Promodo experts below.
How to Set Up Your Campaign Properly
The Holiday Shopping Season 2016 has begun. For success during the holidays, it’s necessary to set up your Search and Shopping campaigns properly. Google shares the best practices here. Let’s focus on the most valuable piece of advice:
• Think, plan, act.
Before you jump into Merchant Center or Google AdWords, ensure that you have estimated your budget, set KPIs, created a promotional calendar, and a crisis-response plan. The latter is crucial, as you’ll definitely have to deal with customer, vendor, and team-related issues. Always have a backup plan before you get started your holiday promo campaign.
• Prepare your foundation.
Far before the holiday sales, build your digital storefront. It’s time to advertise all possible seasonally-relevant products. You should show the prices, discounts, special deals, and all the information your clients need to make a purchase. Make sure to update everything as soon as needed.
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• Attract more holiday shoppers.
Although you aim to reach your target audience, keep in mind that holiday shoppers are subject to change their point of view, so it’s possible to capture more clients. Pay special attention to optimizing for mobile. The load speed of your mobile site can become your competitive advantage and, therefore, attract more shoppers.
For further reference, you may check out this guide about how to survive the holiday season.
To get a review of your existing marketing activities and get suggestions for improvements, consider using Promodo consulting and audit services.
How to Make Email an Effective Holiday Marketing Tool
Experts agree that most emails are opened on mobile devices. This is especially true when we’re talking about the promotional emails. So, if you want to launch a holiday promo campaign, remember to optimize them for mobile. Other to-do suggestions include the following according to the CampaignMonitor analysis:
• Develop an interesting idea for your email, e.g. organize a flashmob, invite people to join you on a holiday event, offer an attractive discount program – whatever works out for you and may interest your potential clients.
• Make the message holiday relevant, sales-driven, personalized, and inspirational.
• Use email marketing automation to save the time of your team.
• Include a “Buy Now” button in your emails to make it easier for your subscribers to make a purchase.
You may include something valuable in your email, e.g. a holiday gift guide, last minute deals, how-tos, etc. Remember to stay brief and add some nice pictures to capture the attention of your audience.
If you need help to start or change your email marketing campaign, check what benefits you get with the Promodo email marketing services.
How to Grow Your Halloween Sales
Most online merchants start the holiday shopping season with Halloween. So, don’t waste your opportunities and launch your marketing campaign using the true and tried hints for online stores:
• Decorate catchy flexible elements of your website.
Avoid decorating your online store so that it looks like a party room. By doing so, you’ll save the precious time of your developers and designers. Usually, it’s fine to re-design only selected elements, e.g. banners, pop-ups, etc.
• Suggest freebies.
Select special items that your clients could present to their colleagues, family members, and friends as nice Halloween gifts and ensure that these goods attract the attention of your website visitors.
• Consider issuing an e-gift card.
Having nice electronic gift cards of different values helps you increase sales because customers like such kind of a promotion. You may also use email marketing tools to remind your clients about the cards they have and encourage them to come back to your website.
• Employ SEO tools.
Try one of the popular SEO techniques. If you have a blog on your website for content marketing, write a piece of content targeting “Halloween gift ideas,” “Hallowing gifts for colleagues,” or “Halloween gift baskets” keyword and then SEO it to the first page on Google, Yandex, or another search engine that most of your clients use.
• Engage your customers.
Encourage your clients to create content about your brand on social media. You may host best decoration contest on your Instagram page, ask people to share their gift buying tips on your Facebook page, or announce a gift unpacking video competition on YouTube.
You can try one of the ideas discussed above or come up with something new. Either way, make sure that your to-do plan is practical, easy to complete, and effective in a given term.
How to Run a Social Media Campaign Effectively
To create a remarkable social media campaign for your brand this Halloween, study the suggestions below and put the most appropriate ones to your bag to get ready for the holidays:
• Spruce your social media profiles by changing the color scheme of your cover photos and adding some pumpkins, spiders, or ghosts.
• Use images, GIFs, and videos that create a party mood.
• Take photos of your team in their costumes and ask your audience to select the scariest costume.
• Provide a holiday-themed discount, e.g. a “scary good deal” or “vampire strong teeth.”
• Add a touch of Halloween to your customer experience by releasing a holiday video, preparing a Halloween-related poll, etc.
• Give advice and be helpful, e.g. prepare a list of tips on how to use your products and services, provide guidelines on how to select a perfect Halloween present, respond to your clients 24/7, etc.
Remember that your team will be busy during the holiday season, so think about hiring digital marketing professionals from the outside.
Think big, act step-by-step, and consult experts for the best outcomes.
About the Authors
Nadiia Gryshchenko
English Copywriter at Marketing Department
Nadiia is a copywriter and content manager at Promodo. She has been creating content and blogging for Ukrainian and international companies for 3+ years. When not writing, she likes visiting new places with friends, reading fantasy books, and walking with her dog Darren. Befriend her on Facebook or LinkedIn.
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