The joyous season of the year is almost upon us! And, it brings with it opportunities worth billions of dollars!
- The overall retail holiday shopping in 2020 amounted to around $789 billion.
- Online sales figures in the same year jumped up by 24%.
- Online sales are expected to grow by another 11-15% this year.
During this time, consumers are out and hungry, hunting the best deals, cheap gifts, and quick deliveries; such is the spirit of the holidays.
So, how can you grab your fair share of this pie?
Invest in product listing optimization, prepare your eStore, and launch careful eCommerce marketing campaigns to increase traffic, sales, and conversions this holiday season.
How to Drive Sales In The Holiday Season 2021?
- Customers On Their Browsing Journey.
- Engage Customers As They Research for Gifts.
- Create a Seamless Shopping Experience.
eCommerce Holiday Planning for Online Retail Businesses: What Is There to Prepare?
A lot of things, to start with. But, let’s tackle this one by one!
1. Get Your eStores Ready for SEO
Want rankings? You gotta go out and get’em!
There are millions of eCommerce sellers out there preparing for the upcoming holidays. The competition is going to be intense, like it always has been.
But to make sure that your eStore doesn’t lose its voice in the noise, it must rank high enough to bag maximum customer attention and hence, maximum conversions.
How can you achieve that?
The answer is SEO.
Optimizing your eStore with all the right keywords and covering all the latest trends is pretty much what you need to do. But before that, you’ll need to conduct extensive research wherein you find out all the trending keywords (both targeted and LSIs).
You can use a keyword tool like Google keyword planner for that. And, since the holidays are mostly about gifts and decorations, highlighting products as gift ideas could work really well as it is exactly what customers are looking for. Know your target customers and develop a strategy for listing optimization for the holiday season accordingly.
And while you’re at it, don’t forget to optimize your listing for mobile as a lot of traffic during this season is from mobile devices. Make sure you leave no stone unturned.
2. Market Your Store Right
Here is why you must consider marketing.
And, here is how you can go about the process.
A. Want To Break Your Sales Records? Market That eStore Of Yours Like Crazy!
Buyers go all nuts on offers and discounts during the holidays. Reckless spending on gifts, decorations, food, and whatnot. If your listing makes the cut and is able to grab the customers’ attention, you’re in for a treat!
In fact, if you do market your eStore right, you might be able to break your previous sales records all at once! That’s right!
B. Competition Is Hard But You Have To Come Through With Improved CTR.
No CTRs, no sales.
If no one clicks on your product ads or visits your eStore, how would they buy? CTR is one of the most important things that you should be focussing on around the holidays.
Sometimes, you might be selling the right products but may lag behind in marketing them right. Meanwhile, there’s another seller with almost the same products as you but way ahead of you in conversions. The reason being his high click-through rate.
So, take PPC and store marketing seriously if you want prospects to find you!
C. Attracting Consumers Works Well If You Cater To Their Demands.
Buyers will buy. And if your eStore supplies meet their demands, you’re there!
Of course, it would take some research to see what they are demanding. If you don’t know how to go about it, you can always opt for eCommerce marketing services. Go whichever way seems right. Just do not skip this part.
D. You’re Not The Only Seller Trying To Leverage The Holiday Season
There are millions of other sellers fighting for customer attention. If you don’t do something to make yourself heard, you’ll be overshadowed by your competition.
Thus, preparing for the holidays entails a brilliant marketing campaign to make your eStore stand out.
This Is Your Chance To Get Your Creative Juices Flowing
It’s not every day that you get a chance to be creative with your online store. The holidays give you a fair opportunity to play around with not only your website design but your marketing campaign too.
Designing illustrative and creative marketing campaigns will work well in gathering enough customer attention to increase your sales.
Here is how you can go about it!
1. Holidays Are Coming: Let Your Website Make It Obvious
People are in a festive mood. Let your eCommerce website make it seem obvious!
And by that, we don’t just mean creating an interesting theme (well, that too), but setting up one that incorporates smart marketing efforts to keep your buyers hooked.
For example, each and every page of your eStore must be themed according to the holidays along with a banner that displays some of your greatest offers. You may market products relevant to the holidays smartly using well-designed and creative banners. In fact, to make sure that you do it right, go for eCommerce store development services and get a unique website designed in less time.
2. Social Media Is Like Wildfire. Use It Wisely
Nothing spreads a piece of news like social media. Once you’ve decided on your holiday offers and have a fully-functional holiday-themed website in place, it’s time to spread awareness.
Take to social media. Use Facebook, Twitter, etc. to post updates and let people know what you have to offer. Trending hashtags around the holiday season work brilliantly in getting some traffic through social media. Others like Instagram and Pinterest could also be of help if you have a lot of visual content to share.
3. Throw In Some Enthusiasm With A Contest
Organizing a fun contest on social media can really help direct some quality traffic and customer attention to your eCommerce website.
For example, if your eStore sells clothes, then you can use Halloween and organize a contest wherein you invite users to send their pictures in a Halloween costume and you’ll be choosing a winner. Why stop at that? Choose 3 winners instead.
It’s all about making people happy. To gain more traction, you can even make a separate webpage on your website showing the spirit of the holidays. Not only will your buyers be thrilled, but they will also be impressed and could subscribe to your eStore, thus increasing your customer base.
So, get as creative as you can!
4. Come Up With Some Useful Content Related To Holidays
Publishing some useful and fun holiday-related content in the form of blog posts, videos or infographics can instantly get you noticed.
For example, you could cover a blog post titled: ‘10 Super Scary Halloween Costume Ideas’ or ‘7 Things To Gift Your Daughter This Christmas.’
Not only will you be able to interlink some of your product pages, but you’ll actually be letting out information that could be useful for the buyers. Try not to be too salesy though!
5. This Is The Right Time For PPC
Many of the eCommerce sellers focus only on their existing customers, which is good as a strategy but not enough. The Holiday season is the perfect time to invite some new ones to your customer list.
That is where PPC comes in handy.
If your product listing’s ad matches their demands, they’re likely to buy the product straight away. So, launch a well-thought PPC campaign before the holidays to let new customers discover your eStore.
6. Don’t Forget About Emails
The festive season calls for attractive mailers.
This is yet another area to get creative and sway your customers by presenting your holiday offers in a way that makes it hard to say no to them. Use illustrative fonts, attractive images, and innovative designs to come up with intriguing mails. Remember not to include too much text. Stick to visual representations for most parts.
Launch Occasion Specific Programs and Campaigns
The holiday season comprises multiple events. If leveraged separately, each of these can take your sales graph up significantly. We have covered a few in this space to give you a better idea of the sales potential of these holidays and how you can utilize the opportunity to grow your business.
1. Halloween: Increase eStore Sales With A Spookfest
This super fun trick-and-treat holiday can bring in lots of benefits for your eCommerce business.
- In 2021, Halloween spending was projected to cross $10.14 billion, up from the pre-pandemic sales of $8.8 billion.
- Over 50% of consumers expressed their interest in shopping online this year.
- The biggest revenue categories for Halloween this year are likely costumes, candy, decorations, and greeting cards.
Needless to say, the possibilities with this festival stretch far out. As long as you know where to invest your time and money, Halloween can do a lot for you.
- Offer Halloween gifts as freebies
- Create a Halloween-theme landing page
- Decorate your home page with contextual banners, headers, and images
- Retarget customers with gift cards aimed at Halloween products
- Send product recommendations and promotions
- Create blogs for Halloween gift ideas and other interesting topics
If the holiday is already overhead and you can not find the time to lay down a detailed marketing campaign, you can outsource eCommerce marketing services as well.
2. Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving, celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November, is a critical annual highlight for online sellers. Despite not being a federal holiday, most employers provide leave on this vacation.
That, combined with the time of the year, makes this a perfect opportunity for you to roar your sales higher.
- Consumers spent $5.11 billion on Thanksgiving in 2020, $5.14 billion in 2021
- Consumers in the USA spent around $99.1 billion between November 01 and 28- a 1.6% year-over-year growth
Despite this pandemic changing the rhythm of online shopping, Thanksgiving has kicked off this year’s holiday season quite effectively, as always.
Here are a few thanksgiving marketing ideas to help you tap into that revenue pool for the next holiday season.
- Use your content to showcase community support
- Create giveaway campaigns
- Put together product catalogs that highlight Thanksgiving based items
- Send thank-you notes to your subscriber list
- Add deals and coupons in your emailers
- Host a live shopping events
- Look for relevant local events in your neighbourhood and showcase them in your profile
3. Black Friday & Cyber Monday
Black Friday comes right after Thanksgiving and the weekend is followed by Cyber Monday. These two days are almost always in a battle for sales and traffic.
That is all the more reason why you should have a strategy prepared to market and sell on both these days.
In 2019, Cyber Monday got 19% more traffic than Black Friday.
This year, Black Friday got 23% higher sales than Cyber Monday, minting nearly $8.9 billion in the US.
However, keep in mind that these two days fall during Thanksgiving week and therefore, there is already a sale frenzy going about. You must tweak your strategy accordingly to make the most of this occasion.
4. Christmas: Make It Merry!
Christmas is an exceptionally opportune marketing moment because it rides on the momentum already built by Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday.
There is also the added factor of Christmas being the biggest holiday of the year. Crazy spending is an expected trend this time of the year.
You have all the opportunity you need!
Publishing impressive content around this holiday could actually direct a lot of customers to your eStore. Plus, discounted offers and deals are what every buyer is in for! The trick lies in how well you are able to present them to your customers. Other Christmas marketing ideas include:
- Prepare your website for conversions
- Focus on product listing optimization
- Use creative Christmas-based descriptions, headers, and images
- Create gift guides based on consumer profiles
- Create product bundles for successful cross-selling and upselling
- Use an omnichannel marketing strategy (emailers, newsletters, SMS, social media, WhatsApp)
- Create personalized retargeting campaigns
- Run PPC campaigns for multiple regions
- Use social proof to enhance brand reputation
Gear Up For The Holiday Season (This Year And Next) With SunTec India
We have readied you with some of the best holiday selling strategies for sellers. But, for this year, a lot of time has already passed. So, our best suggestion would be that you start preparing for the holiday season in 2022 as soon as possible.
Let SunTec India help you in creating an eStore that won’t just embrace the holiday spirit, but also help you lock in maximum prospects. Avail our eCommerce store development services to get a website designed that’s one-of-a-kind. You can also avail our eCommerce marketing services if you need help with marketing your eStore right.
Just write to us at info@suntecindia.com and get started. You can also subscribe to our newsletter to get a deeper insight into this and more information on what we have to offer. Stay tuned for more pieces like this.