With only a few more weeks until the end of the year, now is the perfect time for businesses to start looking at their holiday marketing strategy. According to Auspost, more than 73% of Australian Households shopped online in 2018. They also found that the weeks between November 11th to December 15th accounted for almost 15% of all ecommerce transactions with events such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday and, of course, Christmas being the main driving forces. While all of these events are not necessarily relevant to all businesses, as many are more B2C orientated, the importance of understanding how to effectively market your business during this period is crucial.
Tips To Maximise Your Marketing Performance
Analyse Data & Run Diagnostics
Data is the lifeblood of all businesses. Before you begin to plan your holiday marketing activities, all businesses need to make sure they have the correct and relevant data available. For example, in a B2C context this could involve looking at how well certain products or services are performing online. Can certain products be used in your holiday campaigns? There are also a few other areas that can also be explored in relation to data, which can provide key insights into how you structure your holiday marketing strategies:
- Medium channel: How are customers reaching your website?
- Device Usage: How are your customers viewing your website? Mobile, laptop or tablet?
- Issues with pages: Do specific product or services pages have a higher bounce rate than other pages? Why?
A poor functioning website can lead to negative customer experiences, which in turn, can mean lower conversions. To make sure this doesn’t happen, diagnostic checks should be run covering a number of areas including:
- Website Performance Audit
- Content Audit
- UX Review
Plan Ahead
Make sure that all marketing messages are pre-planned with content and imagery carefully crafted to engage your target your audience(s).
Not only does the content of a message need to be considered, but also how it is delivered. For example, B2B businesses may find that LinkedIn Advertising is far more effective at engaging customers, whereas as B2C business may find that Google Shopping Ad campaigns are more effective.
Finally, make sure your whole business is across the marketing promotions you have on offer. It is all well and good if your marketing team is running an amazing holiday campaign, but if your other departments such as your sales or CRM team have no idea what is going on, this can lead to major disruptions in operations. Leading to negative customer/client experiences and negative WOM.
Utilise a Multi-Channel Approach
An effective multi-channel approach is must over the holiday season. This not only means that specific marketing messages are uniform across all platforms. But it also means that all marketing messages follow a similar theme, otherwise business messages can be seen to be disjointed, confusing your target audience. And of course promoting across multiple platforms also allows for a greater reach of your campaigns and more effective targeting. Make sure to test which mediums work best and hopefully, you will have some historical data to point you in the right direction.
Being active across multiple channels is especially necessary at this time, to deal with any customer complaints and issues in a timely fashion. This is not only important for the short-term retention of customers, but can also play a key role in attracting future customers through positive reviews, testimonials and positive WOM.
End User Tips
- Offer Plenty of Delivery Options
- Ex. Free Shipping, Click & Collect Options and Same Day Delivery.
- Make it Easy to Convert
- Holidays can also be stressful for customers. Make it easy for them to choose your product/service. Ex. Buy Now Pay Later, Links Direct to Purchase Page etc.
- Give a Gift
- Providing a free gift with orders can have a positive reaction from customers.
- In a B2B context offering a gift can also be an effective retention strategy.
- Promote Sales and Deals
- Evoke a sense of urgency in your target market.
- Countdowns and reminders about expiring deals can be highly effective.
- Use Seasonal Pages
- Tap into nostalgia of clients/customers. Make them more willing to convert & explore your website.
Planning and executing an effective holiday marketing strategy can be challenging. Contact one of the team at Redline Digital to find out how we can make it that little easier!