The holiday period is a terrific time for both shoppers and businesses alike. Most people look forward to holiday discounts, sales, and offers to maximize their spending, and for businesses like you, it’s a terrific opportunity to skyrocket your retail sales.
In 2021, holiday sales were forecasted to increase by 8.5%-10% from 2020, with an expected spend of over $860 billion. These are massive numbers, considering the pandemic was just around the corner and is still trying to swoop its way in. And it’s not surprising that these numbers are expected to rise even further in the holiday season of 2022.
To capture your potential customer’s attention and stay top of mind, not only do you need a strong marketing campaign, but also you need to take it up a notch and deliver an incredible brand experience. Before the festive season arrives, prime your holiday strategy and get ready to go all out, guns blazing.
But with the overwhelming number of strategies businesses preach today, it isn’t easy to decide the ones you should leverage for your eCommerce store. So, this article will talk about six tried and tested strategies to help you increase sales during the most profitable season of the year.
Why do you need to set up brilliant holiday marketing plans for 2022?
As humans, naturally, we love holidays, festivals, and any and all celebrations. It’s the time people get festive, spend time with their loved ones, and of course, spend a copious amount of money.
With consumers hitting the stores or shopping online this holiday season to get their fill of “retail renaissance,” they are expected to spend nearly $859 billion. So, to effectively tap into your customers’ emotions, evolve your offerings, and ramp up your promotions, you need a rock-solid holiday marketing strategy.
Innovative marketing strategies can help you do just that. They are creative and work as your north star to design sales funnels that convert. Effective holiday marketing campaigns tap into customers’ seasonal nostalgia, thereby taking your sales and profits to the next level.
But, how soon is too soon when you start marketing for a holiday?
Starting too early could make consumers irritated, but you can lose them to your competitors if you start too late. To hit the sweet spot when timing your campaigns, analyze the needs of your business, shoppers, and products. Your best bet would be to start planning your holiday strategy at least 4-6 months before the holidays begin.
Best holiday marketing strategies to supercharge your sales
Retail holiday shopping trips in the latter part of the year end in huge splurges with shoppers catching up on their yearly holiday traditions. Do a lot of consumers start their holiday shopping before December? Definitely, yes.
Avoid scrambling around at the last minute when customers have already begun searching for gifts. Plan your marketing activities well before peak sales season so you have adequate time to launch, understand, and tweak your campaigns.
- Analyze last year’s marketing campaigns
Before diving headlong into designing a campaign from scratch, go back to your previous marketing campaign. Dig up the data to see what kind of holiday promotions worked for you and what didn’t make an impact.
You can use Google Analytics to analyze your website traffic, determine your audience demographics, and see where your sales are coming from.
Here are some questions to answer based on historical data:
- Which holidays worked well for your business?
- Which campaigns were most profitable?
- Which channels result in sending heavy traffic to your website?
- What are your best-selling holiday products?
- What were your customer buying trends the previous year?
Your answers will show you how best to tweak the campaign to boost your sales during the upcoming holiday season and optimize your strategy for the desired numbers.
- Give your website a holiday makeover
Get into the holiday spirit by simply dressing up your online presence. Take Christmas, for example—adding a Santa hat to your logo speaks a thousand words. You can also incorporate Christmas lights into the design on your landing pages, as well as dress up your cover photos and banners on social media.
Ciate London takes its holiday-themed content seriously. When you land on their website, you instantly notice the confetti around its logo, the banner at the top of the page with its holiday promotion, and a separate tab dedicated to its Christmas collection.
- Treat customers with awesome holiday offers
One of the appealing things about holiday shopping is promising deals you don’t get any other time of year. Get ahead of your competitors by offering attractive holiday promotions and discounts. Create sales-boosting holiday landing pages for promotions and sales to immediately catch your customers’ attention and improve your conversion rate this holiday season.
The clothing brand, Kate Spade grabs eyeballs by offering a 40% discount coupon front and center on its hero carousel. That’s a big incentive for shoppers to spend extra.
Want to stand out from the crowd?
The perfect gifts you can offer during the holidays are exclusive editions or holiday-related products. Consider bringing the holidays into your actual product offerings by adding holiday decorations to your product packaging, creating ornaments or holiday figures, etc. You can also bring back your most-popular products as limited editions by adding a holiday flavor to them.
- Create FOMO with discount countdowns
Elicit a sense of urgency and speed up conversions by adding a countdown timer to your products. You can use these timers in your email marketing campaigns or feature them on your ecommerce website for your most in-demand products or for specific sales.
Urbanic shows a countdown timer on all the products on sale. Going a step further, they also display how many units of that particular product are left—creating the impression that it will sell out soon.
This induces the sense of missing out on a product if you wait too long and improves sales by getting the customer to place their order.
- Embrace holiday email marketing
Holiday email marketing can be a very reliable and effective marketing strategy to drive sales. It drives traffic to both your website as well as your brick-and-mortar store so customers can act on your holiday promotions.
Some ideas to explore in your holiday email marketing strategies are:
- Use email automation to send announcement emails ahead of time to inform your subscribers about the upcoming holiday sales.
- Treat your loyal customers and email subscribers to hot deals and personalized coupon codes.
- Round up your most popular products, bundle them up into categories and create gift guides, which can be sent to help your shoppers what they want to buy.
- Send reminder emails with countdown timers a few days before the sale ends to encourage your customers to hit that “Check Out” button.
Here is an example of an email by Forever 21 that brings attention to the Black Friday vouchers being offered to its subscribers.
- Collaborate with influencers
Influencer marketing can help add social proof to your brand, especially during the pre-holiday season. It generates a lot of buzz around your business and helps keep it top of mind for customers when they begin their holiday shopping. Hop on social media, carefully select your partnerships and invest in early promos of your products to drive sales.
Dunkin Donuts’ micro-influencer marketing campaign checks all the boxes. It’s smart, ties in with the holiday season, and caters directly to last-minute holiday shoppers who need a “pick me up.”
Conclusion
Holiday marketing opens up a lot of potential to get creative with your campaigns and reach your year-end revenue goals. It’s all the more important for businesses to cut through the noise and cater to their customer’s needs with innovative strategies.
Are you ready to maximize your sales this holiday season? Cash in on last-minute shoppers, play on festive nostalgia and go all-out on your holiday campaigns with the strategies described in this article.
Stay motivated, set realistic expectations, and remember to always put your customers first!
