As an online retailer or eCommerce store owner, your holiday marketing plans and strategies should include some critical items that are well-explained in this checklist.
The 2018 holiday marketing season is right around the corner and things are all set to heat up from next month on-wards. Do you have your eCommerce marketing plans ready? Here’s a smart checklist to help you promote your eCommerce retail business during and before the holiday season begins. Need a Free Consultation – Click here
Set Proactive Holiday Goals
Compared to the 2017 holiday eCommerce
sales
in the United States, 2018 is all set to notch a 13
percent increase in the eCommerce sales
figures. As per holiday marketing forecasts, whopping
$90 billions of dollars worth of sales are in the offing
for online retailers looking towards smart opportunities
of making their presence felt online. If you happen to
be one of the many online retailers waiting to make a
kill online, then at the very outset, you have to figure
out what this opportunity means for your line of
business. What are the expectations that you have from
your ongoing and future eCommerce transactions?
What is the kind of profit that you are looking towards
generating in the upcoming holiday season?
All that you need to do is estimate the current performance of your eCommerce business and set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound) goals. With the right goals and deadlines in place, you will be able to analyze if your eCommerce holiday marketing plans have actually worked or not. So, to define your holiday eCommerce success right away, you need to set your goals before you go ahead with anything else.
Establish a Feasible Holiday Marketing Budget
It is important to chalk out
a well-planned holiday
marketing budget for investments in marketing and
promotion. For instance, it is essential to know how
much you would like to spend in the forthcoming
Christmas season to achieve your goals. In case you are
running short on budget, you may not be left with enough
money to cater to your e-store’s share of gift buying.
On the other hand, by investing too much, you may end up
with little or no profit on your hand in spite of making
a significant boost in your unit sales. Citing an
example, an online retailer in Manhattan recently
invested in a $2,000 promotion for horse warmers, an
item which is a far cry from being a traditional holiday
gift idea. Though his holiday marketing campaign tripled
the overall sales volume, his items had to be sold at
discounted rates. At the end of the day, the profit
raised from each horse warmer was a mere $12 – certainly
not worth the risk and efforts!
To avoid such situations and to make the most from your budget, it is a good idea to base your holiday marketing budget on the data collected from marketing campaigns conducted across the year.
Free-shipping Offers are a BIG Draw!
Your holiday marketing plan can be
made all the more
attractive by including free-shipping offers for online
purchases. As per a survey, 47 to 54 percent of most
online orders include one form of free shipping or the
other to induce shoppers to buy more. Decide whether you
intend to provide free shipping on all orders, or only
when a minimum purchase amount has been reached.
Alternatively, you can ensure good results from your
marketing campaigns by allowing for free doorstep
deliveries of the products purchased during the entire
holiday season, or on some pre-decided days.
Peak-day Promotions are Important
While Christmas sales are popular across
the holiday
season, there are five landmark days that are known to
pull in higher traffic and sales. These are:
- November 22, 2018: Thanksgiving Day
- November 23, 2018: Black Friday
- November 26, 2018: Cyber Monday
- December 12, 2018: Green Monday
- December 14, 2018: Free Shipping Day
- December 31, 2018: New Year’s Eve
Believe it or not, online holiday sales figures witness
a mercurial rise on each of these 5 days. Sales figures
as high as $1 billion were reached on Thanksgiving Day
2017 in the United States, while Cyber Monday and Black
Friday eCommerce sales were tracked at
$2.2 billion and $1.6 billion respectively. Green Monday
2017 showcased returns of $1.4 billion for online
retailers in the form of desktop
eCommerce sales while over $845 million was
generated on Free Shipping Day as a result of similar
online store sales.
All in all, it makes good business sense to have
separate and more lucrative holiday marketing strategies
for these peak selling days. Think out of the box and
plan your retail marketing strategies with pay-per-click
ads, ready email campaigns, or other promotional efforts
to garner the best returns.
Prepare Keywords and PPC Ads Beforehand
Holiday eCommerce
marketing is incomplete
without pay-per-click advertising. It’s wrong to wait
until the last minute to place PPC ads. Optimize and
plan your campaigns in line with a prepared schedule so
that you are ready with the right keywords and ads much
ahead of the holiday rush.
Rich Media Ads do the Trick
Media
advertising opportunities are the right way to deal with
the fierce e-commerce competition that is all set to
take center stage during the 2018 holiday shopping
season. So, even as it is a good idea to buy PPC ads on
popular search engines beforehand, you can top the race
by looking at other media channels like TV, radio,
newspaper, email advertising, etc. For instance, you may
like to advertise your ware and promotional schemes via
audio or video, and also display ads that can be clicked
upon by potential customers. Video streaming services
serve as excellent advertising vehicles as users cannot
skip the ads. YouTube is another helpful resource for
rich media advertising. Investing a part of your holiday
marketing campaign budget in each of these advertising
platforms will go a long way in helping your e-commerce
store get its due attention during the crowded holiday
season.
Content Marketing will never Fail to Provide Good
Returns!
Linger no longer, as now is the right time to begin
publishing Christmas shopping guides, helpful content
for holiday shopping, tips for Thanksgiving Day
purchases online, etc. It helps to ensure that search
engines get ample time to index the content generated by
you before online shoppers start Googling for product
information or buying guides.
Are you ready to create the right magic with your smart holiday marketing moves? Go full throttle ahead and reap rich returns before others do. You may like to start by ticking off the items on the above checklist – you will be glad you did!
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