With 38% of Christmas shoppers already well into their festive spending, ecommerce stores need to have their Christmas marketing planned, prepped and finely tuned. With thousands of online stores fighting to sell their product to buyers, you need to set yourself apart from the rest and market your products in a way that makes them irresistible to buyers. Whether you’re a store that sells a range of products or whether you sell something a little more niche, you need to find a way that makes buyers notice you above your competitors.
We have a team of ecommerce experts and together we’ve compiled our top tips to create a powerful Christmas marketing strategy for your business.
First up,
Plan
Determine your goals and identify realistic steps to reach them. If your plan is to increase your conversion rate then you could increase your social media activity and tailor posts to be more sales driven. You could also consider working with reputable influencers your industry. Don’t underestimate the power of a content plan. This way you are ensuring that each post you put out there is serving a purpose and has a clear path.
Don’t forget to make sure your website is fully prepared for Christmas. More stock, higher volume of orders, discount codes and updated imagery to suit the festive period. If you’re prepared for this before the Christmas period then you have more time to focus on everything else.
Customisation
With the high street full of lights, window displays and decorated stores, your ecommerce store needs to be equally decked out for Christmas. There’s a plethora of ways in which you can customise your buyers’ experience to the festive period. Think about your website, social media, email campaigns and packaging.
On your website, switch your imagery up, add festive touches and even change your colour scheme to Christmassy colours. Add animation to your headers and show your products in Christmas scenes if you can. Maybe somebody is using a product you sell to prepare Christmas dinner or you could show the delight on somebody’s face opening your product on Christmas day.
With your social media, profile pictures, cover/banner images, post graphics and everything else in between you need to be adding a festive touch to. If you don’t, customers will go elsewhere. A lot of sales companies do a 12 days of Christmas social media campaign with a different offer for each day – this would also work for an email campaign.
Pull On The Heart Strings
Think about memorable Christmas adverts. You remember them because of the characters in them and how the advert made you feel. Tap in to consumers emotions and make your Christmas marketing emotional. When making almost any decision, emotions are involved. You make choices based on how you feel and usually feelings go above rational thoughts.
An example of this type of advert is the Aldi Kevin the Carrot campaign.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69Cg_ez7d1U
Within your ecommerce store, don’t just put out standard product descriptions. Make them tell a story and spark emotion within your audience. On your social media and through blog posts, share behind the scenes content to give your buyers an insight into the story behind your products. You can use these pieces of content to slowly reveal new products and/or offers, too!
PPC at Christmas
Don’t get left behind this Christmas by failing to adjust your Adwords campaigns for seasonal keywords. Your PPC campaign may be more successful if you change your keywords to seasonal search terms in the approach to Christmas. Consider how your product will help people and the problems that it will solve. PPC isn’t just guess work. A truly effective PPC campaign is built on a foundation of strong research and strategic testing.
Take Advantage Of Other Seasonal Events
Think Halloween, Black Friday & Cyber Monday. As an ecommerce store, you can’t afford to miss out on these events. Take the chance to get your product and an irresistible offer in front of your target audience before the Christmas period. To ensure that you get return business from these sales, here’s a few of our top tips:
- An offer that will persuade buyers to choose your store. Something like free delivery or a points scheme.
- Something that makes them feel like they’re getting more than they would elsewhere. Maybe an extended guarantee or free next day delivery.
- Give them something for nothing. Check out the big online stores. You’ll notice a lot offer a free gift with purchases over a certain amount. Follow suit and impress your audience.
- Give them something they can save for later. Maybe a code for 20% off a product/brand they have bought or shown interest in for 6 months after their purchase.
Think Outside The Box
The world of online marketing and ecommerce has progressed a long way since relying solely on traditional seasonal events. It’s also come further than relying on Black Friday and Cyber Monday to propel Christmas. Whilst they’re still important, there’s a whole host of other marketing dates that you can use to your advantage. There’s probably a day to fit almost every industry. Examples include; Small Business Saturday, days like National Pizza Day, National Meditation Day and National Twins Day.
Fix Your Imagery
Put your deals and promotions right in front of your audience. Don’t make them scroll, click or search for anything. Make sure your website banners and social media posts shout about the products and promotions that you’re trying to push. Add information to your website banners, social media images and your email campaigns. Make sure your audience can’t miss your deals.
Shift Your Focus Away From The Product
As odd as it may sound, your customer doesn’t really want to know abut the finer details of your products. What they really want to know about is what the product can do for them. For example: a boiling water tap means you don’t have to wait for the kettle to boil (or remember to fill it up). It saves you time and it’s convenient, that’s what will sell it to your buyer. An effective method for achieving this is through detailed images and videos of the product in use. This shows the customer exactly what the product does and the problems that it can solve for them. A great example of this technique is from Asos, they offer a 360 degree video of each garment that they sell.
Gift Guides
Some may see them as old school, but your audience see them as helpful and as you doing something for them. That’s what counts. Split them into categories (for him, her, couples, parents, children etc) to make them easy to use and include your most popular products. You can keep them on your blog but link to them from your social channels. Facebook posts, tweets, Instagram posts and most currently Instagram stories are great ways to promote gift guides. John Lewis are a great example of the power of a gift guide.
Create Christmas Bundles
So… Say that you’re an online florist. Someone adds a plant to their basket on your ecommerce store, you could suggest that they add some plant food and/or a pot to their basket. List the total price of the collective items and you’re displaying to them the value of the deal you’re offering. Buyers have an increased sense of value when they see bundles, this increases further when bundles show that items are discounted. Therefore, your average spending and your conversion rates will increase.
If you need help with your ecommerce store or Christmas marketing, don’t hesitate to get in touch with the team!
www.drumbeatmarketing.co.uk
