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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