The holiday season is a great time for most. It is indeed the time to unwind and celebrate. It always presents an opportunity for the online retailers to capture the market. Further, the online retailers skyrocket sales, and also cultivate brand loyalty through the streamlined marketing. Get exclusive ecommerce development company from CMARIX.
There are vital days such as Black Friday and also Cyber Monday. Hence it is the time to gear up and get a proper head start.
Here are some tips to compile a list of ten insider tips to help you create a solid marketing strategy that shall boost the ecommerce sales this particular holiday season. Here is the complete guide.
Creating a Team-Wide Holiday Marketing Plan
We should get our ducks in a row completely before even implementing a strategy for the holiday season. You might have a lot of trouble executing without a thorough plan. The plan also needs to be there for all the marketing efforts and tracks that you progress.
Things a plan needs to include
An ecommerce holiday marketing calendar that is proper. The calendar needs to also have extremely realistic timelines in order to properly execute the initiatives.
There needs to be a budget that you plan to allocate across the teams. All of this should be based on the goals. Also there needs to be a list of metrics to track the overall progress of the marketing efforts.
There should be the frequencies of evaluating the complete performances. There needs to be performance data too during the season.
You might create this plan ahead of time. It shall be much easier to set up the attainable goals. Always make the most out of a budget. Stay on top of everything.
You need to look at several years of holiday data and not just 2020
Well, last year’s holiday shopping season was really abnormal. We have put this out there mildly.
2022 is expected to be similar in several ways, you cannot rely mainly on assumptions, right? You just cannot go in blind. Instead, you all are required to take an informed, data-driven approach while marketing for the holidays. Get in touch with an exclusive ecommerce solution company, CMARIX.
You can all gather the necessary historical data. We always recommend going back several years and not just to.
It is essential to remember that the previous marketing performance data shall help to inform the strategies and also the decisions for this year by revealing a lot of things. How shall customers behave in the months to come? Selection of the popular seasonal keywords to target in the holiday PPC ads strategy.
What are the products that should be prioritized at different times of the year? Which are the marketing channels to concentrate on? Be it search, social, email, etc. which are the selling tactics that should be used? Be it urgency, fear, social proof, etc. all of this is just the tip of the iceberg.
All the people also need to re-familiarize themselves with a very few core metrics from the past. This shall reveal the insights regarding consumer behaviour, winning strategies and the products.
There are on-site search terms. These are those terms that the consumers search in the website’s native search feature. All of you can gain this data from the web analytics platform. You can all identify how these searches change throughout the entire year to better plan out the holiday promotions.
There can be a shopping cart abandonment rate. This is the great percentage of checkouts that have not been completed. All of these can surely help determine the reasons the user sessions result in cart abandonment. Get in touch with exclusive digital marketing services from CMARIX.
Next, there is the customer acquisition cost. You can divide the total marketing and sales cost with the total number of conversions that you get in a given time period. Suppose, is this year’s budget utilizing the same customer acquisition cost? If not, you are required to revisit your particular holiday financial strategy.
You can actually utilize all of the data points to your complete advantage. All of this is for a fully informed approach this particular season.
You need to make sure that the particular marketing teams are aligned and also supporting each other’s efforts.
You might have a small or even a large marketing team. They might be outsourced or even in house. They may be both, frankly. You need to make sure they are all on the very same page. There is indeed a lot that goes on between SEO, social, PPC, email, and content marketing experts.
Every team has its own goals, plans, and KPIs. It is indeed easier to work in disconnected slides. Before you know it, the consumers might begin to feel that there is poor synergy in the marketing collateral.
For this particular reason, it is highly important to align all of the marketing teams on your plans. You need to align them on the bigger picture as well. We all need to make sure that their efforts support each other. There needs to be support for the overarching marketing strategy as well.
Also, they should not compete with or even contradict one another. It is always great to keep all of the marketers in the great loop when it is regarding timelines for the marketing initiatives. There are discounts to be offered throughout the year. There needs to be the creative angles and also messaging for the holiday marketing campaigns.
In this particular method, all of the marketing collateral shall match. All of this shall result in a consistent experience across all the touchpoints.
You Need to Market to the Early-Bird Shoppers
Your customers shall be shopping more earlier than ever. The holiday marketing season shall continue to get longer.
In fact, according to Statista, the majority of the people in the US begin their particular holiday shopping before the end of October.
Actually, there is no reason to wait until November or December to initiate the holiday marketing campaigns. Instead, there needs to be created to target and capture the customers with the early bird campaigns that need to run throughout September and October.
Here are some of the pointers to help you in getting started. We all are required to work out the financials and also determine the discounts that you need to offer. We also need to begin promoting the early bird discounts all across the channels. The channels include email, social media, search engine ads and the ecommerce store website.
Giveaways are offered to the extremely loyal consumers who help to promote the early bird discounts on social media. The results need to be evaluated. You all need to optimize the offerings and the creatives for the rest of the holiday season.
You need to keep in mind that the marketing creative and copy during this time need to be different from the very standard ecommerce holiday marketing campaigns. All of us recommend brainstorming the ideas and also testing them out much before launching anything official of the sorts.
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A Plan Needs to be Made for the Out-of-Stock Products
Well, covid 19 has completely disrupted the shipping lines and the supply chains all over the world. As an online retailer, you all need to be prepared for the best-selling products to go out of stock. All of this should be before the busiest portion of the holiday shopping season.
How? You can all take measures to provide a completely positive shopping experience to the consumers. You can take subsequent measures to prevent them from turning to the competitors when they cannot find whatever they want.
Here are a Few Pointers for Handling the Stock Outs During the Holiday Shopping Seasons.
We need to look at the past data to anticipate which products are likely to go completely out of stock. Also, when are they going to be out of stock? We all need to adjust the promotional efforts accordingly. Just as an example, we can all utilize the urgency to promote those products that usually sell out before the peak holiday sales season.
You need to make a very detailed SEO plan for the out-of-stock products. The option to pre order always needs to be provided. The option can be present to internally link to the alternatives. The out-of-stock labels can be present in the online store.
The consumers are required to be notified through the email marketing and the in-app notifications whenever a specific product that they previously tried to purchase is back in stock.
Get in touch with an exclusive ecommerce solution company like CMARIX. You should not forget to enable the customer service teams by keeping them in the loop about the plans. After all, they are the ones who shall deal with the questions and the concerns of the frustrated holiday shoppers.
