Get Your Brand in Front of the Holiday Rush

Holiday chatter has already started to float through the September air like autumn leaves—don’t worry, we feel it too. It may seem early, but the truth is that while we start to pull on longer sleeves, it's also time to start thinking about pulling out holiday-focused digital tactics. As a retailer or ecommerce brand, planning and executing your digital marketing strategy starts now.

“In 2016, Cyber Monday became the biggest U.S. online shopping day ever with close to $2.67 billion U.S. dollars in online spending. In fact, nearly a quarter of U.S. shoppers did half of their holiday shopping online in 2016.”

~ Shopify

What will 2017 look like on the biggest day of online spending? And what should you be doing to capitalize on this potential? Great questions. We try to answer them below with 4 recommendations for executing an effective digital marketing strategy this holiday season.

1. Put Mobile First

“Nearly 8 in 10 [consumers] anticipate using their phone for holiday shopping.”

~ Deloitte

Smartphones have become the virtual shopping assistant of almost every consumer. Meaning your site better be optimized for mobile. It is crucial to adhere to a Mobile First Responsive Design approach, meaning campaign and website design considers the mobile User Experience and User Interface first, then scales the Information Architecture up with additional formatting and layout hierarchy and structure for Desktop second. So even when shoppers aren’t making their final purchases on their phone, their browsing experience is optimized to help them compare prices and look-up product information before making that final purchasing decision, whether online or in-store. Look at you with the assist!

2. Target Content Your Customer Will Find

The term “gift ideas” spikes dramatically every year in December.

~ Google Trends

Study your audience, know their shopping trends, then provide them with content they are looking for. Maybe your shoppers would benefit from a holiday gift guide, a contest or a series of short weekly blog posts? Create a holiday specific page or hub to centralize your holiday content and promote the products you know everyone will love this year.

Promote your content on your website and with supporting SEO and Paid Search to make it easy for them to find. (Launch early enough to get your pages ranking!)

3. Create Urgency

What are we counting down to?! I don't know...but didn't you feel anxious to find out? Bingo. Creating a sense of urgency can be a powerful method to encourage shoppers to stop thinking and start purchasing! By implementing countdown clocks, shipping deadlines and launching limited-time promotions (especially on Black Friday and Cyber Monday) you’re providing your customer with clear visual cues that there is a finite timeframe in which to take action, giving them a reason to buy and buy now.

4. Tag Your Campaign, Measure Your Performance

It’s crucial to objectively assess your results so you can continually improve each year. Your metrics will differ depending on your goals, but we like to make sure our clients are setup with Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager working together in tandem. Google Tag Manager makes it easier to add and update website tracking, remarketing tags, conversion tracking, third-party tags and custom event tracking.

Now that you've read our 4 recommendations, are you prepared to get your brand in front of the 2017 holiday rush? Connect with us, we're happy to help you dust off those jingle bells. 

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