December brings with it a host of holidays across the world–and with those holidays, a host of online orders and extra shopping that doesn't take place at any other time of the year. Children are spoiled rotten, adults get items on their wish lists that they've put off all year, and sales go up for many businesses. To help draw some of that spending to your business, December holiday online marketing is critical. However, you have to design your marketing to reach your audience in order to make them as effective as possible.
Think About Your Audience
Who is your target market? In these days when concern over being politically correct runs higher than ever before, even your Marketing must be carefully constructed to ensure that your customers are intrigued, rather than being offended. For example, is your target audience the type to take offense at “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays?” While many people don't mind being wished a happy holiday season no matter what you call it, others may boycott your business purely because of your failure to observe this precaution. On the other hand, a religiously-minded business–a shop that sells alternative items or a Christian shop filled with merchandise designed specifically for Christmas–will benefit from specifically mentioning their chosen holiday in their marketing.
Highlight Your Promotions
This time of year, everyone is running sales. What do yours look like? How do you stand out from the crowd? While your loyal customers will come to your store even if your promotions aren't as good as what the other stores are offering, your marketing goal is to bring in new business. Also, consider offering new promotions after the holidays to attract people who have received gifts or even gift cards from your business. You never know when you'll make a new loyal customer!
Make It Easy For Employees, Fans, And Visitors To Share
When you create a physical ad campaign, you hope that word-of-mouth will help spread information about your promotions or specialties. When you create an online marketing campaign, you want people to send those ads on to as many people as possible. Use your social media accounts to boost your marketing campaign as much as possible, and get people to interact with them. A contest based around sharing, re-tweeting, or otherwise spreading the word about your marketing campaign is a great way to get people interested; or, you can check out these other social media marketing strategies. Just remember to keep it simple: during the holiday season, people are busier than at any other time of year. That means that if it gets complicated, they're going to click away to something else.
Keep It Mobile-Friendly
More people than ever before are using their mobile devices to shop, do research, and pull up coupons and other information while they're shopping. Your marketing campaign should be just as visible for mobile users as it is for tablet or computer users. Try checking out your site on a mobile device yourself. Are there too many pop-ups that are too hard to click out of? Is the mobile site clunky or hard to use? Is your ad only partially visible or the lettering too small to see? Think about your holiday marketing campaign from the mobile perspective to maximize your customers' experience.
Don't Lose Track Of Email Marketing
This is the time of year to grow your mailing list, increase your contacts, and reach out to more customers than ever before. Write eye-catching titles that are sure to catch readers' attention as they skim through their inbox, include information that's of genuine value to your customers, and try to find the sweet spot between sending so few emails that your customers don't recognize you and so many that they stop reading them because they're overwhelmed. During the holidays, you're competing with dozens of other companies, all sending out emails with the same goal you have: improving their sales for this last piece of the year. Make yours stand out to get the customer attention you need!
Looking for more strategies to improve your holiday marketing campaign? Contact us today to learn more about how we can help take your marketing to the next level.
