Silly season is upon us and that means loads of Christmas lights and jingle bell ads ringing out from our laptops. The only issue with the festive season is that traditional advertising becomes background noise and pretty wall art for most consumers as they are enduring non-stop advertising during this period. However, regardless of this, the festive season brings in heaps of business for many companies especially those who have an online store. 

According to Statista, the e-commerce market had sales reaching $3.5 TRILLION in Christmas of 2019 and represented roughly 14% of the total market share of global retail shares. Thanks to our mate COVID-19, these sales are most definitely going to increase, as indicated in the data below.

Business owners can’t sit back and watch the money come in. Ecommerce is competitive as advertising rates get higher, the digital noise gets louder and consumers are constantly changing their buying habits. 

For businesses to succeed this festive season, they are required to analyse and optimise their digital marketing strategy, here are a few steps to take into consideration.

The Analysis

Every business should first analyse and learn from their previous performance. In the case of brick and mortar stores going online, they should analyse their performance during the country lockdown. The analysis can bring to light which products were top-selling and the day which yielded the most traffic. 

The best way to analysis the performance is by using Google Analytics as it can assist in answering harder questions, such as: 

• Which days are getting the most traffic?
• Which pages on the site get the most traffic?
• Were there pages that underperformed?
• When is the business’s sight seeing the most ecommerce conversions?
• Which pages on the site resulted in the most ecommerce conversions?

After analysing the data, the business can identify which are the top landing pages and promote their top-selling products or services on their homepage.

A Merry Website

An important element of a website during the festive season is to prepare the “window shop”. 

Before ecommerce, customers would physically walk past a business and were drawn in by their window display. The in-store branding tempted customers inside to make a purchase, but now, with ecommerce, the opposite is true. 

A business website is your window shop and it is important to make sure the website looks its best to attract customers. There are many ways this can be done, such as using SEO, PPC, email marketing and Social Media. 

SEO for the Silly Season 

In order to drive traffic to a business website during the festive season, the focus should be on Christmas as it will enable the website to rank well in the search results for queries that are Christmas related. A way to do this is by showcasing your Christmas products as it is appealing and inviting, or holiday-themed pages such as Black Friday offers, Boxing day Bashes etc. 

Many retailers have already started this, just take a look at Target’s home page featuring their Black Friday products. 

Depending on what the business offers, seasonal SEO is vital to assist the business in ranking for search variations, as it is important to ensure the right keywords are used to target the right audience in order to drive the most relevant traffic to the website. 

The analysis conducted can assist in deciding which pages to optimise with the relevant keywords.

‘Tis the season to communicate

Once the website has been filled with Christmas content, it’s time to communicate it as far as the North Pole. 

Email Santa

Emailing is the way of the future as it is the most powerful way to communicate with customers on your Christmas promotions. Yet in order to make email marketing effective, there are a few tips that need to be followed:

Segmentation

Having a location-based offer means you send out the relevant messages to the correct recipients who are most likely to convert. Such as offering a discount on a product in a specific store, therefore targeting customers geographically. 

Personalisation

Speaking directly to your customers makes a world of difference. Personalisation is not just about name and location but it can include based on previous purchase history or frequently looked at items. 

Real-time

Email marketing in real-time can be promoting daily deals such as free delivery on a specific day. Email is a great way to get the message across. And to identify when the best time it is to send these emails will be determined on the data gathered from the analysis. 

Social Media

Social media has always been a powerful tool when it comes to influencing customers. Leading up to the festive season, a business can make use of social media by posting Christmas themed posts, such as promotional codes for free shipping or even prices. All of these posts need to be planned out in order to achieve a high engagement and a good click-through-rate to increase those Christmas sales. 

You can build a solid relationship with potential and existing customers as well as build brand loyalty and awareness!

Pay Per Click

Businesses should consider using seasonal PPC by using Google AdWords to ensure their business offerings are being seen by a large number of relevant people. 

Businesses will need to ensure the following first:

• Find the necessary seasonal keywords by research.
• Create seasonal campaigns.
• Write up seasonal ads.
• And lastly, monitor the performance of the campaigns.

By using SEO and PPC together, businesses will be able to get their ads displaying for seasonal search terms. PPC campaigns will need to be as relevant to the season as possible and these ads will need to direct the user to relevant landing pages. 

An example of below shows how a business is already taking advantage of using seasonal PPC ads. 

If the ad is clicked on, it will take the user directly to the relevant landing page. Read this article on how you can make use of PPC this festive season. 

In final thought, it is important for businesses to be prepared this festive season and this can be done using the relevant tips provided above. 

Digital marketing is important, especially in the world we live in today. It is a battlefield out there in the world of ecommerce, and businesses need to stay as relevant and competitive as ever. 

If you would like CleverClicks to assist you on making this happen, be sure to get in touch with us.

From the team at CleverClicks, we hope you have a lovely, memorable and safe festive season ????????! 

Tags: Christmas, digital marketing