Autumn is rolling around, which means holiday shopping season is just around the corner. Holiday marketing campaigns should not only be prepared for the increase in retail purchases but more importantly, tailored to the new era of e-commerce and mobile advertising.
Being prepared can entail something as simple as having a website that is easy to use (78% of holiday shoppers said this is what’s most important to them when shopping online), or as detailed as building target audiences and tracking them across multiple devices to send personalized ads based on their interests and consumer behaviors.
Your holiday marketing campaign should be as dynamic as your shoppers, so we’ve provided 3 keys to help keep you on track:
1. The Rise of Mobile
Is your holiday marketing campaign mobile-friendly?
According to the National Retail Foundation, over 25 million holiday shoppers said they were utilizing their mobile device to shop on Cyber Monday alone.
Ensure that all aspects of your campaign, whether it is your website, ads or emails, translate to where people are engaging most: their cellphones.
Tracking mobile device IDs opens up a plethora of consumer information such as app downloads, app usage, and purchasing habits, to better understand how people are engaging. It’s important to have a holiday marketing campaign present across all screens, but it’s even more crucial to understand how consumers are engaging in order to be successful.
Are you increasing foot traffic?
The way in which people are buying and sharing their purchases is at the convenience of their cell phones, but in-store purchases are certainly not left in the dark. 82% of survey respondents in a Signal holiday study expressed that they will continue to make purchases in a physical retail store during the holiday season.
Mobile engagement actually aids in driving foot traffic to retail stores; they go hand in hand. In fact, people who shop both in-person and online spend more than those who only go to stores.
Your website should seamlessly work with your physical retail stores by offering options to order online and pick up in-store, as well as flexible return policies. (Don’t forget to provide holiday promotional codes – people love free shipping).
By understanding consumers on an individual level from their mobile device IDs, your holiday marketing campaign can gear ads based on users’ locations to help drive them to a nearby retail store that you’re sure is accessible to them.
2. Timing is Key
Always stay one step ahead of your consumers.
In addition to knowing where to meet your consumers, it’s important to know when to engage with them as well. A successful holiday marketing campaign requires pre-planning and intentional outreach before, during and after the holidays.
Facebook found that 49 percent of people surveyed in August 2015 had planned to do most shopping before Black Friday, while 12 percent planned to be done before October.
According to holiday shopping survey results by Epsilon, more than a third (36%) of people said they would start their holiday shopping before October, while 41% of the surveyors said planned to start their holiday shopping in November.
If you haven’t launched your holiday marketing campaign yet, ensure that you and your team are working diligently to be prepared before your consumers are buying their gifts for the holidays.
Also, analyze your data and see what works best at what times of day, week, month or season to optimize sales for ongoing efforts and future campaigns.
3. Don’t Forget About the Millennials… and Their Facebooks
Millennials are driving the new wave of mobile purchasing and e-commerce with social media as their resource. Therefore, you must be creating content that engages with shoppers on social media.
Social media has become a hub not only for sharing and posting about purchases, but also a resource for retail inspiration and transactions. With Facebook’s ad retargeting, more users are increasingly susceptible to holiday marketing campaigns as they scroll through their feeds.
According to a Facebook IQ study, users in the U.S. posted 30 percent more photos, text and videos during the holiday season – 84% of which were coming from mobile devices. Also, adults between the ages of 18 and 34 were more than twice as likely to credit Facebook as a resource for gift ideas.
According to Kelton Global as well, 65% of Millennials in 2015 surveyed that they expect to utilize social media to help them choose gifts this year.
Social media may already be implemented into your holiday marketing campaign, but the key is to listen and evolve with the way millennials are engaging with and utilizing its functions.
‘Tis the Season
Your holiday marketing campaign is unique based on your marketing objectives and target audience, but keeping up with the rise of mobile engagement, reaching users at an optimal time and implementing targeted ads to millennials’ gift search on social media will certainly keep you ahead of the game this holiday season.
