7 Holiday Marketing Tips to Increase Revenue + Workbook

Is your business ready for the holiday season? It’s here! Whether your business is large or small, you need to be prepared for one day (hello, Black Friday!) or the entire holiday season. It’s not enough to have a “great product” or even a great price.” You must also be prepared to offer exceptional customer service and build long-term relationships if you expect to do well during this particular time of year.

Now is the time to get serious about improving your marketing skills. In this issue, we’ve outlined seven powerful (but easy) strategies you can use to supercharge your marketing campaigns.

1. Optimize Your Website Performance

Website performance is one of the most important factors for an eCommerce business. If your website is not performing well, your sales will suffer.

During shopping seasons like the holidays, consumers expect eCommerce sites to have quick load times and offer lots of good deals. This makes them happy because they can quickly find what they want and get back to the joys of the holiday season.

The ideal loading time for an eCommerce website is four to seven seconds. That’s when the customer’s mind is made up – he’s either going to abandon the website or buy whatever it is he’s looking at. For every one thousand people who visit a website, about three hundred and fifty will stay for more than two minutes, and approximately one hundred of these will make a purchase. After three minutes, users begin to abandon your website, so you need to keep them on your site as long as possible.

Additionally, many major brands like Macy’s and H&M have had their websites taken down due to huge traffic spikes. Outages are almost inevitable when you have millions of people all hitting your website at the same time. This can happen because the website is not optimized. By using a little common sense, you’ll prevent this from happening.

Another way to prepare your online store is to evaluate its web hosting. If the website is getting close to its resource limit, It’s time to upgrade the website.

The perfect plan should have enough bandwidth, memory, storage, and processing power to support the number of products you’re planning to sell, the amount of anticipated monthly traffic, and a smooth shopping journey.

2. Strengthen Your Social Media Presence

Social Media is one of the most powerful marketing tools around. It can influence your customers’ purchasing decisions by up to 70%! It’s also one of the few digital marketing platforms that lets you directly engage your customers. This makes it an excellent choice for eCommerce companies.

Besides raising awareness about Holiday deals, use social media to find out what your customers want and keep them happy with relevant offers.

Here are some tips and tricks for making sure your holiday sales exceed your expectations:

Social Media is an integral part of any online marketing campaign. Make sure you are paying attention to it. Use a clear photo, brand your image, and make your cover interesting. Make sure the bio includes important keywords. If you’re writing a sales pitch for a website, have the words “sales,” “website,” “pitch,” “copywriting,” and so on. All the links in the bullets must work.

Pre-schedule promotion posts. It’s important to let your subscribers know in advance about upcoming specials and events, especially when that information pertains to something they are interested in. Make sure to use a “runway” strategy to post teasers before the sales. 

Take Advantage of Partnerships

Don’t be scared away from the holiday sales because of the “snowballing” effect; use this to your advantage with partnerships. Influencer marketing is the future of advertising, so engaging them to partner with is a no-brainer.  Working with micro-influencers (people with relatively small audiences) is the key to making your influencer marketing successful.

Respond to the comments and messages. Buyers may “like” or “+1” your social media posts. They may ask questions, offer ideas for improving your sales message, or ask for more info about an item. They may also complain if they are not satisfied with something. To remain profitable, a merchant must be aware of anything unusual that may be going on with his customers. It’s vital for you to always remember that, as the merchant, it is your responsibility to make sure each and every order is fulfilled correctly and promptly.

*Pro-Tip: Snag a copy of my Making The Most of Social Media Workbook to help guide the way. 

Making the Most of Social Media

3. Audit Product Pages

Most customers go straight to the product page to find what they want, and they spend most of their time there. That means they can quickly and easily shop without all those annoying pop-up ads getting in the way. Therefore, the product title should describe the item in enticing ways and give clear direction for what the customer should do next.

This is a simple 4 step checklist that will improve copy and SEO in just three easy steps.

1. You must also optimize the product description for each product in your listing. There is an extra step that not many people know about. This helps you understand the product or service better.

2. Use keywords for SEO that are relevant to your website. For example, if your website is about dogs, use those words in your website copy instead of “poodle.”

3. One of the most important ways to improve the profitability of your website is to answer as many questions as possible from prospective buyers. That’s why it’s vital to have an established FAQ section on your site.

4. Create “wish lists” for your clients. Clients are always looking for unique things they can buy for friends, family, and themselves that they don’t already have. It will not be well received if the product is not specifically tailored to the recipient (or the purpose). 

4. Create the Urgency to Increase Sales

Offering discounts isn’t enough to get customers to buy online. You also need to provide exceptional value to them if they become repeat clients or buyers from you. To get the most traffic to their website during the peak season, urge your customers to “rush to the website” before the deals close. Urgency is an essential ingredient in successful promotions. You can create it in various ways:

If you’ve got a truly exceptional deal to offer, you should flash that deal as fast as humanly possible. A lightning deal is also known as a flash sale or one-day-only discount. Encourage shoppers to purchase by displaying the start and end times of the sale, urging them to “buy before the timer runs out. Also, using exact words and time-sensitive language makes your copy more effective. For example, you could write…” limited time only,” “Sale!” “final sale,” “last chance,” or “Buy Now!

Consider using a color that is a “contrast” with the dominant shade of the web design. A color that stands out makes the offer more visible. For example, Use red to draw attention to an offer but only use it where it won’t be disruptive to your sales message. Red is a good example of a “complementary” color.

5. Update Store Design for the Holiday Season

Use Festive colors and elements to create a shopping atmosphere that will get your customers in the holiday spirit and encourage them to buy from you. Your website’s design should be appropriate for your business and reflect the business’s branding. That way, your website’s visitors will feel at home and more likely to stay and visit other pages on your site.

Besides being careful about the aesthetics, make sure the site is well laid out, easy to navigate, and offers a great user experience. The best way to start is to copy other people’s successes. There’s no need to be constrained by a cookie-cutter approach when it comes to designing a winning website for your business. Consider our list of best website examples for ideas and inspiration.

6. Reduce the Cart Abandonment Rate

Abandoned cart is simply another phrase for “lost sale.” It’s something all marketers worry about, but it’s especially problematic for eCommerce website owners. That’s because, for eCommerce websites, every single sale is important. If a customer places an item in his shopping cart but then leaves without buying that item, it represents a loss of a sale.

Use abandoned carts as an opportunity to capture more valuable customer data through additional questionnaires or by having the customer rate the item they were about to purchase.

Here are A few tips to help prevent Abandoned Cart:

1. Make the “total without taxes and fees” the default option in the shopping cart. When the customer sees the total, they’ll automatically think about the price before all the added items and taxes. Be transparent with the cost from the beginning. This will make your customers feel safe and keep them happy. They’ll know how much they’re spending, and they’ll be more likely to purchase.

2. Allow your customers to browse as long as they want but don’t let them look at anything for longer than 7-seconds. Many online buyers are motivated by the desire for a bargain – they’ll wait until the last minute if necessary — and they expect a convenient, easy-to-use payment method. Don’t worry about asking for too much information or making the checkout process overly complex. Instead, make it easy for your customers by only asking for the most relevant information. Also, ask for information from those who are most likely to buy from you.

7. Run a Reminder Campaign for 2020 Holiday Sale Visitors

Don’t be afraid of putting a little elbow grease into your SBA efforts. Send out a reminder or “tickler” campaign to re-engage your clients and customers for any sales or promotions you ran last year. It’s likely if they bought last year, they will again this year. You may find that you get more mileage out of this little effort than you would have ever believed possible.

So what did we learn?

  1. Optimize Your Website Performance – If your website is not performing well, your sales will suffer.
  2. Strengthen Your Social Media Presence – Social Media is one of the most powerful marketing tools around. It can influence your customers’ purchasing decisions by up to 70%!
  3. Audit Product Pages– Optimize the product description for each product in your listing using keywords and phrases.
  4. Create the Urgency to Increase Sales – Offering discounts isn’t enough to get customers to buy online. You must create urgency and value simultaneously.
  5. Update Store Design for the Holiday Season – Your website’s design should be appropriate for your business and reflect the business’s branding. During holidays sprinkle in festive colors and elements to create a shopping atmosphere.
  6. Reduce the Cart Abandonment Rate – Abandoned cart is simply another phrase for “lost sale.” Make sure to create a great follow up system and prep on the front end to limit abandonment of carts.
  7. Run a Reminder Campaign for 2020 Holiday Sale Visitors – Send out a reminder or “tickler” campaign to re-engage your clients and customers for any sales or promotions you ran last year. It’s likely if they bought last year, they will again this year.

Many marketers mistakenly believe that people are always on the “lookout” for the next big holiday. But that’s not true. People don’t need constant stimulation. In fact, most people are so overstimulated with advertising and marketing messages during the holidays, and they have “Holiday Fatigue.” Now, that doesn’t mean that business owners and marketers don’t struggle with the idea of selling during the holidays. They worry they won’t be able to find the products they are selling during this time. They are afraid their customers will be distracted by Christmas music, family get-togethers. Don’t worry about all that. If you use simple tips and strategies in this episode, your sales will soar anyway! 

No Quick Fix Marketing

You know, I think there’s just been too much emphasis in recent years on “quick-fix” marketing solutions. Instead of spending hours and hours doing the hard work of crafting a compelling sales message, many people (and sadly, even some so-called marketing experts) seem to believe the answer is to send out a bunch of ‘tweets’ or ‘dms’ or ‘reminders’ or whatever.

Well, guess what? That sort of thing works great for treating acne or if you’re a multi-level marketer with money to burn (I guess you could call it that), but it will NOT work for most of your other sales efforts. No. What you need is a real, honest-to-goodness sales strategy and campaign. If you need an extra set of hands or a simple strategy session, book a consultation with me. Our team of marketers, copywriters, strategists, and virtual assistants, we’ve got you covered. Schedule a consultation with me today.

Links For This Episode:

Schedule a Consultation

Making The Most of Social Media Workbook

Small Business SEO Checklist 

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About Jennie Lyon

Jennie Lyon is the founder of Jennie Lyon Virtual Assistant Services. Jennie specializes in helping busy entrepreneurs organize, manage, develop and promote their brand! She is devoted to helping small business owners and entrepreneurs with social media, content creation, email marketing, client relations, website management, and administration services. If you are a small business owner, coach or self-employed entrepreneur struggling to find enough time in your day to focus on what you really love - schedule a free 15 minute consultation with Jennie. www.JennieLyon.com

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  1. […] In this article, we’ll share 4 of the most effective strategies for reducing shopping cart abandonment that will increase your bottom line in Q4.  […]

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