Are you hoping to make this holiday season your most profitable year yet? If so, keep reading.
Before you know it, Black Friday and Cyber Monday will be here. When you consider that holiday sales were up over 14% in 2021 compared to 2020, you can expect this season to be a game-changer for many small businesses.
But if you don’t have campaigns in place to re-engage existing customers while drawing new visitors to your site, you may struggle to reach your business goals by the end of the year.
The good news is there are more ways to connect with your audience and skyrocket sales than ever before.
Below, you’ll find a collection of actionable digital marketing strategies that can help you make the most of your holiday marketing efforts. These tips can help you reach more people and secure more sales regardless of your size, industry, and product selection.
Let’s begin!
Create Personalized, Value-Packed Deals
If you ask any shopper to share their favorite part of the holiday shopping season, a vast majority of people will reply, “the deals!” Everyone loves the chance to save money, especially if it’s on a product they already planned to purchase.
You have to compete with other companies hosting deals during this period, which can be challenging.
You can do several things to make your deals more appealing and valuable to your target audience.
For starters, I suggest using personalization to create one-of-a-kind customer experiences.
Research shows that a jaw-dropping 4 out of 5 shoppers claim they are looking for more personalization from brands. If you can tap into your customers’ unique needs and pain points through things like unique popups and email campaigns, you can expect sales to follow.
I also suggest creating bundles that shoppers can’t get any other time of the year. For example, an online pet supply store could build packages for cat and dog owners with steep discounts compared to buying individual products. Customers who planned on buying this stuff anyway would happily jump at the option to get a bundle at a discounted price.
You can also encourage first-time visitors to take action by promoting discounts, like 20-50% off sitewide purchases. People are much more comfortable shopping with a new brand if they can buy anything they want with all the price tags slashed in half.
Build Attention-Grabbing Landing Pages
Landing pages are the way to go if your goal is to drive new traffic to your site while amplifying your value proposition.
Simply put, a landing page is a standalone part of your website that usually has one or two focus points. For instance, we create landing pages for each product that show visitors how our software can improve their lives and help them reach their goals.
The type of landing pages you build for your site will depend on your specific goals and products. However, there are a few universal rules that can help you boost conversions this holiday shopping season.
Here are a few tips worth keeping in mind:
1. Limit distractions – Remove sidebar advertisements and minimize your navigation bar so visitors can focus on your page.
2. Include visuals – Video and still images can bring life to your page and drive sales. For context, landing pages with videos typically see 86% more conversions.
3. Share often – Share your landing page on social media and through email so you can drive existing customers and first-time visitors to your promotion.
4. Highlight benefits – Instead of sticking to your product features and a simple discount, frame the features about specific benefits so that visitors see how buying your product will help them succeed.
Show Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) Cues
Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is a marketing strategy that business leaders use all year long to convince visitors to take action on their site. Essentially, FOMO shows users that they have a limited window to take action on a special sale or product.
The best example that comes to mind is a simple sale countdown timer. You’ve likely seen this feature on many different websites, especially during the holiday season.
When visitors see that they only have a few days or hours to take advantage of an offer, many will stop procrastinating and place their order.
You may be asking, “how often do people respond to this strategy?” Well, consider this; a whopping 60% of online shoppers say they’ve made an impulse buy due to fear of missing out. In most of these cases, the users returned to place an order in less than 24 hours.
Aside from visible countdown timers, there are other ways you can inspire FOMO. Here are a few examples:
1. Low stock – If your product is only available in a limited quantity, show when it’s getting low so users know they need to take action.
2. Limited offer – Use email and popups to send personalized promotions that are only available for a limited time.
3. Live sales notifications – Show what other shoppers are buying to build social proof and encourage users to make a purchase.
Host an Online Contest
Online contests are a fantastic way to increase sales while connecting with countless new leads. We’ve used this strategy for the last few years, and every campaign was highly profitable.
Here’s how we did it.
First, we created a social media contest for Facebook and Instagram. We decided to give out 10 annual licenses for our software and one MacBook Pro. As you can imagine, people who were already thinking about investing in our SaaS gladly participated.
The rules for our event are designed to get users to engage with our brand across multiple platforms. We allowed users to enter several times by signing up for our newsletter, visiting a landing page, sharing our post, and commenting on our giveaway.
We ended our contest after Cyber Monday and announced the winner on our social media profiles and website.
Here’s where it gets interesting. We emailed the people who didn’t win and thanked them for participating. At the end of the email, we included a special discount just for signing up. The conversion rate for this particular coupon was dramatically higher than other organic campaigns.
You can host these events alone, partner with affiliates, or even create bundle giveaways with similar businesses. These three giveaway techniques are bound to help you secure more sales this holiday season.
Make Sure Your Support Team is One Click Away
Your customer support team can dramatically boost profits and engagement. Many people who visit your website are not quite ready to make a purchase because they have questions about your product or service.
If no one is there to answer those questions, visitors will leave and find another site that has a better customer service program. Obviously, this will result in a high cart abandonment rate, fewer sales, and less engagement.
However, if you make it so people can contact your business in one click, most will stick around to talk to a customer service representative. I suggest using an “always on” live chat bubble on the bottom right side of your website. Make it easy for visitors to click and connect with an agent, and you will instantly impress first-time visitors.
It’s also a good idea to train a few representatives to help users on social media. Over 4.5 billion people use sites like Twitter and Facebook to learn about businesses, especially during the holidays. It makes sense that they would want to talk to a chat agent on their platform of choice instead of finding a live chat option on your site.
Start Planning Today
My final tip is this; start planning your strategy today. You don’t want to wait until a week before Black Friday to begin planning deals and stacking your customer service team. If you wait too long, your competitors, who likely spent months preparing, will probably win over more customers.
It’s not uncommon to see business leaders and marketers across all industries have their holiday marketing plans finalized before the end of October. So, don’t think it’s too early to start planning for the holiday season because there’s no time like the present.
—–
Syed Balkhi is an award-winning entrepreneur and online marketing expert. He is the co-founder of OptinMonster, WPBeginner, MonsterInsights, and WPForms.