I know it sounds crazy, but we’re less than one month away from Christmas. Although Black Friday and Cyber Monday have passed, there’s still time to make the most of your holiday marketing. In fact, December has become a busier shopping time every year. With 30% of people waiting to do the majority of their shopping in the last week before Christmas, now could be the perfect time to promote your business with mobile marketing.
This year, more people than ever before will use their mobile phones to not only research products, prices, and promotions, but also make their holiday purchases. More than half of the visits to shopping sites (54 percent) will come from smartphones and tablets, surpassing desktop computers for the first time, according to Adobe Analytics’ annual suite of online holiday retail predictions.
With that in mind, here are 4 tips to make sure your business is making the most of the mobile-first shopping world this holiday season.
1) You’ve Got Email
I know our inboxes have all been flooded by the holiday sales and hype the past couple weeks, but email continues to be a valuable tool to reach consumers, especially on their mobile devices. Although statistics vary by industry, around 45% of email opens occur on mobile devices, compared to 36% on desktop.
The chart above shows the time of day emails are checked across devices. It’s most effective to reach consumers via email in the morning on their mobile devices. Tablet and smartphone email checks also increase later into the evening as well. It’s also important to test not only the messaging of your emails, but also the different days of the week and hours of the day to find that sweet spot to maximizes the effectiveness of your email marketing.
For your holiday email marketing, you should focus on segmentation and personalization. A cookie cutter email strategy will not be as effective as targeted messages that suggest different products or services based on a user’s preferences or past interactions. Don’t forget to add in remarketing messages for users who may have abandoned their purchases, enticing them to come back to your site.
2) Location, Location, Location
The second holiday mobile marketing tip is to use the power of location-based advertising to reach the right consumers at the right time. Smartphones make it easier to reach your audience while they’re on the move. There are a few easy ways to harness the power of location-based advertising.
Local Search: 93% of people who search on mobile devices go on to make a purchase. When consumers look for you or your products, you want to make sure they can find you. Typical local search queries include not only information about “what” the site visitor is searching for (such as keywords, a business category, or the name of a consumer product) but also “where” information, such as a street address, city name, or postal code. Be sure that all your information is listed correctly on directories and search results by keeping your Google My Business profile up to date.
In addition to local search, having a paid search presence can help boost your visibility to potential consumers especially in times of competition, such as the holidays. Be sure to include voice search keywords into your campaigns to fully capture the mobile searcher as 41% of adults use voice search on a daily basis.
Geofencing: The second location-based advertising tactic you could integrate into your holiday marketing campaign is Geofencing. Geofencing allows you to target specific addresses and locations and serve ads to the people in those locations through mobile applications. Whether you’re targeting people in your business with additional promotions, or targeting competitor locations with your message, Geofencing provides the ability to hit those potential customers at the right time. To learn more about the power of Geofencing, check out Tobaria’s blog.
3) The Power of Social Media
Social Media is a great way to interact with current and future consumers. People spend an average of 2 hours a day on social media on their mobile devices. There are tons of fun ideas for posts that can be created and shared during the holidays to spice up your social profiles. Here are a few ideas for unique content to add to your social media calendar this holiday season:
Contests: People love the chance of winning something, especially around the holidays. Come up with a fun contest that showcases your products or services. Be sure to familiarize yourself with the rules and regulations of social contests before posting.
Polls: Twitter has an amazing feature that lets your post a poll about any topic in seconds. Have a weekly Christmas themed poll that gets people involved and coming back to vote the next week.
Go Live: Maybe you’re having an office wide Christmas caroling session or a snow angel competition – going live during these types of fun events can make your brand feel more human and approachable to your followers. You can also use live videos to broadcast sales or specials, as well as highlight products. Be creative and have fun with it!
Photos: Be sure to take photos of the things your company is doing over the holiday season and share them to your pages. Whether it’s setting up decorations or frosting sugar cookies, adding photos to your social media page that are non-promotional is a great way to get positive feedback and interaction.
4) Speed Up the Check Out
Once you’ve gotten the right people to your website, you want to make sure you’re doing everything you can to keep them there and to ultimately make a purchase. 53% of users abandon sites that take longer than 3 seconds to load. Make sure your site is mobile optimized for both speed and usability as more people will use a mobile device to make their purchases this holiday season.
Once you have your site optimized for mobile, you’ll really want to focus on improving the checkout experience. Out of every 100 consumers shopping online, 67 will abandon their carts. Here are three things you can do to up your completion percentage and lower overall cart abandonment.
Limit the Steps: The number one reason people abandon their carts online is due to the overall time it takes to check out. Eliminate extra fluff and steps that may drop off stops in the path to conversion. For mobile, make the checkout process simple and quick to navigate on a mobile device.
Guest Accounts: Another main reason people leave websites during checkout is the requirement to create an account to checkout. Allow people to checkout as a guest without creating a mandatory account. You can always send them information later to encourage them to sign up the next time for faster checkout or special promotions.
Payment Gateways: People will abandon a cart if they don’t trust that their payment information is being safely collected by the website. When possible, add payment gateways through trusted sources like PayPal or Visa Checkout to allow new customers to feel at ease with their payment information.
It’s the Best Time of the Year
With Christmas right around the corner, it’s a great time to try new techniques to reach potential customers and have a little fun doing along the way. With more people using their mobile devices this year to execute their research and shopping, focusing your efforts on reaching consumers on their phones can boost your business exposure and sales in the final month of the year. Remember to focus on the user experience, reach people at the right time and place, and try out different types of content on social media channels. Merry almost Christmas!
