The holiday season is fast approaching and with Thanksgiving right around the corner it means the Christmas advertisements are here. Dragging along the coattails of these holidays are some of the most important shopping days for businesses looking to score big in sales. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are some of the most important sales days of the year and can often make or break a yearly earning.
There’s a reason holiday advertising begins earlier and earlier each year. Today’s new technology and advertising capabilities allow more businesses to put their information in front of the everyday customer. And while this customer connection might seem like a good thing, many businesses are left battling for space against competitors advertisements.
How then can you make sure that your holiday advertising will stand out in the crowd of this year’s businesses looking to connect with your customers? Here are five tips you need to gear up for the upcoming holiday rush.
1. Secure the Foundation
In order to optimize your holiday advertising, one of the most important assets you need to consider is your website. Make sure that your advertisements connect to a website that is easily accessible to customers. Here are a few ways you can improve your websites performance.
Optimize your website
People will be searching for products this holiday season, make sure that if they’re searching for a product that your business sells, that your website shows up in the search results. If you’re interested in looking at a more details checklist to optimize your website check out our blog, “Your SEO Checklist,” or find out what your SEO score is today.
Make sure you’re mobile friendly
With people owning more smartphones than ever before, you can be sure that during this year’s holiday season everyone’s phones will be out looking at holiday advertising. Make your website mobile friendly so customers can easily navigate your site and make purchases without difficulty on their phone or tablet.
Connect your website with social
Social Media will be extremely important during this year’s holiday rush, so make sure that when customers find your information on a social platform that the information for your website is included. This way your customers will be seamlessly transferred from one location to another and the purchasing path is as short as possible.
2. Beef Up Your Advertising Strategy
If the holiday season is a big time for your business, then don’t rely on the advertising strategy that you’ve been operating on the entire year to get you through it. Start allocating more money to holiday advertising that will promote your business during this busy time. It’s critical that you prepare for the season as early as possible, utilizing social media campaigns, updating website information, and rewarding loyal shoppers.
Creating holiday advertising that will make your business stand out in a crowd is one thing, but making sure that your ads are seen by customers in another. Find out which marketing tactics will work best for your business and devote the necessary money to make sure those tactics can put your business information in front of customers.
Some of these tactics include:
3. Build Your Presence on Multiple Social Media Platforms
If you haven’t already, start taking advantage of different features on social media and build a following that keeps your brand top-of-mind when it comes to the holiday season. Here are a few examples of helpful social media features.
Facebook recently published a list of their own to help businesses prepare their business page for all the holiday advertising about to take place. Some of their recommendations include:
- Create ads that build awareness and consideration.
- Use videos to make your brand unique and capture attention. Create ads with a strong call to action button which directs them to a purchase. Utilize carousel ads to showcase multiple different products and making it easy for customers to browse your inventory.
- Find our audience.
- “Use audience insights to review demographics and purchase behavior, as well as details around interests and lifestyle.” This is necessary information that can help you create ads that are tailored to your customer’s specific interests.
- Bid for reach.
- Make sure your ads reach as many relevant customers as possible. This will create a following who will be aware of your brand and be able to pick your business out over all the holiday advertising.
Instagram & Pinterest
Both of these platforms have recently come out with new features that make it easy for businesses to display their products and convert sales directly from the platform. Take advantage of the “Buy Button” in your advertisements to give customers the option to make a purchase then and there.
4. Define Your Audience
Don’t throw your holiday advertising out over a crowd of people who have no interest in your products. Defining your audience will strengthen the connection you have with your customer base and create loyalty during the holiday season.
It’s just as important to understand the consumer trends that will influence the holiday advertising this season. An EIN News report found that 89% of customers want to buy online and pick up their purchase in-store and 78% are likely to visit a store as a result of an alert on their mobile device. By looking at trends like these, holiday advertising tactics like Mobile Adverting are vital when connecting to your audience.
5. Test Your Ads
Another reason the holiday advertising season comes earlier each year is because the extra times give businesses the chance to test different ads and promotions. Taking the time to A/B test different advertisements will allow you to analyze the engagement with each ad. Depending on the data, choose the ads that perform the best and promote them during the busiest times of the holiday season.
Check out the article “Test, Test, and Test Again” if you want to learn more about the benefits of analyzing your advertisement’s data.
Time to get Started
The reasons for the pre-holiday season preparations are to build enough brand awareness so you won’t get buried with all the other holiday advertising. Make your advertising stand out and lead to sales.
Successful holiday advertising is the combined optimization of several factors. Start by creating a strong foundation with your website. Make is easily accessible to customers no matter their device or where their searching for you. Second, develop an advertising strategy that can stand up to the demand of the holiday season. Third, take advantage of multiple social platforms to build brand awareness and connect with new customers. Fourth, understand the people you want to target with your holiday advertising. Who are they? How will they see your ad? And how can your ads convert to sales? Answer these questions by creating an advertising strategy that speaks to the right customers. Finally, test your different ads so when the times comes to promote your products during the holiday rush, you’ll have your best ads running.
If you’re interested in talking to someone about more specific ways you can prepare your business for this holiday season, contact us today and we’ll work together to build a strategy that will push your business to the front of the holiday advertising pack.
Phone: 605-215-5106
Email: info@keymedia.solutions