Now that the Holiday season is upon us, businesses worldwide are ready to welcome their busiest and probably the most profitable time of the year, and to start with that get to know about this awesome Holiday Marketing Guide.

The holiday season brings a number of global festivals, including Christmas, Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, Diwali, and New Year, most of which are celebrated all over the world. And since all these festivals are pretty big, a lot of shopping and sales activities are observed worldwide during the season.

As a business, you are probably ready to see a jump in sales during the holidays. At the same time, you must also be wondering if there is a way to maximize the sales your business makes during these couple of months.

Well, of course, there is.

A little effort on your part along with the right Marketing approach can do wonders to maximize your business sales during holidays and bring you more traffic both offline and online.

But, don’t worry, you do not have to work a lot or spend huge money in order to bring more leads to your business website and convert them into sales during this time of year. All you need is the right Digital Marketing Strategy for Holidays. And that’s what you’re going to get here.

Wondering why you should step up your marketing efforts during the holiday season?

It’s because the holidays are a time when people shop in abundance. During the festive season, which happens to occur in the winters, people have both the time and the need to shop. This is why businesses see a boost in their sale during the holidays.

So, if you are already going to receive more sales & profits in the coming months, it only makes sense to up your marketing efforts in order to further increase your sales and profits.

Wondering how the Holiday Marketing Guide works?

The trick to boosting your business sales is to identify the right opportunity at the right time. And the holidays are the biggest business opportunity you’ll get during the year. If you can manage to market your business the proper way during the season, you might just turn out to be the winner.

Now, there are many ways to boost your marketing efforts and promote your business during the festive season, and we are here to help you find the best ones. Hope this detailed holiday marketing guide helps you win some big deals and up your profits this holiday season.

Related: 102 Innovative Digital Marketing Idea, Tips And Tricks 2020 For Big And Small Business

Complete Holiday Marketing Guide From Scratch

Irrespective of whether you’re a marketing beginner or already using a digital marketing service to promote your business online/offline, this detailed Holiday Marketing Guide will help you reach new sales goals with a boost in your marketing efforts.

We at SAG IPL help businesses analyze & prepare sound marketing strategies for their holiday campaigns. Our holiday marketing campaigns have a success rate of over 90 percent. Here, we share some of our top holiday marketing Guide and tips from our successful campaigns. Have a look!

Start Early using holiday marketing guide

The key difference between a successful holiday campaign and an unsuccessful one is the timing. Big businesses start promoting much earlier than regular businesses.

You can see stores like Walmart and Target having their holiday decorations up and running already, more than 2-3 months before Christmas. This is more enough to let people know that the holidays are coming and get them excited about buying.

Now, I’m not saying that you should already start your holiday advertising or put wreaths up in your shop displays. But, you can start giving your customers small indications to let them know that you are ready for the holiday season.

Start with a list of the holidays/festivals coming in the next couple of months and then sort your products/services accordingly. In most countries, the holiday season starts right from Halloween (October) and goes on to the New Year’s Day (January) and Valentine’s Day (February).

Depending on the product or service you sell, you should start planning your holiday marketing strategy at least a few months in advance. Of course, you should first plan the product or service that you want to promote exclusively during a particular festival.

Then, you need to figure out the best strategy to market it to the right audience. This is where a good Holiday Marketing Company like SAG IPL can help you.

Related: Want to start up your own business & you running out of ideas? Here 50 Startup Ideas that you can start your own

Use Multiple Channels

One of the benefits of using the internet for your holiday marketing campaign is the availability of unlimited options and venues for promotion.

Beyond traditional advertising methods such as newspapers, hoardings, and TV ads, you can use online advertising to help your product/service reach beyond regional boundaries and to millions of people who browse the internet.

Irrespective of whether or not you sell your products or services online, you can use online channels such as social media, communities, email marketing, content, blogging, etc. to reach and promote to your customers online.

Social media, for instance, is one of the best ways to reach your existing and potential customers. Billions of people use Facebook, Instagram and other social websites to connect and communicate.

Almost all these sites provide ample opportunities and options for businesses to promote directly to their customers. Depending on your marketing budget, you can opt for free or paid options.

Paid advertising will, of course, enable you to reach and market to a larger audience in less time compared to what you can achieve with free tools.

Besides social media, you can also use email marketing to spread the word about your exclusive products, services and/or offers during the holiday season.

If you are just starting out in the online marketing space and need help setting up an advertising campaign or creating an online marketing strategy, be sure to check out our digital marketing services designed specifically to help businesses like you to get the most out of the internet.

Launch holiday-specific offers

Another great way to woo your audience to buy from you during the holiday season is to introduce attractive offers and discounts that people simply can’t refuse. These include flat discounts, freebies, free shipping, etc.

While it’s common for businesses to offer discounts to attract more sales on holidays, one thing they fail to do is tell enough people about it. While advertising in newspapers and on TV can help get the word out, the best way to reach a bigger audience is the internet.

Use social media, email marketing, blogging, and other outreach marketing campaigns to let customers know about your exclusive offerings.

If you can, make your offer campaigns mobile-friendly and broadcast them frequently on mobile devices through SMS, notifications, etc. to get better reach and exposure. Not sure how? See here how SAG IPL’s mobile-focused marketing strategies help businesses double their sales in no time.

Paid advertising and campaigns

Advertising is, without a doubt, one of the best ways to reach your target audience. While traditional advertising options such as TV ads and newspaper ads are still effective, the best approach to reach a larger audience is online advertising.

There is a multitude of options available for anyone looking to promote their business or services through paid advertising. You can try Google Adwords, which is the best way to get your advertisement displayed across the internet. 

Google’s bots can automatically analyse and show your ads on all the relevant places, on websites, search, social media and more, in order to get you more traffic and sales. Other options for paid advertising include Facebook ads, Instagram ads, LinkedIn ads, Twitter ads, etc.

When creating ads, make sure to use holiday themes or images so that your product/service seems relevant to the holiday season.

If you are using Google ads, make sure to make the most out of extensions or options like site links, location, call/contact, review extension, etc. which are often displayed along with the ad. Even in your existing ads, you can check and re-format these extensions to get the most out of them.

Of course, you’ll have to try multiple platforms in order to find out the one that best works for your particular product/service, which is why we recommend starting early.

Need help setting up a paid advertising campaign or to find the best platform for advertising? Check out the paid advertising services of SAG IPL.

Shopping ad campaigns

If you are looking to get more customers to buy your physical products, make sure to leverage the benefit of shopping advertisements.

Shopping Campaigns, or Product Listing Ads, are paid advertisements that talk exclusively about a particular product from the user’s standpoint. The key here is to strike the user’s emotion through the right offering.

This is the best type of advertising for product-based businesses, as everything a user needs to know about the product, including the best price, discount, product picture and the buy link, is given right in the advertisement, making it easier for the user to take an action.

Google Display Ads are a perfect example of product-centric advertising.

One thing to know when using shopping campaigns, especially on Google, is that your product ad will probably appear alongside other ads of the same or similar products. So, you need to be unique in your offering, which can be done by using a great product picture and putting a competitive price for it.

Related: Holiday and Work!! How to Manage Work During Holiday Season 2020?

Analysis & Refine your ads

Another important thing to do when using advertising campaigns for holiday marketing is to routinely track the performance of your campaign and make changes/optimization as and when required.

It’s important to regularly optimize your paid campaigns in line with the latest user demands and search criteria. Even after the sale has started, if you find that your campaign can do better with slight changes, don’t hesitate to make it.

When you start early, you’ll have sufficient time to try different things. For instance, you can try out an ad campaign and then track its performance over time. If that doesn’t work or need to be changed, you can do so because you have plenty of time.

Ad Automation

Also, you can consider leveraging the benefit of automation to effectively manage your ad campaigns without having to spend a lot of time on it. It is particularly beneficial for time-sensitive ads like holiday marketing.

You can use an ad automation tool provided by the advertising platform such as AdWords to automatically manage and schedule ads depending on your holiday preference.

For instance, you can schedule a Christmas ad to commence automatically from the first week of December. Also, you can set it to automatically pause and resume on predefined intervals. This is also very useful if you are targeting multiple holidays.

Write a Crisp & Delightful ad Copy

When so many businesses are competing to show their ads on the top of Google, what you can do differently will matter a lot. Focus on creating a unique, relevant, and attractive copy for your ad. Crisp copies written to engage are the ones that bring sales.

Some of the things that you can and should do include adding relevant keywords in the ad title, creating a description around the holiday season, enabling extensions for social media, location, call, site links, etc.

If required, revisit and rewrite your ad copy multiple times before launching the campaign. If you can, add your offers such as discount coupons in your holiday ad to push potential customers further down the sales funnel.

When your holiday campaign ad is unique, fresh, and better than others, you automatically get an edge over other advertisers.

Related: Developed and Marketed an Ecommerce Project Successfully (With 100% Practical Case Study)

Time-sensitive delivery

Another thing to know about the holiday marketing Guide, and something that you can utilize for your benefit, is that people love it when brands deliver their orders on time. This is particularly helpful during the holiday rush when everyone seems to be looking to buy something.

If you sell products online (e-commerce), consider adding options such as fast delivery or same-day delivery. Timing is one thing that can make your marketing campaign stand out from the competition.

If your delivery time is shorter than the competition, chances are that people will prefer buying from you. Free standard delivery can be the cherry on top.

Another way to take advantage of the holiday rush is to offer time-sensitive deals. For instance, you can create an ad offering a flat 20% discount to the first 100 buyers of your product.

Make sure to combine it with a message depicting a sense of urgency. Use phrases like, “limited period offer”, “offer ends soon”, etc.

If you’re providing anything like this, such as free delivery or fast, same-day delivery, make sure to mention this explicitly in your holiday campaigns, including display ads.

Remarket to your previous customers

Remarketing is a strong marketing tool that you can use to reach out to people who have previously purchased from you or interacted with your brand/website in any way.

In other words, you use remarketing to connect with people who have shown an interest in your product but did not convert it into a sale.

This time of the year when people are looking to buy gifts, clothes and many other things for the holidays, they might be showered with many ads and offers by different brands. Now, it’s obvious that they will not buy from all of these brands.

But, if they showed an interest in your product by clicking your ad or visiting your website, chances are that they can be convinced to actually buy from you through a relevant offer.

Remarketing is the way to do that. It involves showing the same ad to the user/s who had earlier clicked on it.

Conclusion

Holidays are the best time of the year, not just for people who celebrate them, but also for those who sell products/services related to holidays. Businesses have a wonderful opportunity to promote their product or service during the holidays, as the shopping spree is higher this time than ever!

By making some basic adjustments and upgrades to your holiday marketing strategy, you can more than double your chances of getting good sales during the holidays this year.

The trick is to start EARLY and follow a better, unique approach than the competition. Not sure how? Hire the services of an expert holiday marketing agency like SAG IPL!

At SAG IPL, we have a dedicated team of digital marketers who help our clients build curated marketing strategies for their holiday campaigns. To know more, contact us today!

The post Holiday Marketing Guide (To Market Your Business During Holidays) appeared first on SAG IPL - A Technology Blog.