All I want for Christmas…..is more customers! The holidays are a great time to engage with customers and spread the holiday spirit! Whether it’s showing your loyal customers how much you appreciate them, or enticing new customers – the holiday season brings lots of opportunities! 

Here are 8 holiday marketing tips to captivate your customers! 

1. Ensure Mobile Friendliness

Business Insider states that mobile shopping (M-commerce) in the U.S. is expected to increase from $128.4 billion in 2019 to $418.9 billion through 2024. Make sure your website is optimized for mobile before the holiday season begins. Testing last minute can be a hassle and cause loss in sales.  Here are some practices to consider for your M-commerce strategy: 

• Responsive design – Make sure your website works on all devices (webpage on your laptop must work on your mobile and fit your mobile screen as well).
• Proper spacing – Space out any links to adapt to your fingers. 
• Proper font size – Use font sizes that are easy to read on a mobile screen.

2. Update Your Website

When users browse your site during the holiday season, they should know right away that you’re preparing for holiday sales. One way to make your website give the holiday feeling is using festive banners. Add colours such as red and green to emphasize the Christmas spirit and use various icons such as snowflakes, snowmen, Christmas lights and trees. 

Include high-quality images – presents, snow, Christmas trees, ornaments, and lights are all ideas to incorporate into your website images. Lifestyle photography is another great idea to evoke customers’ emotions. For instance, if you sell blankets, you can use an image of a person sitting in front of their fireplace wrapped in a blanket drinking hot chocolate. 

Have you ever been unsure of what gift to buy for someone special? Google reports that 7 out of 10 shoppers have no idea what to shop for during the holidays. Gift guides are a great way to solve this as it helps customers make decisions. Consider these ideas to create your gift guide: 

• Gifts based on age – 30 Best Toys for Toddlers, 5 Best Gifts to Get for Teen Girls, 3 Amazing Toys for Your One-Year-Old 
• Gifts based on personality and interests – 5 Great Gifts for Basketball Fans, 20 Best Gifts to Give to Marvel Fans, 20 Gifts for Wine Lovers 
• Gifts based on budget – 30 Cool Gifts Under $50, The Nicest Gifts You Can Get for Under $100 This Christmas 
• Gifts based on gender – 15 Special Gifts For Her, Top 20 Gifts Every Man Loves 
• Gifts based on the recipient – The Nicest Gift to Get Mom, Top 5 Gifts Your Girlfriend Would Love, 25 Sibling-Approved Gifts 
• Gifts based on influence –  15 Eco-friendly Gifts to Buy This Year, 50 Best Gifts to Get From Black-Owned Businesses, 10 Best Gifts to Buy From Women-Owned Businesses 

3. Send Holiday Greeting Cards

Seasonal greeting cards are a great way to show customers that you care and you’re thinking of them during the holidays. If you don’t know where to start, consider using basic templates online that match your brand guidelines and colour. Choose a font that is simple and easy to read, and stick to the same one for consistency. Don’t feel obligated to use only Christmas colours -Try incorporating brand colours to make your card look more personal and stand out. To show your  Christmas spirit, you can add lingo such as “Ho-Ho-Ho”, “Merry”, “Jolly” and can even put in Christmas icons (snowflakes, snowman, Christmas tree, reindeer) in brand colours.

Here’s something we’ve all probably been through – receiving unnecessary sales pitches in holiday messages. It’s annoying, am I right? Turning your message into a sales pitch, or talking about your products can automatically kill the festive mood. Your brand name and logo will be enough to keep your brand in the mind of consumers! 

Everybody loves a little personalization in their holiday message! Every customer is unique, so don’t use the same message for everyone. For a loyal customer who you have a closer relationship with, write a more heartfelt message, and for a new customer, you can keep it a bit generic. Here are sample greeting card messages for each customer:

• The new customer –  “Wishing you, (insert name) a Happy Holiday and New Year. Best wishes from the entire team at (insert company name)”. 
• The loyal customer – “(Insert name), we wish you a wonderful holiday season and warm wishes for the New Year. We appreciate you for being a part of our family for (insert the number of years they’ve been a customer) years! Best wishes from your friends at (insert company name). 

Another important aspect to consider when writing holiday messages is to refrain from using religious messaging. Everyone celebrates the holidays differently. Use common images and don’t talk about a specific holiday or mention a certain set of beliefs in your holiday message.  

4. Use Holiday Keywords

Keyword research can be a great tool to drive customers to your site during this busy season. For instance, if you’re aiming to rank high for the phrase “Christmas gifts for wife”, you should determine whether “gifts” or “presents” have a higher search volume. You also want to know whether “holiday” or “Christmas” is more popular. However, broad terms such as “Christmas” or “holidays”, can be high volume keywords yet highly competitive. Using long-tail keywords is more efficient for your holiday marketing strategy as they are more specific and give a higher conversion rate. This is because they target leads with higher search intent. 

For instance, someone searching the word “Christmas” is probably looking for something Christmas-related, but is not sure what they exactly want. Are they looking for Christmas trees, ornaments, sweaters, deals for a new TV? However, the keyword phrase “Red Christmas sweater for girls” is more specific and narrows down the target audience searching for your products, resulting in more interested leads and a higher conversion rate. 

5. Run a Holiday Contest

Running a giveaway can drive traffic, but it won’t get as much engagement as contests do. Running contests can help customers learn more about your brand and build a personal relationship with you. While many holiday contests choose a winner randomly, you can add some fun and creativity to yours. Here’s a couple ideas: 

• Best Holiday Selfie Contest – This is great if you’re an apparel store. You can ask your customers to post a picture of themselves wearing your brand’s clothing and ask them to add a seasonal touch. The best one can be featured  on your website and they can also win a prize. 
• Holiday Jingle Contest – Ask customers to rewrite their favourite jingle using your brand as the theme.  
• Best Caption Contest – You can post your company’s holiday photos on Instagram and ask customers to come up with the best caption. 
• Colouring/Drawing Contest – If your business serves mainly children, you can ask them to submit a drawing of a snowman or a Christmas tree in your brand colours. 

6. Partner With Influencers 

MuseFind discovered that 92% of consumers trust influencers more than advertisements and celebrity endorsements. This can be a great strategy for brands that want a stronger social media presence. 

The first thing is to find the right influencer for your brand. The best way to do this is to search for influencers who already talk about products or services similar to yours. Find influencers who are popular amongst your target audience, and reach out to them! 

Using influencers can add creativity to your holiday campaign. Try to tell a story through your holiday campaigns. For example, Zales Jewelers partnered with influencer Jaci Marie Smith and her husband to shoot a “Holiday Love Story” for their holiday campaign. Instead of creating a generic post with a picture of their jewelry, they used storytelling to evoke the emotions of love and joy within customers. 

7. Remarket to Your Customers 

Remember when you almost bought a top online and then saw it again 2 weeks later? Well, that isn’t a coincidence –  it’s remarketing! Remarketing is very important during the holiday season since customers are extra busy during this time. It’s easier for them to forget your brand with the numerous sites they’re browsing. 

Consider the following tips to successfully retarget your customers: 

• Retarget at the right time – What’s the point of retargeting someone if they’re not going to see it? An important rule is to not retarget a customer the instance they leave your website. Give 2-3 hours before retargeting them. Use google analytics to see what days of the week you get the most traffic. Once you’ve identified the best time, schedule your ads for this time. 
• Retarget cart abandoners – Abandoned carts are a huge issue for eCommerce stores. According to Statista, the abandoned cart rate in 2020 was 88%. The holiday season is when most shopping is done, and this means more abandoned carts. Target your customers effectively using Facebook’s enhanced cart recovery ad. 
• Run segmented-based retargeting – Retargeting every user with the same ad won’t be effective. Some users may be browsing for knowledgeable content while others may be looking to buy a product. If a site visitor spends most of their time on your products page, retarget them. But if they’re spending more time reading your blog posts, maybe don’t retarget them with product ads.

8. Leverage Instagram Ads

Instagram is the perfect place to promote your products during the holidays. Users are already actively posting selfies of their Christmas decorations and browsing for giveaways – you can bring them the holiday content. While posting organic content is great, putting some money behind it to get a greater reach wouldn’t hurt. Promote a video of your products with a festive background (snow, Christmas trees, etc.) to create a festive mood and get customers excited for Christmas. Add holiday emojis in your ad copy and include festive words like “merry”, “holidays”, “cheery”, or “gifts”. 

Let Growvare Help!

Are you ready for the holidays? If not, it’s best to get started now! Use the 8 tips mentioned above to create a successful holiday marketing strategy! Growvare is an AI-driven ad platform that can help you strengthen your holiday campaigns with tools such as split-testing, AI-driven targeting, multi-channel advertising and 24/7 campaign monitoring! Book a meeting with us to find out more!