How to Dominate the 2013 Holiday Shopping Season
Every year it seems like retailers roll out the Christmas decorations just a little bit earlier. Kmart started airing holiday ads this September. Why? Kmart wins big on layaway plans, and it figured out that customers need to start thinking about that now to have items paid for in time. Kmart knows its customers and is hitting the nail on the head.
This strategy didn't go unnoticed. People crawled out of the woodwork to complain about it, and it was a national news story across the morning shows. Although the season is supposed to hit high gear AFTER Halloween, very few people think to ask why holiday marketing campaigns are coming earlier and earlier every year. And that's an important question. Why would a retailer set up Christmas displays in October? Or September? Maybe even August? Surely it isn't just because they're imbued with holiday joy.
The answer is because timing is a key aspect of holiday success. Smart retailers try to figure out exactly when their specific sales seasons start. For some, that could be the traditional launch of the holiday shopping season — Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Is that definitely true for every retailer? Are you sure?
Timing matters. The core of marketing is messaging, and when you say something is as important as what you say and where you say it. It's a bit of a balancing act. If you mess up the when, what or where, it throws the entire campaign off. Due to the finite length of holiday shopping seasons, you have to get it right as quickly as possible. There may not be a second chance before the opportunity is blown.
Let the Past Guide You
In digital marketing, like in life, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The best executed campaigns arise from diligent planning. The best resource you have is last year's data. Research past traffic patterns, product sales and conversion rates. Once you identify trends, take advantage of them. If you see sales of an item spiked at a specific time, use that knowledge to guide merchandising strategy. When you know something is selling like hot cakes, give it front-page placement on your website.
This is an excellent time to use your powers of deduction to implement related tactics. Look back and see when "gifty" items started selling well. This is the time to deploy holiday-specific landing pages and gift cards. It may make perfect sense or it may not, but don't discount the data. That's exactly why certain retailers start marketing for the holidays in September; they realized through past sales numbers that's when their customers are beginning to shop for the season.
Rethink Your Segments
You probably have a pretty good idea of who your target market is. That's great most of the time, but holiday seasons throw monkey wrenches into what you think you know about your customers. Holidays are about giving gifts, and that means a lot of sales will come from one-time buyers. These are people shopping for your loyal base, and they're generally much different from your usual customers.
Holiday shoppers also have a whole different list of concerns than typical buyers. They probably don't have accounts with you, and value easy checkout. Make it easy for them to buy from you. Feature things like simple return policies and gift wrapping. It's also helpful to implement messaging around the idea of gifting and make people who typically fall outside your target market feel welcome.
Make Sure Your Site is Customer Friendly
The layout of your site may make logical sense to your customers, but remember that holiday shoppers aren't the same people. They're the husbands, aunts, cousins, friends and children of them. This may be their first time shopping with you, so nip any possible confusion in the bud and make quick purchases easy. Organize your products in a way that makes sense to shoppers with little to no context for your site.
Another key thing you can do to amplify conversion is help with decision making. Lead shoppers to items quickly through navigation. Adding categories like "most popular gifts for men, women, etc." and highlighting gift sets helps shoppers find suitable ideas. The customer experience should be centered on making products easy to find and purchase for first-time visitors.
Don't Forget to Test
The mantra of digital marketing is test, retest and then test again. This is the surest way to optimize conversion. Holiday windows can be short, however, especially during promotion periods. That doesn't mean you shouldn't test, it just means you need to have a testing strategy before launch.
A great approach is to redirect 10 percent of your traffic to a test landing page. If this page leads to an obvious conversion increase, more traffic — or even all of it — can be immediately switched over the test landing page. Be nimble and ready to react to any observed lifts. Evaluate intraday response rates on headlines, product pages and highlighted products. Change whatever isn't performing well. If you enter a campaign with testing in mind from the start, you can take advantage of very quick optimization and improve results.
Take Full Advantage of Google
Most of your holiday traffic is going to come from Google searches. Everybody wants a piece of the Google search pie, but you can increase yours with a few tactics:
- Go after the longtail keywords for your best return on investment, and add every model and catalog reference number to go after niches.
- Coordinate product listing ads, pay per click and search engine optimization for each popular gift item in order to increase rankings on Google's search engine results page.
- Eliminate links to maintenance and corporate pages during holiday time and use that real estate to highlight products.
- Align your messaging by making sure that any offer (e.g., free shipping or discounts) is duplicated in catalog, print, pay per click and the landing page.
Finally, consider highlighting your phone number. Even if you generally discourage phone calls, enabling customers to talk to you can alleviate shipping and return policy fears. Two-way communication goes a long way to closing sales during the holiday shopping season.
Many retailers rely heavily on holiday shoppers to drive sales that keep them profitable. The results of a holiday campaign can lead to spectacular success or abysmal failure. To avoid the latter, remember that the holiday season is anything but business as usual. Approach it as the unique time that it is, and make sure that you are marketing the right way, at the right time to the right people.
Ken Robbins is founder and president of RMI, a direct response marketing agency.
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