Many of you may think it’s too early to plan your 2015 holiday season marketing strategy but to be honest, it’s almost too late! Holiday seasons are a real golden mine for all online retailers and it takes detailed and thorough planning to deliver a well designed holiday season campaign across all of your marketing channels.
This is why it is important to start thinking and planning as early as 3 to 4 months in advance, making sure not to leave anything to chance once December arrives.
There are several eCommerce announced last year that really did change many of the marketing strategies put in place until recently. In 2015, new digital trends have influenced marketers and online shop retailers making them rethink and adjust some of their customer service tactics, online campaigns and product/service launches not to leave out anything to chance or worse yet, to their competition.
To make sure you are up-to-date with all the latest marketing data, trends, and new techniques to reach out to your audiences during this holiday season, we put together the 2015 eCommerce holiday check list essentials.
Your audience went mobile. What about you?
We know that any type of new investment into your business may lead to a lot of concern and stress given that you are not happy with your current revenues. However, whether you are earning some decent bucks or still looking to make your breakthrough, the only investment we really do thing you should be making this year is going mobile.
According to Internet Retailer, currently mobile drives almost half of all eCommerce traffic and if we compare the numbers with previous years, this trend has been on a nonstoppable rise.
This is especially true for IOS devices who generated 3 times more traffic than Androids.
When it comes to holiday seasons, in 2014/2015 mobile retail traffic and sales spikes hit the fan leading to data well over 50% as reported by major online retailers such as Amazon, Wal-Mart, as well as many other smaller brands with a strong online marketing presence.
Another reason to make sure your website is mobile-friendly is called Google; you may not know this but the search engine, started penalising websites not optimised for mobile browsing.
If you don’t have a clue where to start from getting your website on mobile, we advise you to hire a professional agency, a freelancer, ask a friend who has experience with it. It takes some technical knowledge to optimise eCommerce for mobile so do not play around with it unless you are confident in your skills.
If pictures speak a thousand words, videos speak a thousand pictures!
We know you know this one; high quality images are what drive a customer's attention to a certain service or product on your website. Moreover, images help your brand leave an impression, be distinctive and communicate values and professionalism. This is why images are to be produced and selected very very carefully and placed strategically above the fold.
When you need something more compelling to attract audiences and convince them to visit your eCommerce store, video is a very effective channel of communication to target potential customers. In the past years making a video may seemed like a costly investment but with new technologies, super accessorised mobile phones, and free online editing softwares, you can shoot asurprisingly good video in terms of quality and rendering.
From showing all the application of a product you sell to filming one of your most loyal customers talking about why one of your top shelf product is a great Christmas gift, you can create great multimedia content to share with your social media followers and drive some additional traffic back to your website.
Send out an early Christmas gift to your customers
One of the best ways to reconnect with old customers and remind them to check out your store while holiday shopping is by awarding a holiday gift card. It doesn’t matter how much you are willing to give away or what discount will you grant your customers for this special time of the year; what’s important is to make them feel special and treat them to a great value product at a great price for a limited period.
Someone who has already shopped with your brand will be more than happy to return to your website and browse through your products, especially if given a great discount. Always remember that every returning customer is more than just a customer, he is your brand’s fan and therefore should be treated like a V.I.P.
Shipping and return policy is your holy grail during holiday sales
When shopping for their friends and family, customers want to make sure they get what they purchased in time for the holidays and they want to know if product return/exchange is possible. Even if your shipping and return policy does not allow for products to be returned, you may want to grant this kind of options to your customers just for the holiday season.
Make sure shipping and return is visible on your website and easy to find by users. If you offer free shipping for large purchases, highlight such benefit on your homepage!
Are you selling on Amazon and Ebay?
While you spend your time looking for potential customers and drive them back to your website, you can also find them where they already shop, for example on websites such as Ebay or Amazon.
If you never thought about it, we strongly suggest you consider selling some of your top product lines by taking advantage of these huge online retailers.
When making your brand available on Amazon or Ebay or on any other similar online retailer you will reach out to new audiences who may be interested in what you got to offer.
In the next few weeks we will upload more interesting ways to engage your customers this holiday season so make sure you check in with Zaproo during the whole month of November!