Hark! Looming over the American horizon are the 4 horsemen of seasonal retail opportunity. Black Friday and Cyber Monday, two heads on one behemoth of unnecessary purchases. Christmas, the great driver of childhood capitalism. And last but not least comes New Year, whispering in your ear to prepare for 2020 and even buy up the last remnants of 2019 for a pittance in the process.
If you’re a regular consumer, then your wallet would be trembling in fear if it were capable of such motion. But if you’re more of a seller than a buyer, preparing to offload far more than you acquire during this hyper-actionable time of year, then it’s a time of joy and wonder. Well, in prospect, at least. With so many retailers competing for the revenue on offer, you’re not guaranteed to come out ahead. That’s why you need a plan.
Want your online sales to pick up over the coming months? Of course you do. So try using the following holiday digital marketing tactics for the season to supercharge the impact of your online store.
Start the hype early
When’s the right time to start spooking-up your marketing for Halloween? A week prior? Try a month prior. There’s a reason why brick-and-mortar retailers start decking out their Christmas aisles in September or even earlier: consumers lap it up. They’ll grumble, of course, and comment on how ridiculous it is to offer Christmas products that early, but they’ll still buy the shiny limited-edition candy varieties.
We all want to get excited about seasonal events because it adds some pizzazz to our daily activities, so give people the chance to get excited by building the hype early through email marketing. Tell your customers about the sales coming down the pipeline. Get them thinking about what they’re going to wear for Halloween, what they’re going to look for on Black Friday, or what they want to drink to ring in the New Year. That way, when the sales do arrive, they’ll really hit home.
Focus on FOMO
FOMO, or the fear of missing out, is a huge motivator whenever the holidays roll around. It’s particularly significant around Christmas when adults feel easily feel left out of social events and certain hit items get kids nationwide begging their parents for favorable treatment. You can use this to your advantage by stressing the limited nature of almost every product on offer and getting people to feel the urgent need to act.
When Black Friday arrives, what if everyone you know snags a hot deal but you’re left out in the cold? Christmas is around the corner, you better make sure you have that limited edition ornament. To avoid missing out, consumers should buy as soon as possible—stress that message (in a tasteful way, naturally), and you’ll reap the rewards.
Take to the streets
While everyone’s doing regular digital marketing, you can steal a march on them by doing something different: embracing the potential of hybrid online/offline retail by taking your online store to the streets with a popup shop. This is something to try when a seasonal event is getting close and city centers are starting to fill up with shoppers. Why? Because people who’ve gone out to shop are ready to spend.
In times gone by, this would have been prohibitively awkward and complicated to arrange—you’d have needed to take stock, add up all the sales, and feed them back into your online system. At this point, though, it can all be handled automatically through the use of smart mobile devices and a cohesive system like Shopify POS: just load up a suitable tablet with a mobile data feed and your selected product range, grab a card reader, and sync everything up. After that, it’s time to set up your pop up store and start charming people.
Jump on trends
Social media pushes a lot of traffic on a daily basis, so you need to factor it into your holiday strategy. The best way to do this is to pay close attention to trends. Some of them can be anticipated (it’s fair to say that plenty of people will roll out the #blackfriday tag this year), but many of them stem from cultural context and can’t be predicted.
Keep monitoring trends on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and any other social media platforms you use. You can also look to Google Trends, and you should definitely be paying attention to the most popular blog posts going around those sites. What are people writing about? What topics are capturing the most attention? If there’s a product that’s gathering a lot of buzz, you should take the opportunity to write about it. Trendy content gets easy views. Don’t be proud!
Relax your copy
Has this article come across as a little more casual than you’d typically see from a piece that’s ostensibly about business? Some might find that alienating, but I’m banking on it being more engaging. Here’s the thing about holidays: they don’t make people want to be professional and make coldly-rational decisions. They inspire people to embrace positivity and relax.
And when people are feeling relaxed, they’re going to respond better to content that embraces that ethos. No one wants a dry and flavorless turkey for Thanksgiving, and no one wants dry and flavorless content—so get more casual with your content. Start writing in a way that shows enthusiasm and personality, and readers will be more likely to want to support your store.
As we approach the end of the year, the retail opportunities are stacking up, and you need to do something about it if you want to bring in the most profit. These 5 holiday digital marketing tactics can do a lot of good for your business, so why not implement them and see how you get on? This might be your year to shine.
Header image by Pixabay via Pexels free license.