If you sell anything online, you know that the holiday season is the busiest, most lucrative time of the year.
Just last year, Americans spent $38 billion online during Cyber Week, which includes the five days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday.
Black Friday alone saw a record $9.8 billion in online spending, up 7.5% from 2022 and Cyber Monday saw a record $12.4 billion, up 9.6% from the previous year.
The key to getting a piece of all this spending?
Getting ready early.
Whether it’s Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or the Christmas shopping season, early and comprehensive e-commerce holiday planning is essential to maximize sales and stand out in the most competitive market of the year.
Looking to make 2024 even more profitable than last year?
Our team at eAccountable has created a guide to help you thoroughly prepare for the upcoming holiday season and execute your marketing campaigns successfully.
4 Ways to Prepare for the Holiday Season
1. Review and Analyze Last Year’s Performance
Before diving into your 2024 holiday planning, take a step back and review your performance from last year.
Take a good look at metrics such as website traffic, conversion rates, sales, and customer feedback to get a good idea of what went right and what went wrong.
Figure out which previous offers appealed to your target audience and which flopped to help you determine out which promotions to run this holiday season.
Once you’re able to identify what worked well and what didn’t, reimagine your 2024 holiday strategy so you can maximize your sales this holiday season.
This analysis will provide valuable insights to guide your marketing efforts and ensure you avoid past mistakes this time around.
2. Prepare for Incoming Traffic
Whether you’re in-store or online shopping, you can expect a lot of traffic this holiday season.
If you want to maximize your online sales, you’ll need to prepare your website’s infrastructure to handle the influx of online shoppers.
Optimizing Your Site
The first rule of e-commerce is to make sure your online store is ready for visitors. If your site isn’t ready, you’re not going to get any new customers.
A Black Friday shopper’s first impression of your e-commerce store can make or break a big sale—whether it’s tricky navigation, bad aesthetics, or not enough information about what makes your products different.
Make sure your website is optimized for speed and performance. Slow load times can drive potential customers away.
What are some low-hanging fruit that can make your website more efficient?
- Implement a content delivery network (CDN)
- Compress images to maximize storage
- Clean your database to improve query performance
- Minimize HTTP requests to improve load times
Regularly test your site to ensure it can handle high traffic volumes without crashing.
Stock Up On Inventory
The last thing you want is to not be able to fulfill orders while everyone is scrambling for their last-minute holiday gifts.
Make sure to have enough inventory to meet the increased demand during the holiday shopping season.
Get ahead of the game by coordinating with your supply chain to ensure timely deliveries and avoid stockouts.
Having adequate inventory is crucial to maintaining customer satisfaction and maximizing sales.
Generate Product Reviews
What will potential customers look for on your product pages before deciding to make a purchase?
Product reviews. Positive ones.
Customers want reassurance that other people have bought your product and have had a good experience with it.
This is why product reviews significantly influence purchasing decisions.
Make a consolidated effort to encourage current customers to leave reviews on your products by sending follow-up emails after purchase or offering incentives.
Positive reviews build trust and can boost your SEO, making your products more visible to potential customers.
SEO: Is Your Site Visible?
Make sure your e-commerce site can easily be discovered by putting a consolidated effort into your search engine optimization (SEO).
Conduct keyword research to identify popular holiday-related terms and incorporate them into your product descriptions, meta tags, and content writing.
This will help increase your website’s visibility when it comes time for holiday shopping.
Create holiday-themed landing pages to attract organic search traffic and improve your site’s visibility.
High search engine rankings will drive more organic traffic to your online store, increasing the chances of conversions.
4. Create Your Marketing Calendar
When it comes to holiday campaigns, you can’t just wing it. You need a well-organized marketing calendar if you want to stand out against the competition.
Plan your promotions around key dates such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday, Christmas, and New Year’s.
Don’t just plan for the traditional holiday season; make sure to include other significant holidays like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and Halloween to maintain engagement throughout the year.
After you build your shared calendar, use a task manager like Asana or Monday to assign all marketing activities necessary to make these holiday promotions come to fruition.
4 Ways to Execute Your Holiday Marketing Strategy
Now that you have everything in place for the holiday season, how do you effectively execute your marketing strategy to maximize your e-commerce sales?
1. Create Compelling Holiday Promotions
Develop attractive holiday promotions to capture your audience’s attention.
These could be special discounts, limited-time offers, or the launch of a new product.
Make sure these promotions are genuinely unique and compelling enough to drive conversions.
For example, offering a significant discount on a popular product for one day only can create a sense of urgency and encourage immediate purchases.
2. Create Anticipation For Your Sale
Don’t just put out your holiday sales and expect people to come.
Remember, you’re competing against every other e-commerce business for a piece of the pie.
Get creative and create buzz around your holiday promotions.
Find a way to stand out against the competition by sharing teaser campaigns, countdowns, sneak peeks, user-generated content, and influencer collaborations to hype up your holiday sales.
Encourage your audience to stay tuned for exclusive offers so your brand is top of mind when they start their holiday shopping.
3. Offer Multiple, Flexible Ways to Make a Purchase
Checkout should be easy.
If there are too many obstacles to checkout, you’re losing potential customers.
Make the checkout process as convenient as possible for your customers by offering various payment options.
Buy Now, Pay Later
In 2024, the Buy Now, Pay Later market will be valued at over $500 billion alone.
Implement buy now, pay later options to provide flexibility for your customers.
Services like Afterpay and Klarna allow customers to spread the cost over several payments, making it more feasible for them to purchase higher-priced items and spread it over several payments.
4. Enhance Customer Experience
Customer experience is everything.
Ensure your customer service team is well-prepared to handle increased inquiries during the holiday season.
Offer live chat support to assist your customers in real time.
Create a FAQs page to provide answers to frequently asked questions.
Simplify the return policy to make it easy for customers to return or exchange items.
Personalize the shopping experience by recommending products based on users’ browsing history and past purchases.
Offer gift wrapping and personalized messages to add a special touch to their holiday orders.
Remember, the better your user experience, the better chance you have at turning first-time holiday shoppers into loyal customers.
5. Omnichannel Marketing
If you really want to make a splash this holiday season, you can’t just rely on one marketing channel.
To make an impact as an online retailer in 2024, it takes a coordinated and consistent effort across all your marketed channels.
Implement an omnichannel marketing strategy to reach your target audience across all marketing channels.
Leverage Email Marketing & SMS
When it comes to holiday campaigns, SMS & email marketing should be a crucial centerpiece of your omnichannel strategy.
Use email and SMS to tease out your upcoming sales and then send multiple personalized messages to maximize your promotions.
You can segment your list to send follow-up emails and texts to your most engaged customers who haven’t purchased yet to get them to convert.
Leverage Social Media
Utilize social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to promote your holiday promotions.
Create paid social ad campaigns, share holiday content, run contests and giveaways, and use holiday hashtags to maximize your visibility during the holiday season.
Social media is a great way to build community around your brand and acquire new customers.
Leverage Amazon
If you sell on Amazon, optimize your listings for the holiday season.
Utilize Amazon’s advertising options, like Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands, to boost your listings in search results.
Offer appealing holiday deals and discounts, such as Lightning Deals or coupons, to draw in bargain hunters on big days.
Monitor how your holiday campaign is performing with Amazon’s analytics tools to adjust your strategy in real time and maximize your ROI.
Leverage Affiliate Marketing
Affiliates can help you acquire new customers and increase your sales during the holiday season.
To run an effective affiliate marketing holiday promotion, start by collaborating with affiliates who have a strong influence over your target audience and providing them with exclusive, holiday-themed promotional materials.
Offer attractive commission rates (that don’t bite too far into your margins) to incentivize affiliates to prioritize selling your products.
Promote limited-time offers and exclusive holiday discounts to create a sense of urgency.
Make sure to keep your affiliates informed about upcoming deals, product updates, and promotional strategies to ensure your holiday campaign goes off without a hitch.
Leverage PPC
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can drive targeted traffic to your site.
To run an effective PPC holiday promotion, start by conducting thorough keyword research to identify holiday-specific terms relevant to your products.
Create captivating ad copy and visuals that highlight your special holiday offers and discounts.
Set up targeted campaigns on platforms like Google Ads and Bing Ads, focusing on high-intent keywords and retargeting previous visitors to your site.
During your holiday promotion, monitor your campaign performance closely, adjusting bids, keywords, and ad creatives in real time to maximize your increased traffic and return on ad spend (ROAS).
Work With An Expert Team
In 2023, 75% of US consumers planned to shop online for Christmas, up from 57% of US consumers who planned to shop online for the holidays in 2022.
Don’t miss out in 2024.
Preparing for the holiday season requires a comprehensive strategy that goes beyond just offering a killer sale.
If you want to get e-commerce holiday planning right, it requires:
- Reviewing last year’s performance
- Optimizing your site
- Enhancing SEO
- Creating a detailed marketing calendar
When it comes to executing your holiday marketing strategy correctly, it requires:
- Compelling promotions
- Creating buzz for your promotion
- Offering flexible payment options
- Providing a great user experience
- Executing a comprehensive omnichannel marketing strategy (Email, Social, Amazon, Affiliate, PPC)
And you don’t have to do it alone.
Our full-service team at eAccountable has helped hundreds of clients maximize their sales by helping them get ahead of the competition by getting prepared early for the holiday shopping season.
So don’t leave money on the table.
Drop us a line here for a free consultation on how we can help you and your team maximize your holiday sales this season.