eCommerce Holiday Marketing Cheat Sheet

The holidays are on our doors yet again! Last year we played in the blind as most of us had no idea how to handle the eCommerce holiday marketing with the pandemic and global restrictions in play. It was indeed an unprecedented year.

2020 saw enormous growth in the eCommerce industry as many had to spend the holidays apart from their loved ones, and everyone was avoiding in-store shopping. eCommerce shopping suddenly became a popular option even if some shoppers went digital for the first time in their lives. The result? The eCommerce industry saw two years’ worth of growth in one year, witnessing an exponential increase of 32% to reach a total of a little over USD 188 billion. With the growing number of eCommerce shoppers every day, the rise in online shopping is sticking around for the Holiday season of 2021.

So, the customers have started planning for their holiday shopping; it only makes sense that eCommerce businesses fasten their belts too.

Online retailers will have to make some serious efforts to prep for the busiest time of the year to cater to these eager shoppers.

For a small to medium business, the holiday season can be overwhelming. But with comprehensive planning and foresightedness, it might not be rocket science. But you have to plan; we are talking months ahead. The closer you get to sought-after sales holidays like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the less time you have to gather and execute your digital marketing strategies.

Failing to do so might end you up with a lost opportunity to rake in the most possible revenue during the year. Lack of preparedness can lead to numerous problems, some of which may be a failure to execute the digital marketing campaigns on time, reach the potential customer base later than your competitors, and probable loss of revenue in the last quarter of the year. The Holiday season accounts for up to 20% of the retail industry’s annual sales and 30% of many individual retailers’ total sales.

As an eCommerce business owner, you should prepare for the Holidays. For instance, we all know how SEO works. You cannot see the results in a day or a week. Sometimes it takes months to come to the first page of SERPs for specific keywords you are targeting. So, if SEO is one of your effective tactics to promote your business for Holiday sales, you will have to initiate your efforts much before the fourth quarter of the year.

Hence, planning will give you the edge and facilitate you to align your efforts together.

There are some fundamentals you need to stick to being an eCommerce business owner to create a magical holiday for your customers. 

• Audit Previous eCommerce Holiday Marketing Campaigns

The pandemic has changed the overall eCommerce landscape. So, just one year’s worth of stats of a pandemic-stricken holiday season will help in a limited way. Although looking back to 2019 or 2018 statistics and customer data might not give us excellent ideas, these statistics will surely help us understand what has led to victories and what could use improvements.

• Identify eCommerce Holiday Marketing Strategies to Appeal to your Audience

There is no set template for eCommerce holiday marketing efforts that will sync with all your customers equally. So there is no point in mirroring strategies and campaigns from the past or your competitors’. You need to figure out your language to resonate with your targeted customer base. For instance, social commerce efforts go well with Gen Z or Millennials. 

• Create a Schedule for Execution 

The holiday season, as said earlier, is the busiest shopping season of the year. You have to work smart. Detailed schedules will save time and resources and help you create better customer experiences than you hoped for at the end of the day.

How to Prepare for eCommerce Holiday Marketing?

You know what they say, “the more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.”

To help you along the way, we have put together a list of prep points that you can follow for “The eCommerce Holiday Season 2021.”

• What’s Trending

You have to do ample research on what’s trending this season. From inexpensive decor to minimalist living, from a vegan thanksgiving to high-end Christmas pies, from the traditional sequined outfits to Billie Ellish Holiday Barbie-inspired dresses, you research the market well before rolling out any holiday campaign. You can get valuable insights from Google Analytics, Google Trends, Social Media, Fashion Weeks, Influencer Media, and Competitor Analysis. You have to stay ahead of the curve by rendering a competitive price and an unbeatable customer experience. According to Intelligence Node, 88% of the customers compare retailers before making a purchase. Make sure you differentiate while tracking trends.  

• Consumer Insights and Pain Points

To build a customer-centric business, you need to understand your customers. The best way is to get insights by talking to them. There are a few ways to know how your customers feel about your brand. Let your customers fill out surveys for you. You can give them special discounts to fill in the surveys. These kinds of incentives foster brand loyalty while gathering customer insights. Another way to know about your customers’ inner feelings is by tracking the online store’s data. You can identify pain points by analyzing where your customers click the most, the most popular products, why customers abandon the carts, and the reasons for lousy bounce rates. Ensure that your customer experience should be as streamlined as possible for the holiday season. 

• Buyer Personas and Customer Segments

For any campaign to succeed, understand the purchasing intent and consumer behavior hinges. For the holiday season, it is beneficial to create buyer personas for both the gift giver and the lucky ones on the other end while segmenting your eCommerce holiday marketing campaigns into givers and receivers. You can identify key characteristics and segregate them into personas like Mothers, Browsers, Discount Chasers, or Last-minute Shoppers. Also, you have to track transactional behaviors, demographics, and psychographic data to create buyer personas. These personas will help you enhance the relevancy of your campaigns and messaging. 

• Keep the eCommerce Holiday Marketing Strategies Simple

Anyone can be overenthusiastic considering the holiday spirit. But don’t let the hustle and bustle of holiday planning get to you. It is always better to start small with the holiday campaigns. The holidays are bad timing for experimentation, and there is too much on the line. Try to pitch one idea, one emotion, and one benefit via each message of your campaign. Analyze your team’s bandwidth and infrastructure to support the operations, and act accordingly to build connections, trust, and loyalty.

• Be Ready to Tackle Unforeseen Problems

Remember that you are a retailer during the holiday season, simultaneously navigating the global pandemic. There can be unwanted incidents like a last-minute technical issue, a bug, a site crash, or anything else. You have to have a fast-acting support and maintenance team prepared to mitigate any problems that may occur, be it for the website, ads, or anywhere else. You also need to keep a tab on the fulfillment centers for timely deliveries.   

• Believe Content is the King

With the competition and the whole Holiday season hype, there will be many companies putting their content out. Customers have seen most of this content year after year. The content-first approach is one of the things that will keep you afloat during all this chaos. Content marketing as a tool will let you connect to your customers at a personalized level. Make sure to touch upon holiday gift guides, personalized offers, ads, and shopping assistants. Also, keeping SEO in mind, content strategy can reap big rewards when included in your eCommerce holiday marketing strategy.  

• Create Hype Around the Brand and Products

Once you have a digital marketing strategy in place, you can create hype around your products and services. You have to have a coherent strategy for social media, including Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and whatever the young kids are using these days. You can promote early-bird discounts, last years’ bestseller recommendations, or even scarcity messages and countdowns. 

• Go Omnichannel with Your eCommerce Holiday Marketing Campaigns

Now, your eCommerce holiday marketing strategy is in line with the customer’s needs. You have to be ready to release it across various platforms, and hence your campaigns should be compatible to go omnichannel. Buyer personas and customer segments play a vital role here. Tailor your campaigns to be personalized based on your customer segments. You can also prepare to launch your ads in the peak selling moments to achieve maximum impact, like before Christmas Eve. 

• Optimize your eStore in Holiday Spirit

A customer should be able to feel the holiday spirit while shopping at your eCommerce store. Decorate your eStore with holiday decor and give a fulfilling vibe to your customers. Make sure the designs are in line with your brand positioning. Also, optimize your store to prep for the incoming Christmas traffic. Make sure to test your servers for load and capacity to cope with the high influx of traffic. Your front-end must resonate with your back-end. 

• Take the Mobile-First Approach

To take full advantage of the eCommerce holiday marketing season, ensure that your campaigns support mobile viewing. Mobile shoppers constituted a whopping 84% of the eCommerce growth in the holiday season in 2019. Hence, make your campaign look better on mobile phones while prioritizing Christmas visuals.

•  Give Attention to your Existing Customers

Attracting existing customers is as necessary as acquiring new customers. A loyal customer can contribute significantly to revenue growth, especially during the holidays. You should review your customer data and eCommerce store metrics to analyze customer’s buying behavior, past purchases, and campaigns that resulted in most conversions. You can use this data to plan for the most selling holidays like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

The holiday season is a make-or-break scenario for any eCommerce retailer. Cut-throat competition with a high influx of traffic and customers shopping online makes it harder for businesses to stay afloat. But there are steps you can take in advance to make the best of the busiest shopping season of the year, the eCommerce holiday season 2021. Start planning ahead of time and pair with the right digital marketing partner to facilitate your customers to establish a lifetime relationship with your brand.