As the “most wonderful time of the year” for online shopping and spending quickly approaches, if you have an online business then you are surely at the edge of your seat and waiting for the flood gates to open.
However, just having an ecommerce site doesn’t promise riches of any kind. As much as you may be preparing for the year end sales spike, millions of other sites and etailers are doing the same thing.
With Deliotte already forecasting a 9% jump in holiday sales this year, it’s now more important than ever to make sure you have all of your planning and marketing materials in check.
To help you in this never ending journey to continually break new sales records, I’m going to list some great highlights from Prestashop’s 2014 Ecommerce Holiday Planning Guide, which will be sure to get you thinking and tweaking ad campaigns with plenty of time to spare!
Important Shopping Dates You Need to Know
If you want to succeed with bringing in more traffic, customers and sales than ever before… you simply need to prepare for the days ahead, and we aren’t just talking about Thanksgiving, Black Friday and the week before Christmas.
While October is quite a mind blowing month for any Halloween based etailers, it’s also a great time to prepare for the huge activity to come in November and December. You can see a break down of many of the important dates and events to prepare for over the last 61 days of the year.
It’s also important not to forget about the first week of January when you can hit your audience for “New Years Resolutions” as well! Hint: This is when weight loss, financial and self improvement campaigns do best!
It’s All About the Holiday Marketing Baby!
There’s just something warm and fuzzy about the Holidays that gets everyone so happy and cheerful — even when they are spending a ton of money that they probably can’t afford to spend in the process.
This all comes into play when you look at the different types of marketing and ad campaigns that take place throughout the year. Happy commercials with holiday music playing, kids opening gifts and of course Christmas trees and winter snow… all wrapped nicely around your best selling products and specials.
Take a look at how popular brands like Old Navy and PetSmart bring that special holiday feeling to their site design every year.
But don’t forget… it’s not just web site designs and themes you need to be paying attention to — also think about email designs, landing pages, flyers, customer segmentation (gifts for girls/guys) and so much more. Each of these tweaks and methods can bring a nice boost to your holiday conversions and sales.
SEO, AdWords and Blogging
Many of us focus our efforts on important SEO and keywords throughout the year, but we also forget the importance of how SEO plays a part in holiday shopping as well.
You might be ranking on the first page of Google for your best selling products, but what happens when people start throwing words like “christmas gifts”, “holiday shopping” and “free shipping” into the mix? Are you still even ranking?
These are just some of the key points you should be thinking about when preparing for end of the year shopping.
The same applies for your Google Adwords campaigns. Throw out the slow performing default ad copies you are using and spruce them up with holiday keywords and promotions.
As for your blog… there’s never been a better time for you to come up with some quality content that really gets your audience engaging with and sharing your product pages. Everyone loves to share content about their favorite holidays… especially any useful lists and articles on how to save money during the holidays and best gift recommendations for friends and family.
Get creative and see what happens!
The Most Wonderful Time of the Year for Ad Testing
There’s no doubt about it… running an online or offline business during the 4th quarter is extremely exciting and as a great time to really get creative with your ad campaigns. Millions of people are more willing to pull out there credit card and spend money than at any other point during the year.
I’ve only scratched the surface of the many different ways you can prepare your business for the holidays, but the free report from Prestashop goes into way more detail. At the end of the book you will also receive a holiday checklist to get your business in organized and on the right path for the massive online spending that is about to take place.
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