With the holiday season right around the corner, eCommerce brands are putting all hands on deck in an effort to maximize sales for Black Friday and beyond. This 2-to-4 week stretch often features the best bargains for consumers, making it extremely competitive for companies to get their names out there and make sales.
So what can you do to get (and stay) ahead of the curve? Let us show you how to get the most from your time and budget!
Start Creating Your Best Offer(s)
Consumers are expecting nothing short of the best deals during the holiday season, leaving brands with no choice other than to respond. This is your company’s chance to shine! We always recommend saving your best offers for the holiday season because (1) it presents the best opportunities to attract new customers and (2) it allows you to compete with what your competitors are offering.
However, before you can start making sales, you’ll have to reach potential customers!
Ramp Up Your Paid Ads Campaign
The holiday season is no time to cut corners. Be sure to allocate yourself a healthy advertising budget, so you can reach and convert new customers at a profitable rate. If your business regularly advertises, we often recommend that you reference your best performing creatives from the past. Remember: the consumer’s attention will be almost as difficult to grab as the sale!
The best places to advertise? It often depends on your industry and target market, but we’ll outline a brief guide for you.
Search Ads
These text-based ads appear under the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) when people look something up on popular search engines like Google and Bing, as well as popular eCommerce sites like Amazon. Select keywords often have a few slots for “Sponsored” results. These are best utilized for intent-based searches.
For optimal success, understand the user experience by putting yourself in their shoes. What specific problems are they facing? How can you present yourself as a solution? Does your tone (for your ads) reflect their state of mind? Have you run any tests?
Display Ads
These are the visual banners you see when scrolling through popular websites and social networking sites. The messaging for Display Ads can range anywhere from brand awareness to direct response, usually depending on the strategy and targeting parameters. For most cases, we recommend starting with low-commitment displays, then following with strong remarketing ads!
Keep in mind that Display Advertising is typically a long-term investment. In many cases, it could pay off to continue running them even beyond the holiday season.
Can’t decide which is the best investment for your brand?
Learn More About Search + Display Ads
Shopping Ads
Not everyone looks for straight links when they search on Google. In fact, there’s an entire shopping section dedicated to eCommerce sites. With this, you can pay to have your products featured, as part of an integrated Google Shopping Campaign.
This is a great tactic for targeting people searching for similar products that you offer. It can be even more effective for those gift shopping for others!
Prepare Your eCommerce Site
Imagine spending more on ads, only for your website to be unable to handle the influx of traffic. This happens to companies all the time because they don’t take enough time to plan!
To prepare for more website traffic than usual, you’ll want to increase your website’s bandwidth — think of it like adding additional lanes to a highway. It allows for more traffic to move quicker. This can be done through the company you use to host your website — there will likely be a fee to increase your website bandwidth, but it’s well worth the cost.
Ready Your Customer Service Reps
Your customer service department should prepare for more business, just as your website should. Depending on your situation, you may want to consider offering overtime to existing customer service staff or temporarily outsourcing 3rd-party reps to help handle the load.
Wrapping Up
As you brace yourself and your business for the upcoming holiday season, be sure to keep these things in mind, as they’ll save you time and stress, while increasing revenue. Worried there may be too much on your plate? Then consider working with the professionals at Active Web Group. We have well over 2 decades of experience building and marketing websites for eCommerce businesses across all sizes and industries. Interested in seeing how we can help you achieve your short and long-term goals? Contact one of our experts for a free eCommerce analysis or call us at 800-978-3417!
