5 Top E-commerce Digital Marketing Strategies Proven to Drive Holidays Sales (3 minute read)

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5 eCommerce Strategies To Increase Your Holiday Sales

With Christmas only two weeks away, your target audience is probably deep into the holiday shopping craze. E-commerce digital marketing during holidays can be tricky. You have to come up with highly efficient strategies while struggling against the growing competition.

To help you stay on top of your game during this challenging yet highly profitable period, we've created a list of 5 key digital marketing strategies proven to drive holiday e-commerce sales.

1. Take Advantages of Google's Custom Intent Audiences

For many e-commerce companies, holidays are the time to make the big bucks. That's why they are ready to pay a fortune for paid search ads. As a result, keyword costs go up and so does the competition.

To minimise PPC costs and reach the right target audience, you can take advantage of Google's custom intent audiences. It allows you to target consumers based on what they search for, websites they visit, and apps they use.

By segmenting your audience by websites and apps, you don't just create a better targeting campaign. You can work with your competition's audiences as well. Basically, you can target customers who visit your competitor's websites.

When you learn how to use custom intent audiences, you can minimise the cost per click while reducing waste in ad spend.

2. Set Up a Google Smart Shopping Campaign

If you haven't set up a Google Shopping account yet, consider doing it in time for the holiday season. Smart Shopping is a relatively new automated marketing option offered by Google. It's still unexplored by many companies.  

How it Works:

You provide information about your products, and Google uses it in different combinations to show relevant ads across multiple Google Networks, including Google Display, YouTube, Gmail, and Google Search. It tests various combinations of images and descriptions of your products to find the best option for you and the searcher.

According to Google, companies that set up Smart Shopping campaigns can achieve 20% more conversions without raising the ad spend. Since AI does the majority of the optimisation work for you, the marketing department can focus on other holiday marketing tactics.

Pros and Cons:

The key benefits of setting up such a campaign include speed, automation, simplicity, and impressive coverage.

However, you need to be ready for a certain lack of control. Manual optimisation is still better than what AI can offer. Smart Shopping can be an excellent addition to your holiday marketing campaign, but it can never replace other paid search tactics.

3. Adjust Your Traditional Google Shopping Campaign

Google Shopping has 30% higher conversion rates than text ads. During the holiday seasons when consumers are rushing to get the best deals, Google Shopping campaigns are even more efficient.

The key to getting the best spots for your products are sufficient bids and well-polished product details. Working on both during the holiday season can streamline your campaign.

  • Enable the product rating options on your Google Shopping ads. They can reinforce the consumer's decision to buy your product. To enable the review extension, fill out a form.

  • Work on high-quality images. You can also adjust them to communicate the holiday spirit. For example, adding a small Santa's hat in one corner of your product image can take the consumer's shopping intent in the right direction.

  • Adjust location options. Limit your locations to a brick-and-mortar store and places where you can ship products. Remember, during the holiday season, shipping can be delayed. Reconsider each location in order not to fail with list-minute order management.

If you haven't done it yet, take advantage of Showcase Shopping Ads. They allow you to group together several items and demonstrate them in response to the consumer's broad search terms.

During the holiday season, they are an excellent way to capture low-intent consumers and sell them a variety of products. You can also sell poor performance products by grouping them together with highly demanded items.

4. Implement Marketing Automation

E-commerce companies experience an influx of customers during the holiday season. Without automating some of your marketing efforts, you could miss new shoppers while leaving your existing customers unhappy.

  • Recover old customers — holidays are an excellent time to dust off your email list and remind your past customers about your company with a series of automated emails. Consider creating personalised holiday greetings.

  • Prevent holiday rush — historically, spending during the week before Christmas in New Zealand rises by 50% compared to the rest of the year. Help your customers spend the extra money in advance by sending a series of reminder "Christmas is only 3(2,1) weeks away" emails.

  • Bring shoppers back — take full advantage of Google and social media remarketing ads to improve conversions during the holiday seasons.

  • Improve customer service — pre-scripted messages and responses to common issues can help keep customers happy while you are overwhelmed with other tasks. You can use automation to send follow-up messages, design cart abandonment emails, acknowledge customer orders, and ask for feedback.

Implementing marketing automation tactics can help you reach more consumers and create more time for other marketing tasks.

5. CapitaliSe On Post-Christmas Shopping

According to Google, about 20% of December store traffic happens during the first 6 days AFTER Christmas. Stopping your marketing campaign once Boxing Day is over is a big mistake. You can continue driving holiday sales all the way until New Year's Eve.

This is an excellent time to implement Google local inventory ads. You can also use the information gathered during the pre-holiday rush to set up high-quality remarketing campaigns.

Keep your holiday marketing efforts alive after Christmas is over. You can target consumers who have more time for shopping during the off-days.


The Takeaway

The holiday season is the perfect time to take advantage of a variety of tried-and-tested marketing tools offered by Google, including Custom Intent Audience, Google Shopping, Showcase Shopping Ads, and Smart Shopping. To reach more clients and keep them happy, implement marketing automation techniques.

Don't stop your marketing efforts after Christmas arrives. You can continue driving sales for at least 5 days after Boxing Day.

Would you like to find out what e-commerce digital marketing strategies can help you this holiday season?  Contact us today!

And stay tuned for an exciting wrap-up of our holiday marketing blog series - by the time you finish reading it, you could already be reaping the first benefits!

Steve Crowe