site-promotions-10-tips-of-how-to-get-ready-for-the-holiday-seasonHoliday season may be a real challenge for online shop owners. This is the most profitable yet most difficult part of a year and you need a good plan to be ready for it.

Your way to success depends on the level of your preparedness to the season. You should make sure that all the banners, ads, emails, rules, etc. are in place. Here is a step-by-step plan for your marketing during the coming holidays.

1. Banners

Create all the holiday banners beforehand. Usually such banners are placed on the site (on the homepage and/or category pages, checkout, etc.), on the blog and in your social accounts.

Note that the sizes of your banners will vary depending on their place. For example, Twitter and Facebook have different requirements for image size; your site images have special sizes as well. So bare that in mind while creating a task for your designer.

2. Promo codes

Get ready with your promo codes and make sure to spread them to various discounts sites. The conversion rate of visits from such sites is much higher than usual.

3. Loyalty Program

If you already have a loyalty program, you can enhance it with special features like additional bonuses and points. If you don’t have such a program in your store, introduce one! Your customers will be happy.

4. AdWords ads

You can create seasonal campaigns and ad groups to promote the most relevant items and discounts. Say, you can create an ad with the title “20% off on plush toys!”, it will increase your conversions. You can also add words that help to create scarcity and thus get even more sales, like “limited offer”, “only today”, “hurry up”, “buy now”, etc.

5. Email marketing

Email marketing is one of the greatest sources of communication with your customers. You can create email campaigns and send them to your existing or potential clients.

It’s a good idea to use segmentation:

  • you can send a special offer based on previous orders;
  • you can send offers based on customer information you know: favorite color, marital status, children and any other;
  • segment users by country or area to offer something specific;
  • address potential customers who just subscribed to your newsletter but haven’t made an order yet. You can give them an additional discount to encourage the first order.

6. Gamification

We all like winning something. Give your customers this opportunity: add games that will meet the needs of all types of gamification users.

A good example of gamification is Aliexpress: it often introduces new games that help to earn points; the points can be used to get coupons.

7. Gift cards

Many products are bought as gifts but sometimes a buyer is not sure which item to choose, he wants the receiver to choose it themselves. In this case a gift card is a great idea as it adds much flexibility into gift giving process.

Selling gift cards is a good competitive edge for you.

8. Gift wrapping

This point is closely connected with previous one. Some people just don’t want to spend much time on buying gifts. Moreover, the crowds at gift wrapping stations can be crazy. By ordering a gift wrapping option from you a customer saves lots of time.

Don’t forget to clearly state that you provide gift wrapping options even before a person check outs.

9. Landing pages

Create dedicated landing pages for the holidays. These pages can be grouped according to your niche peculiarities.

For example, you can create pages with bestselling items, stuff picks, gifts organized by gender, age, occupation, etc. Analyzing your visitors will greatly help you with that.

10. Promo rules

If you are using any promo rules in your store, make sure they are set correctly beforehand not to get caught by problems during the sale.

Here are some examples of promotions you can hold in your store: buy X get Y free, a free product with purchase, free shipping if N amount spent and many others.

The bottom line

Use different channels to promote your special offers and don’t hesitate to remind customers about your sale: every time there will be new people who are still not aware of it.

Holiday season promotions require a lot of time and efforts but they will pay off with more orders and more thankful customers.