Holidays 2020

No one said this holiday season can’t still bring some happiness to business owners.
And that can happen if you focus on your customers.
The holidays are a time to recoup some of the year’s losses, even if this year has been a year like no other.  

But you need to start RIGHT NOW. 

It doesn’t matter if your business is already 100% online, strictly brick and mortar, or a combination, more customers than ever before are going to need to shop online.
So for holiday gift shopping, your ecommerce campaigns are going to be even more important than ever.

Here are some advertising and ecommerce fundamentals you need to make sure you’re covering in order to give your current and potential customers the best holiday shopping experience possible.

1. Focus on your ad copy

Smart advertisers need to revisit their ad copy before launching their campaigns for the holidays.  By writing unique ad copy to launch your holiday sales, you’re putting yourself ahead of many advertisers who don’t have the time or inclination to do so.  Even if you don’t specifically mention holiday promotions in your ad copy, including seasonal messaging tells your prospects that whatever you are offering is current, providing further incentive to click on your ads.

2. Maintain your online product feeds or catalogues

Make sure you’re only advertising products that are in stock.  And, the offerings are accurate; only make promises your business or ecommerce website can deliver on.

3. Use ad scheduling to promote holiday sales

There are several platforms that allow for some form of ad scheduling, to ensure your ads with sale messages are live and paused when they need to be.  Platforms include: Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Facebook/Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, among others.

Depending on the platform(s) you’re using, be sure to check out their ad scheduling capabilities and adjust accordingly.  Know your options and make sure your customers are seeing an accurate message.

4. Provide realistic shipping expectations

Your website needs to set proper expectations, especially the closer you get to the holidays, and warn people if you don’t believe that item will be there on time.  You might lose a sale in the moment, but it’s better than receiving a bad review after the fact.

5. Improve your site speed

With an increase in online shopping this 2020 holiday season, there is bound to be a drain on network bandwidth.  Remove site speed hindrances from your online store and speed things up for your customers; you have your choice of tools to use for this, including Google Developer PageSpeed Insight, GTmetrix, PageSpeed Insight, Pingdom, Webpage Test, among others.  Do not remove your ad pixels; you need them to have insights into performance and optimize your campaigns.

6. Make your site mobile-friendly

With many customers shopping online this holiday season, it’s really important to make sure your site is mobile friendly this holiday season.

7. Optimize product titles and descriptions

Make sure product titles include as much information as possible within the 150-character limit.  This includes the name of the product, brand, gender, size, color, and target age group (if needed).

A similar principle applies to product descriptions.  Make sure that they contain all the relevant keywords and specific information within the 500-character limit.  Write descriptions that highlight the key features of the product.  For inspiration, consider using keyword research tools such as Ahrefs or SEMrush.

8. Make the most of ad extensions

Features like sitelinks, call extensions, and review extensions can make your ads stand out and help holiday shoppers convert.  Even if you’re already using extensions (such as yourstorename Christmas Gifts) in some of your ad campaigns, it is worth revisiting them and checking that you are getting the most out of the many different ad formats that are available, especially before the holiday rush.

9. Do your keyword research

It is vital to capitalize (and bid) on seasonal searches and other timely trends.  One way to do this is by using Google Trends and other similar online marketing tools (Act-On, SpyFu, Moz Pro, among others) to identify new keywords that can breathe life into your holiday campaigns.

10. Make sure your campaigns are tightly organized

Maintaining tight campaign organization and account structure is something you should always stay on top of, but this becomes even more important during the holidays.  If you’re selling seasonal products, these should (obviously) be contained within their own unique ad groups.  Keywords should be relevant and tightly themed.

11. Own organic search by creating gift-specific pages

Search queries “gifts for mom” and “gifts for dad” peak in the middle of December.  “Gifts for her” and “gifts for him” also spike around this time.  Holiday shoppers don’t always do an online search with a specific product or brand in mind; often, they’re hunting for gifts for specific people in their lives.

By creating new, dedicated pages on your site that are optimized for keywords like “gifts for mom” and “gifts for dad,” you improve your chances of ranking highly in the organic search results and getting your products in front of eager shoppers.

12. Invest in paid social

If you haven’t already started advertising online, the holidays are the ideal time to start.  Why, you ask?  Holiday shoppers often vent their frustrations on social media, providing you with the perfect opportunity to offer up some well-timed relief from their holiday shopping woes.

13. Push favorable product ratings

Favorable product ratings provide positive reinforcement on the buyer’s decision making, help your ads stand out against the competitor products without seller ratings, and contribute to driving your Quality Score which means higher visibility and lower CPC (cost per click).

14. Share customer reviews

People often checkout what other people say in online reviews, especially what they think about your products, so make it a priority to get and showcase your online review.  Companies like Trustpilot, Bazaarvoice, Yotpo,

Reviews.io, Feefo, Birdeye, and others have lots of preset tools that allow you to easily integrate reviews into your website.  This social proof can go a long way when users are trying to decide between two different products or solutions.

For local businesses, getting Google reviews, will be crucial for your marketing success.  The quantity and quality of reviews on your Google Business Profile directly impacts your ranking in local results.

15. Use real-life photos

Similar to customer reviews, being able to see products will help online sales.  The tactile experience of being in the store is something you can’t overcome online.  But the next best thing is to provide your customers with plenty of photos of your products.

High-quality and relevant product images will have a positive impact on your products’ visibility and click-through rates.  For clothing items, be sure to use quality 250 x 250px images and 100 x 100px for non-clothing items.  Use contextual product imagery that shows the item in situ and/or show the product from different angles.  This helps your product stand out in competitive branded item results.

16. Cross-sell like crazy with relevant pop-ups

Use the power of pop-ups to cross-sell your site visitors.  Pop-ups don’t need to be annoying!  In fact, when they’re used thoughtfully and with the experience of the user in mind, they can actually be helpful.  Use pop-ups to advertise related products to your site visitors.

17. Drive easy sales by targeting past customers

A great way to score some (relatively) easy wins is to target users who bought products from your store during last year’s holiday season.  Offer them an incentive to buy again.

18. Capture familiar audiences with remarketing lists

Much like search ads, you can adopt remarketing lists for your shopping campaigns too.  This is great technique that’ll allow you to customize bids to previous visitor audiences.  This would include shopping cart abandoners, returning visitors, and previous buyers.

With the flexibility to bid more aggressively on specific audiences that are familiar with your brand and products, remarketing lists for shopping ads have the potential to do wonders for your shopping campaigns. This includes higher click throughs and conversion rates, as well as contributing to lowering your CPA (cost per action) too with generally lower CPC.

19. Encourage immediate action

When it comes to closing seasonal sales, customer hesitation is your biggest enemy.  Therefore, it is important to know how to encourage your holiday shoppers to take the desired action immediately through:

• limited-time offers and deals, such as extras for early purchasing or offer two-for-one sales
• a seasonal sale with an attractive discount offer
• last-minute gift ideas for late shoppers
• a giveaway or contest
• free shipping and/or gift wrapping
• putting emotional triggers (warm, joy, belonging, instant gratification, time, fear) into your messages to evoke feelings
• short-lived daily content
• a sense of urgency on your landing pages (count down timers, banners promoting specific offers)

20. Save last-minute shoppers with local inventory ads

Some people don’t start looking until after your shipping cut-off, the last day people can buy from your online store and get their orders in time for the holidays.

Your business can save the day for these last-minute holiday shoppers.  

With a local inventory ad (LIA) and local storefront, potential buyers will learn when your store is open, how much you have in stock, how much they’ll have to spend, and more.

21. Save last-minute shoppers with electronic gift cards

Even if you don’t have a brick-and-mortar presence, you can still save the day for your procrastination-prone prospects.  Once your shipping cut-off has passed, we recommend ramping up your offers for electronic gift cards.  True—most people (for the sake of showing their loved ones how thoughtful and punctual they are) would prefer to buy a tangible product.  Nonetheless, when the clock is ticking and placing a traditional order is out of the question, shoppers will be grateful for the option of buying a gift card.

22. Give users a few ways to pay

Make it easy for your customers to pay; let them pay with PayPal, bitcoin, VISA Checkout, Apple Pay, AMEX Express Checkout, ALIPAY, Google Pay, masterpass, amazon pay, and/or some other platform rather than needing to use a credit card at your store.

Whether you do one, some, or all of the above, the key is to start today and don’t let up until the New Year.