Holiday Marketing Strategies to Boost Online Sales

The holiday season is the busiest shopping time of the year. Store owners excitedly await the holiday season, as it comes with an opportunity to meet sales and revenue targets.

However, store owners often wonder how they can divert the increased holiday shopping traffic to their storefronts. This article will answer this question.

Targeted marketing strategies during the holiday season will help divert the increased shopping traffic to your online store to increase your sales and revenue significantly.

Specifically, this article will reveal some of the best holiday marketing strategies you can use to snag holiday shopping traffic and boost online sales.

Let’s start the discussion with what holiday marketing is and why it is essential.

What is holiday marketing?

Holiday marketing means actively running marketing campaigns during the holiday period to get customers more interested in products and services.

The goal of holiday marketing is to promote sales and boost revenue.

Why setting up holiday marketing strategies is important

Setting up holiday marketing strategies is key to attracting some of the increased holiday shopping traffic and boosting your sales figures and profits.

The holiday season is usually the busiest shopping time of the year. Holiday spending increases by over 8% compared to the earlier periods of the year because, as shoppers excitedly welcome the holiday, they tend to ease up and spend a lot more money. 

To cash in on the increased shopping traffic of the holiday period, retailers are known to offer a variety of deals during this time. Customers generally love deals, causing them to gravitate toward retailers that have attractive deals.

You don’t want customers to view you as that odd retailer who refused to reward its customers when everyone else did. So, if there’s a “best time” to run marketing campaigns, it is the holiday period when everyone else offers deals, and customers are actively looking for bargains and perks.

Six holiday marketing strategies to boost online sales 

Below we list some of the best holiday marketing strategies to boost online sales.

1. Make website design changes to give your website a holiday look 

Have you ever wondered why physical stores bother with holiday decorations? The decorations tell customers that the store is part of the community, creating a connection between the store and customers. 

Also, decorations fill your customer with the holiday spirit, putting them at ease and increasing their chances of buying. The same thing applies to online sales. 

An eCommerce website dressed up to reflect the holiday season connects better with customers during this time, communicates positive feelings, and makes customers feel at ease as they shop. So, an easy and effective holiday marketing strategy means making website design changes to dress up your online store in the holiday spirit.

It’s easier to give an online store a holiday look than decorating a physical store to reflect a holiday. It involves adding some elements to your website. Some elements you can add to dress up your website in the holiday spirit include:

• Festive colors and fonts
• Music and jingles
• Holiday-themed images or video
• Countdown timer
• Holiday-related banners

With Bookmark, you don’t need to be a website designer to make these website changes to give your online store the holiday look. Bookmark’s simple drag-and-drop editing tools make it easy to add elements to your website and customize it to fit your unique needs. The Countdown Timer and Video Backgrounds are a few of Bookmark’s many features that can help you give your website the holiday flair.

2. Add holiday flavor to your products and collection

One way to connect better with customers is to extend the holiday spirit to your product and service offerings.

Holiday decorations create feelings that end in your online store. But extending the holiday spirit to your products creates feelings that follow customers home.

Some popular ways to add holiday flavor to your products include:

• Customize your packaging for the holiday.
• “Giftify” your products by bundling two or more into gift packs.

You can add holiday flavor to your collection by creating landing pages for active holiday marketing campaigns. Unlike regular web pages that encourage exploration, holiday-special landing pages would call for a specific action, making more visitors become customers.

With Bookmark’s easy website builder, you can create as many sub-pages as you want to organize your website to your unique needs. 

You can add sales-boosting holiday landing pages like Christmas offers, Gifts for women (or men), Gifts for moms (or dads), Gifts for kids, etc.

3. Offer add-on services like gift-wrapping

Customers like add-on services, as these enhance the value of their purchase without additional costs to them. Thus, when considering holiday marketing strategies to boost online sales, look beyond your core products and services and plan to offer add-on services.

A popular holiday service add-on is gift wrapping. You may enhance the experience by allowing customers to include a gift message.

4. Offer free shipping and returns

Nine out of ten customers say that free shipping is the biggest incentive to shop online, while 78% of customers will buy if you offer free returns. Thus, free shipping and free return are some of the best holiday marketing strategies to boost online sales.

Know that customers generally would rather not pay anything above a product’s price. Free shipping promos eliminate the additional charge for receiving an online purchase, so customers gravitate toward them.

If you don’t want free-shipping offers to affect your bottom line, then offer it only when customers spend a certain amount (e.g., free shipping for orders that exceed a certain price or quantity).

Also, customers don’t want to lose money if they need to return an online purchase. Free return promos work because they allow customers to return an unwanted product with no extra fee.

5. Employ social media holiday marketing campaigns

About 4.7 billion people use social media worldwide, equating to 59% of the global population. So, social media campaigns help you reach potential customers where they are.

Before the holiday shopping season, you should determine where your target audience is (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, or TikTok).

Then determine what they want. Analytics that use browsing behavior can help you determine what your target audience wants. You may also interact directly with your target audience to find out what they want. For example, you can conduct polls to determine the promo they favor.

6. Run holiday email marketing campaigns

Despite the increasing popularity of social media, email is still the best channel to reach people. Thus, one efficient holiday marketing strategy to boost online sales is email marketing.

Here are some reasons why email marketing is one of the best marketing strategies. 

• An email message is about five times more likely to be seen than a Facebook message
• Email has a 66% conversion rate versus social media.

If you’ve not done email marketing before, this holiday season may be the perfect time for it. Start by building a good email list, which helps you create leads. Then design compelling email messages. For best results, target a specific audience at a time and personalize the emails.

If you’ve done email marketing before, revisit your campaign and try to improve it. 

Key takeaways

Customer spending increases by 8.5% during the holiday season. Customers love deals, so running marketing campaigns during the holiday season can draw shopping traffic to your store to boost sales.

Some holiday marketing strategies to boost online sales are:

• Give your website a holiday look
• Add holiday flavor to your products and collections
• Offer add-on services like gift-wrapping
• Offer free shipping and easy returns
• Employ social media holiday marketing campaigns
• Run holiday email marketing campaigns

Conclusion 

There’s no better time than the holiday season to boost sales and revenue figures. The six holiday marketing strategies above can help you attract part of the high shopping traffic during the holiday period.

Bookmark has solutions that can help with your holiday marketing strategies, especially with giving your website the holiday look (via adding holiday-themed elements) and adding holiday flavor to your collection (via creating holiday-special landing pages). Contact Bookmark to get started.

Stay tuned for other guides that help you start, build, and grow your online presence.