Time to Start Your Retail Holiday Campaigns Now

If you haven’t already thought about starting your 2014 holiday campaigns, now is the time to not only plan your campaigns, but actually start them. Did you know that holiday shoppers begin their online search for holiday gifts in September? Of course, the “hot” shopping season begins after Halloween; however early searchers will give you hints as to the big trends for this year. In addition to that, planning and working with other departments such as creative and IT departments can often take some time to get your holiday banners, coding, and landing pages designed and optimised. Here are a few ideas for getting a head start on holiday campaigns:

Product Listing Ads

Google Product Listing AdsStart compiling your databases and get your PLA campaigns in place. Last holiday season, PLA global retail spend increased by 138 per cent.  This type of advertising campaign should definitely be considered as part of your marketing strategy for this year. It takes some time and attention to get your top selling products optimised in time for the season. This includes descriptive product names, engaging descriptions and ad copy.  Some price comparisons may be in order as well to make sure that you are priced right.  Gain an edge over the competition by focusing some time on asking for product ratings and reviews from past customers to further boost your traffic, click-throughs, and overall ranking of your products in the new Google Shopping set up.

Mobilise for Mobile

September is a good month to evaluate what you need done before the holiday season is upon you and it is too late to make any major changes. One of the most important things for online retailers this year is to be mobile friendly. If your customers can’t find what they need on the smaller size mobile screens of smartphones and tablets, they will likely skip over your store. Mobile viewing adds extra conveniences for shoppers and also ensures that they will find what they want to purchase from you in both an offline and a brick and mortar setting.

Target Local Markets

Even if you sell online to a global customer base, you should still optimise yourself for local searches too. Of course, local optimisation is vital if you do cater to a certain local market; but it is important to remember that local placements can help you even if you sell online.

Retargeting

Retargeting can help improve upon all of the other marketing efforts and tie everything together. As you already know as a marketer, it often takes several touch points to get through to your target customer. Retargeting helps remind and re-engage your website visitors when they see your ads across the web. When you begin campaigns early, you can cookie and retarget those early shoppers so that they won’t forget where they saw your products. Retargeting helps improve the ROI of all campaigns.


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