By Danielle Forget, Published November 12, 2014
It’s the most wonderful time of the year, marketers. It’s shopping season!
From the eager parents getting all their Christmas shopping done early, to the shopping enthusiasts counting down the days until those Black Friday promotions. People are gearing up to shop, and they’re gearing up to shop now.
To help get you through marketing’s busiest time of the year, we put together five helpful tips…
1. Leave Enough Time
There is nothing worse than feeling rushed when setting up your campaigns to launch. Scrambling more often than not leads to unnecessary errors and overlooked opportunities.
The good news is that the end of summer is slow season for most brands, giving marketers a fair chance to get a head start on fall marketing prep.
Don’t wait – leave yourself enough time to get started!
2. Go Multi-Screen
Reports show that 74% of people use their mobile phone to help them while shopping, with 79% making a purchase as a result. (Source)
Before you abandon your desktop strategy for mobile, note that 90% of consumers move between devices to accomplish a goal. (Source) That means they very well may have came across your site while researching on a desktop, opened your emails on their tablet, but end up ordering from their smartphone.
Multiple touch point engagement may seem overwhelming, but the secret is all in how you can tie them together in a way that makes sense for each device.
3. Geo-Target Those Shoppers
If you’re an online store, maybe geotargeting isn’t as big of deal to you – but if you’re a bricks and mortar, geotargeting is certainly a must.
One of the best examples is Quiznos. Their campaign was set to target customers who had visited one of their competitor’s locations within the past 30 days using their mobile device’s location history. Armed with this competitive intel, Quiznos used geo-targeting to entice those within a 3 mile radius to stop in one of their stores.
The trick to location-based targeting? Getting the customer at the right stage of the buying process.
For upcoming Black Friday promos, retailers would be clever to target anyone who has been to their physical stores within the past 30 days.
4. Bring Them Back
Some of us our impulsive shoppers, while the rest of us are more cautious with our spending habits.
After a perspective customer leaves your site, you can use retargeting to help stay top of mind and bring them back to complete their purchase.
While retargeting is pretty much a no-brainer these days, be sure to add more strategy to the mix by retargeting with your current campaigns, rather than your standard branded banner ads.
5. Keep Holiday Season On Their Mind
Think it through. While holiday shopping is mainly about people buying for others, Black Friday is geared towards the deal finders and shopaholics.
When creating ad copy for your Black Friday campaigns, use copy that motivates your potential buyers to take advantage of this red hot deal. Create urgency with time sensitive promotions, focus on instant gratification or the spirit of gift giving.
Get Ready
Yes, it may be a very busy and vital time for your marketing strategy. However with careful planning you’ll be able to get yourself in front of those eager shoppers and begin ringing in the profit.
Have any other tips to share for prepping for marketing’s busiest season? Please do share them in the comments!
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