How Marketing Strategies Differ During the Holidays
Introduction
The end of the year is here once again, which means chilly weather, cozy sweaters, warm drinks, and the holidays! The two biggest shopping events of the year both fall in Q4; Black Friday/Cyber Monday and Christmas. With the upcoming surge in consumer spending, businesses have an opportunity to capitalize on the demand for goods and services.
If you are a small, B2C business, it’s important to be aware of how the holiday season will affect your marketing efforts, and how you budget and implement your marketing campaigns. In this blog, we will discuss 3 ways the holidays affect your digital marketing strategy, and what can be done to maximize ROI during this time of year.
Changes in Consumer Behavior
The first major change that occurs during the holiday season is the surge in consumer spending for specific products and services. Traveling, gift-giving, and decorating for the holidays are what most people are focused on. This means other industries might slow down. For example, real estate, automotive, and construction might see a dip in sales.
Plan your marketing efforts accordingly. It might be wise to slow down your marketing efforts if you know there isn’t much demand for your product/service during this time of year.
Conversely, if you are in e-commerce or other B2C industries that are promoting products for the holidays, this change in consumer behavior can be used to your advantage. An increase in consumer buying also means an increase in marketing spending across the board.
Changes in Ad Spending/Revenue
The changes in consumer behavior go hand-in-hand with the changes in ad revenue and ad spending. More businesses will be pushing ads during the holidays, meaning the prices of PPC and other online advertisements will go up.
This change makes your PPC strategy more crucial during these price surges. It will require a more thorough SEO keyword research process, in order to find the most valuable keywords to bid on. Since prices for ad space will increase, it is worth considering increasing spending on fewer keywords. This strategy will increase visibility for your most important keywords, instead of getting minimal visibility for many keywords.
Competition with E-Commerce
E-commerce rules the online ad space during the holiday shopping season. If you are in this industry, you have to take extra measures to stand out among the crowd.
One way to do this is to use your target audience to your advantage. Running extra email marketing campaigns and offering deals to your loyal customers can increase your conversion rates for the month.
Additionally, according to Google, “64% of smartphone shoppers turn to mobile searches for ideas about what to buy before heading to stores.” Therefore, PPC ads and other digital ad holiday marketing campaigns can greatly improve your brand awareness, and get potential customers interested in your product/service.
Social media posts, influencer marketing, and search ads are other good options to pursue to increase your visibility online.
If you are looking to implement PPC ads, or any other holiday marketing strategy this season, give Vortex Digital a call at 319.621.0191 for a free, no-obligation, consultation.
