Digital Marketing Tips For The Holidays

As we enjoy the cooler fall weather, the holidays will be here soon! Here are some digital marketing tips for the holidays to make your digital marketing campaigns shine this holiday season.

The Covid-19 pandemic made digital marketing essential to reach customers at home. The pandemic changed a lot of our shopping behavior. Online shopping and e-commerce have boomed. Curb-side pickup continues to be popular.

How Important is Digital Marketing During the Holidays?

Here are some recent holiday shopping forecasts,

• Holiday retail sales are forecast to increase 4% to 6% in 2022. E-commerce sales will grow 12.8% to 14.3% in the 2022 holiday season, reaching about $260 billion. (Deloitte)
• Digital’s role in shopping has been cemented as more than 70% of surveyed participants reported that their shopping journey involved digital touchpoints. ((Google and Boston Consulting Group survey, 2021)
• In a global survey, 74% of in-store shoppers who searched online before going to a store, said they searched for something in-store related such as the closest store, locations, hours, directions and wait times. (Google/Ipsos)

Digital Marketing Tips For the Holidays

1. Update Your Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile is a free online business profile provided by Google. It allows you to manage how your business information appears on Google Search and Google Maps when customers search on Google.

Updating your Google Business Profile is a quick digital marketing strategy with significant gains. A Google Business Profile is essential for a local business to reach local customers. It is also important to improve your local SEO (search engine optimization) rankings.

Google Business Profile has added several new Covid-19 features. This enables businesses to keep customers informed of any changes to their business hours or services due to the pandemic.

You should update your Google Business Profile with:
• Changes in your business information.
• A complete business description and all relevant business categories.
• A list of all your products and services along with pictures.
• Your contact information and hours so that customers can visit, call and message your business.
• Photos about your business and team.
• Weekly posts about your business. Posts can include Covid-19 updates, offers, products or events. This can be used to showcase holiday sales and events.
• A link to your website for more information or to make a purchase.
• Special attributes like “black-owned”, “women-led” and more.

The new Google Business Profile Covid-19 features enable you to:
• Update changes in business hours including closures, special hours, senior hours or reduced hours.
• List services such as dining, take-out, curb-side pickup, outdoor seating options and more.
• List online services such as virtual appointments, online classes and estimates.
• Post Covid-19 updates such as Covid-19 safety and hygiene practices, closures or other information.
• Healthcare providers can use the Covid-19 information link on your profile to link to a Covid-19 page on your website. On your website, you can provide information on Covid-19 testing, in-person office hours and Covid-19 hotline information.
• New health and safety attributes are now available. Food, retail and service businesses can use these attributes to show Covid-19 restrictions such as:

• Masks required for customers and staff.
• Temperature checks required.
• Appointments required.

In addition to your Google Business Profile, you should also update your business profile on Microsoft Bing Places and Yelp as well.

For more information on how to optimize your Google Business Profile, read our blog post on How to Create and Optimize a Google Business Profile.

2. Increase Your Google Ads PPC Marketing Campaigns

If you are currently running a Google Ads PPC (pay per click) marketing campaign, a digital marketing tip with maximum impact is to increase your Google Ads PPC marketing campaigns for the holidays.

You can
• Increase your monthly Ad budget to show more Ads during the holidays.
• Increase bids on your PPC ads so that the Ads are shown more competitively and in higher positions.
• Increase the geographic locations where your Ads are shown.
• Increase the hours when your Ads run.
• Add Ad campaigns to target more products or services, or holiday specials.
• Add more keywords to your Ad campaigns to increase targeting.
• Add more Ads with holiday themes.
• Use ad extensions in your ad campaigns. You can use upto 4 Ad extensions per ad group. Add Ad extensions for holiday promotions and sales. Ad extensions can be used to list phone numbers, locations and direct links to important pages on your website.
• Add Call Ads to increase calls to your business.

Here is an example of a Google Ad with ad extensions from the Google search results:
 

Google Ads works along with an existing SEO strategy to increase leads and conversions. The ideal digital marketing strategy uses a combined search marketing strategy of SEO and PPC to reach customers and maximize leads.

For more information on Google Ads PPC marketing, read our blog post on What is Google Ads PPC Marketing and How it Helps Your Business

3. Use A Remarketing Campaign in Google Ads To Reach More Customers

If you are running a Google Ads PPC marketing campaign, a digital marketing strategy for the holidays is to add a remarketing campaign.

A remarketing campaign allows you to reach customers who visited your website and never completed a purchase.

When these customers search online on Google for products or services you sell, they will be shown your remarketing Ads to encourage them to visit your site again and complete a purchase.

Google requires a minimum number of users before remarketing search or display Ads will show. However, if your website gets enough traffic, remarketing is a great way to get customers back to complete a purchase.

4. Optimize Website Landing Pages to Increase Conversions

Customers land on your website landing page when they click through from a Google PPC Ad or directly from the search results pages on Google. Your website landing pages are important to provide customers with information about the products or services mentioned in the ad or the search result to increase leads, conversions and sales.

Updating and optimizing your website landing pages that are used for your Google Ads PPC marketing campaigns, or for your organic SEO strategy, is another quick digital marketing win.

Here are some digital marketing tips for your landing pages:
• Your landing page for a Google Ads PPC campaign must be specific to your PPC ads. Visitors who click on an Ad should be directed to a specific landing page which provides more information about the product or service being advertised. This helps to increase leads and conversions.
• Your landing page must have a compelling headline. The text on the landing page should match the text on the ad.
• Your landing page must load fast. Display fast-loading images on the landing page that are relevant to the Ad.
• Use a simple contact form on the landing page to collect customer information.
• Use compelling call-to-action buttons.
• Your website and landing page must be mobile-friendly and responsive.

For more information, read our post on 11 Tips to Optimize Your Website Landing Page for Conversions and Mobile

5. Your Website Should be Mobile-Responsive and Up-to-date

Your website must be mobile-friendly and responsive since most people are searching the web on mobile devices.

60% of smartphone users have contacted a business directly using the search results, like the click to call option. (Think with Google)

As we saw earlier, US consumers are expected to spend more than $86 billion using their smartphones this holiday season. (Adobe Holiday Shopping Forecast 2021)

Your website needs to be updated with the latest information to serve customers for the holidays.

For more information, read our post on 7 Reasons why Mobile-Friendly Websites are Essential to Online Marketing.

6. Increase Website Traffic to Increase Leads and Conversions

A website needs to get sufficient traffic from target customers to be effective in increasing leads, conversions and sales.

E-commerce and online shopping have boomed as more people prefer to shop from home.

You can use several different marketing strategies to increase holiday traffic to your website to increase conversions and sales.

• If your website is SEO-optimized, you can use SEO to improve organic search rankings for important keywords.
• Use local SEO optimization to improve local search rankings and reach local customers. This includes optimizing your Google My Business profile and making sure online directory listings are consistent.
• Increase social media marketing on all your social media channels including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other relevant platforms.
• Post useful and relevant blog posts regularly to attract customers to your website. This also helps to improve SEO rankings.
• Increase paid search advertising such as Google Ads PPC marketing or Microsoft Bing Ads.
• Get referral traffic from other websites or blogs.
• Make use of email marketing and send out newsletters to encourage people to visit your website.
• Make sure your website loads fast. A fast page speed is important for user experience and SEO rankings with Google’s Page Experience Update. Most websites lose 50% of their traffic because they take too long to load.
• Track your website performance regularly with Google Analytics and Google Search Console and fix any issues.

For more information, read our post on 11 Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Website

7. Send Out Marketing Emails to Connect with Your Customers

Another quick and effective digital marketing tip for the holidays is email marketing. Email marketing is a very effective way to connect with customers.

If you have been in regular contact with your mailing list subscribers throughout the year, they already know your business. Send out a newsletter to your mailing list with your special holiday offers and promotions.

Estimates indicate that email engagement rates increased during Covid-19 as customers stayed home.

According to Hubspot Ultimate List of Email Marketing Statistics 2021,
• 78% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months.
• 59% of respondents say marketing emails influence their purchase decisions.

8. Increase Social Media Marketing to Engage with Customers

Another effective digital marketing tip is to increase social media posts for the holidays.

Increase social media marketing on all of your social media channels including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and other relevant platforms.

Use social media posts to share information about holiday special offers and promotions.

You can also use paid social marketing to reach customers on Twitter, Facebook and other platforms.

9. Track marketing campaign performance with Analytics

Your website should be linked to Google Analytics and Google Search Console to track information about how your visitors use your website. This will help to track your website performance and make improvements.

Google analytics provides a wealth of useful information about your website traffic and how people interact with your website.

This includes
• website traffic and sources
• bounce rate
• which geographic locations your visitors are coming from
• landing pages
• exit pages
• how much time they are spending on your site

Google search console and Google My Business Insights help you to track additional data including

• search queries used by customers to find your site.
• indexing status and crawl errors.
• security issues.
• page speed and more

For more information, read our blog posts on Google Analytics reports, Google Search Console reports and Google My Business Insights reports.

Conclusion

These digital marketing tips for the holidays will help to promote your business and holiday offers and to increase traffic, leads, conversions and sales. These marketing strategies will enhance your existing digital marketing campaigns for the holiday season.

We hope you find these digital marketing tips for the holidays helpful to optimize your holiday online marketing strategies.

Article First Published: November 12, 2020, Updated: September 30, 2022

Need Help with Digital Marketing?

Gold Mango Design LLC. helps small and medium businesses with successful digital marketing strategies. Our digital marketing services include Google Ads PPC Marketing, SEO, Local SEO, Web Design & Web Development, Digital Marketing consulting and more. We are located in Plano, TX right outside Dallas and serve customers in the US. Contact us at https://goldmangodesign.com

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