It’s November 7th, and the holiday season is officially upon us! People all over the world are beginning to plan holiday parties, put up Christmas trees (yes, even before Thanksgiving!), and, of course, shop for presents.

You could say “it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas”, but it’s also beginning to look a lot like ecommerce sales will hit an all-time high this holiday season! In fact, this year about HALF of all holiday shopping will be done online! Deloitte, a consulting and analytics firm, performed research that revealed that shoppers are planning on doing an average of 47% of their holiday shopping online, and 47% of their holiday shopping in physical stores. And according to eMarketer, ecommerce stores will bring in about $95 BILLION over the course of this month and next month! Cha-Ching!

So what does this mean for you?

It means that shoppers are more likely to buy from you, an online store, than ever before! There are huge opportunities for you; don’t miss out!

I know what you’re thinking: “So how do I leverage all of this online shopping to my advantage?” Well, friend, I’m glad you asked…

If you don’t have a strategy that will pierce through the chaos of the season and reach more customers, read on. If you want to catch busy peoples’ attention and attract them to your website, products, and/or services, you need an Ecommerce Holiday Marketing Plan.

That’s why we’ve created:

The 9 Vital Steps for Creating an Awesome Ecommerce Holiday Marketing Plan:

Step 1 - Dedicate some time

The holidays are busy, and as an online retailer, they’ll only get busier for you. Look at your calendar now and carve out sometime in the next few days to work on your holiday marketing. It doesn’t have to be a super long amount of time, but committing time on your schedule is an important first step and will help keep you accountable.

Step 2 - Have SMART goals for your holiday marketing

Before you start investing time and money into your holiday marketing, decide what you want it to accomplish. Too often ecommerce marketers create marketing before they decide exactly what exactly they want that marketing to do. This leads to missed opportunities, lost leads, and/or less revenue. Commit to a specific goal now.

For example:

Do you want to increase sales by a certain amount?

Do you want the average sales per customer to increase to a certain number?

Is your focus to create leads that you can market to now and nurture more later?

Decide what your end goal is and the number you’d like to hit.

Remember, SMART Goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound.

Step 3 - Revisit your target market

As you know, all of your marketing needs to be aimed directly at your target market, a.k.a. the people who are most likely to buy your products and/or services. To help you figure out who your target market is, ask yourself these questions:

1. Who are my best customers?

2. Are they often men or women?

3. What age group are they most often in?

4. What problems do my products/services solve for them?

5. What do they like to do? What are they interested in?

6. Where do they spend their time?

7. Are they often on social media? If so, are they on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn?

8. Are they often active blog followers? If so, what kinds of blogs?

9. Are they usually married or single?

10. Why do they like buying from me instead of my competition?

The more you know about your customers, the better you can market to people like them. The answers to these questions will “paint a picture” of the people you should target.

Keep in mind that many people are shopping for gifts for others during the holidays. Ask yourself who might be buying your products/services for your target market. Right now, your marketing should address those people as well.

But don’t forget, about six out of 10 Americans plan on shopping for themselves while they shop for gifts, so make sure you are appealing to your primary target market as well.

Step 4 - Create an irresistible offer

Stand out from your competition with a great offer!

If you need a little help coming up with ideas on what offers to use, Capital One suggests using one of these top sales promotions:

1. Discounted products

2. Free Shipping/Free Returns

3. Flash Sales

4. Buy More, Save More promotions

5. Product Giveaways/Branded Gifts

6. Loyalty Points

7. Coupon Giveaways

8. Competitions

9. Price Match Promises

Step 5 - Pay special attention to your messaging

Here’s where a lot of ecommerce stores and marketers fail: messaging.

Buying is emotional, not logical. That means your messaging has to connect with your specific target market emotionally, not just logically.

When you go to create the content for your marketing, ask yourself these questions:

1. What are the biggest overall frustrations my customers have during the holidays?

2. How can I help alleviate those frustrations?

Often times, people think that their customer’s problems have to do with their products and can be solved by their products. We often hear things like, “My customer is frustrated because they want a good health product that they can give to their spouse as a holiday gift. We solve that problem by providing good health products that would work well as gifts for their spouses.”…

Don’t fall into that trap! You need to think on a bigger scale. Think outside of yourself, then reel it back in…

For example, as you probably know from your own life, the holidays are hectic to say the least. With parties, traveling, cooking, shopping, working, cleaning, and emotionally preparing to see crazy Aunt Betty, it seems like there’s never a spare moment. Plus, it’s often stressful financially…

Robert Collier, a famous marketer/copywriter, once said “Always enter the conversation already taking place in the customer's mind.” What is the conversation going on in your customers’ minds right now? Probably something along the lines of “I’m so busy and stressed! How will I get everything done in time for the holidays?! How will I afford to buy everything I want to/need to buy?! I don’t even know what gifts I should get for the people on my list!”

Answer those questions in your marketing! Address your customers’ overarching concerns, stresses, and frustrations in your offers and in your marketing message and you’ll see your numbers soar.

Step 6 - Leverage your current (and growing) email lists correctly

Use your assets to your advantage. If you already have an email list, segment it out and speak directly to each segment. Connect with them over what they care about – not over a mass, general email. General emails that are directed to “everyone” tend to not be as compelling as the ones that are customized and directed toward specific segments of your list.

Right now there’s A LOT of emails getting sent to your customers and prospects. If you want your emails to make the cut and not get deleted, speak “one-on-one” with your customers based on what you know about them.

It’s a lot easier to segment lists with marketing automation software. That’s why time saving tools like Infusionsoft are so important to your marketing! If you’d like to learn more about how to automate your list building, list segmenting, lead nurture, follow up, abandon cart campaigns and more, click here!

Step 7 - Have a “reason” for your marketing: “Because” specific dates

Did you know that the word “because” is one of the most powerful words in the English language? Research shows that people are more likely to comply with what you want when you use the word “because” and give a reason for what you are doing.

One way to use this to your advantage is to do marketing “because” a certain holiday/date is coming up/is here. For example, “Order now because there’s only three shipping days left ‘till Christmas!” or “Because Black Friday is just two days away, we wanted to remind you about our crazy-good deals!”

Here’s a list of important dates that you can create marketing around.

  • Thanksgiving Day: November 24, 2016
  • Black Friday: November 25, 2016
  • Cyber Monday: November 28, 2016
  • Hanukkah: December 24, 2016 – January 1, 2017
  • Christmas Eve: December 24, 2016
  • Christmas: December 25, 2016
  • Kwanzaa: December 26 – January 1
  • New Year’s Eve: December 31, 2016
  • New Year’s Day: January 1, 2017

Step 8 - Have a Call To Action

Don’t forget to always use a call to Action (a.k.a. “CTA”). Give people the next step to take and ask them to do it. Just a few of the many Calls To Action you can use this holiday season are:

  • Add to Cart
  • Buy Gift Now
  • Buy Now, Pay Later
  • Give This Gift
  • Click Here
  • Purchase Now
  • Order Now
  • Show You Care
  • Get Free Shipping Now
  • Save Now
  • Send Gift Directly, Free

Step 9 - Follow Up

Follow up with your customers and leads. After spending time creating all of your holiday marketing, optimize your hard work by nurturing all the people you connect with. Don’t stop with the holidays, continue to send emails and offers to them throughout the year!

No matter where you do your marketing – whether via Facebook Ads, email campaigns, PPC ads, website pop ups, or some other way – it’s important to include all of the above elements to your holiday marketing strategy. Don’t forget to measure results daily or at least weekly, and to make iterations based on your results.

We wish you the best, let us know if you have any questions we can help you with!