Since last year, ecommerce has seen unprecedented growth due to the lack of brick and mortar shopping. It looks like the pivot to ecommerce has continued into 2021 as well. This coming season, major shopping dates like Cyber Monday and Black Friday are expected to increase in sales as compared to 2020. So, before you use your same old marketing strategies that may have worked in years past, find out some of the ways you can really optimize your Shopify marketing, Google marketing, and Facebook Ads to garner new customers and keep in touch with returning customers. In this article we’ll be breaking down the top digital marketing trends for the upcoming holiday season like:

1. Personalized Customer Experience
2. How to Prep for Big Online Shopping Days
3. Using Google My Business
4. Creating Email Campaigns
5. Holiday GIft Guides
6. Monitoring Reviews
7. New Strategies For Using Facebook Ads

With these tips from a top agency in your digital marketing arsenal, you’ll be more than prepared for the holidays.

Give Customers a Highly Personalized Ecommerce Experience

A customer’s page journey tracking is an excellent addition to a Shopify marketing strategy

If your company hasn’t taken advantage of page journey tracking  yet, now is the time. Page journey tracking maps a user’s journey via their cursor while they visit your website. Using this data can help you gather detailed information on what is working within your site, and what needs improvement. If you are noticing many customers are leaving a page at a certain step, try adding a more convincing call to action or cut down on the amount of pages you have to navigate to make a conversion. Taking this valuable consumer data into account is a great way to optimize your Shopify marketing before the holiday season.

Get a Head Start on Big Shopping Days

Days like Cyber Monday and Black Friday are extremely lucrative, with the right marketing strategy

When the major ecommerce shopping days roll around, it often seems like the internet is oversaturated with ads. The question is, how can you get a leg up on the competition for Cyber Monday and Black Friday? The major key is to be the first to begin running your ads. This year, customers are expected to begin their holiday shopping in earnest by mid October. To make sure your ads stand out, have your campaign ready to go by mid October or before. That way, consumers will see your Cyber Monday and Black Friday ads before any of the others. If you wait until just before the major buying days, there is a chance your campaign will be lost in the shuffle. 

Update Your Site For Optimized Customer Service

A great way to provide excellent ecommerce customer service is by answering inquiries before a conversion

During the holiday season, the more information your customers know about your business the better. By answering common concerns on your site or your Google My Business listing, you can give your customers confidence with their ecommerce experience. For example, shipping time is a major concern around the holiday season. If your customers already know approximately how long an item will take to arrive before they purchase, you’ll receive fewer negative reviews. Without a designated FAQ section on your website or Google My Business listing, you may end up with unhappy customers who were unaware of shipping or other company policies.

Launch a Themed Holiday Email Campaign

When it comes to using Shopify for marketing, email campaigns are one of the best options for the holiday season

Much like running ads, holiday email marketing campaigns are also super effective for enticing customers around the major shopping days. Email campaigns are common during the holidays, so you need to make sure that your email campaign has a few creative ways of standing out. A few ways to really catch the eyes of your target audience are:

• Keep copy simple, short, and direct
• Make good use of a CTA that leads back to your site
• Use limited time offers as a way to add urgency to your campaign
• Make sure that your emails work well with mobile and desktop formats
• Let your customers know how long they have to place holiday orders

These are just a few ideas to get you started with your holiday email campaign. The key is creating a simple and effective message with a clear call to action. And don’t forget to get creative, consumers definitely appreciate seeing something new in their inbox!

Create a Branded Gift Guide to Share with Your Target Audience

Gift guides are a great way to get consumers thinking about how your product fits on their yearly shopping list

For a lot of people, the hardest part about holiday shopping is finding the right gift for a loved one. That’s where your marketing strategy comes into play! By creating a gift guide that can be sent out as a part of your holiday email campaign, your audience can apply the guide to their own friends and family. A gift guide is a great way to highlight new or signature products that are integral to your brand without a consumer having to actively search for your products. By creating a gift guide, you make it easier for your audience to make decisions — and ultimately conversions.

Closely Monitor Your Review Section

More and more consumers will rely on reviews this upcoming shopping season

Customer reviews are a part of every business. Whether good or bad, past customers love to report on their experience, and prospective customers rely on these when they consider patronizing your business. So, if you haven’t already, take a look at your customer reviews either on Google My Business or another major review source. If your business has negative reviews or no reviews, customers are more likely to shy away in favor of more well reviewed businesses. Monitoring your reviews and responding to negative reviews can give your business a boost when it comes to online trustworthiness. There is also opportunity to take advantage of user generated content (UGC), such as photos and other testimonies. The more reliable information consumers have about your business, the better.

Check Your Site Speed

If your site isn’t loading quickly, you could lose customers due to high bounce rates

These days, every second spent on a site counts. Especially during the holidays. That's why you should minimize your site’s loading speed before the season really kicks into high gear. If your site isn’t loading after 2 or 3 seconds, you could be in trouble if you don’t take action to simplify your site’s backend. Here are a few things to pay attention to when it comes to making your site faster:

• Minimize the number HTTP requests
• Compressing any large files on your site
• Replace any large image files
• Enable browser caching

Optimizing your site makes sure that your marketing campaigns will result in conversions. After all, if your customers don’t trust your site, they are unlikely to make any purchases.

Use Facebook For Holiday Marketing

As shopping through social media grows year over year, its time to optimize your facebook marketing strategy

Shopping features on social media apps are great places to remind customers of your business, or convert new customers based on their social media use. On platforms like Facebook, it's easier than ever to purchase items directly from a targeted advertisement. So let’s go over some tips from Facebook on how to optimize your ad campaign:

1. Update your product catalog for maximum clarity - This season Facebook wants you to make sure that your product catalog is optimized. When your business has a clear, concise, and accurate catalog complete with pictures, you'll have a better chance of reaching your target audience.
2. Add shopping tags to your posts – Product tags are key for increasing site traffic and conversions. On both Facebook and Instagram, you can tag up to 5 products per post. Shopping tags are a great way to create holiday gift guides and visually show off your products in either posts or stories.
3. Create Holiday Collections – When you are using Facebook to promote your product collections, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, according to Facebook, you should have at least 8 products in each collection. It is also important to price your collections under $100 so consumers are more likely to click on an impulse.

After implementing these changes, you are ready to start your advertising campaign through Facebook. Facebook also intends to roll out even more advertising features during the holidays, so stay tuned for the latest news from the platform.

This holiday season use Responsival’s tips for executing a successful holiday digital ad campaign. As a top digital marketing firm, Responsival can help take the hassle out of growing your online presence. No matter how big or small your business, Responsival has the tools you need to run a successful holiday Shopify marketing campaign this year. Let’s work together, schedule a discovery call with our sales team today!