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The festive season brings with it an inevitable flurry of last-minute marketing and promotional activity. For most businesses, Christmas is a once-yearly opportunity to capitalise on the nation's willingness to spend, spend, spend. Last December internet shoppers spent £5.46bn, according to the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index (www.imrg.org), up 17% on the previous year. Sales in November also rose by 3.8%.
With Christmas looming – and with the opportunity to profit from an increasingly large proportion of festive sales – there has never been a better time to hone your web marketing strategy. In this article we'll look at 4 simple ways you can make the most of the Christmas rush.
Sophisticated Web Marketing Methods for the Christmas Season
Ideally, your Christmas marketing activities are a continuation of the best online business practices you should already have in place – just with a little tweaking.
1. Keyword Blogging
The use of keywords or phrases forms part of everyday blogging best practice for the budding internet marketer. Digging a little deeper, however, can often yield surprising results. 'Long-tail' keywords (three or four word phrases which are very specific to your product) are a great way to widen the net a little, particularly involving universal themes such as Christmas.
Producing content that promotes your product or service in conjunction with generic Christmas terms such as:
...is a simple but effective tool for boosting your website rankings in niche areas. Don't forget to include a 'call to action' and link back to the relevant promotions/content on your site.
2. Focussed Landing Pages
Landing pages are a great way of experimenting with new strategies/layouts or simply to promote specific products in a targeted manner. Consider using time-sensitive, seasonal offers to give your readers an incentive to purchase a product or sign up to your newsletter:
The key here is to include a time-sensitive offer that provides an incentive to take action.
3. Marketing Emails
Much like a mini landing page, targeted email messages can be a useful tool for promoting specific products and presenting exclusive offers to existing customers. Consider sending a pre-emptive mail-out, reminding existing customers on your database that Christmas is fast approaching.
People love nothing more than to feel organised – particularly at such a hectic time of year – so appeal to this basic human need in conjunction with a limited-time reward for that killer one-two combination.
4. Social Media & Keywords
Once you have a grasp on your basic keywords and search terms, this information can be used to broaden your seasonal marketing strategy. Take Twitter for example, which includes a facility to search and track certain words and phrases.
This is mainly achieved through the use of hashtags, Twitter's version of popular tags used in posts. By monitoring the use of certain hashtags, internet marketers can 'collect' related Tweets and their associated authors. This information can then be used to target tweeters in an appropriate manner, for example by providing a link to your promotional landing page.
However you choose to promote your business this Christmas, being genuine and sharing some good will will ensure you are remembered for a long time. If you would like help preparing your Christmas promotions, contact us.