The summer has come to a crashing halt, the continual heatwave replaced by autumnal temperatures and Christmas is officially on the radar. Head on to social media and everyone has at least one friend counting down to the festive season.
There are rumours doing the rounds for what the John Lewis advert will be and if businesses haven’t set out a plan for holiday marketing campaigns, there’ll soon be key meetings on setting out a Christmas plan.
Christmas Consumer Spending
The Bank of England’s Knowledge Bank shows that a typical household spends more than £500 more across December. This includes everything from going out, food shopping, alcohol as well as buying gifts. Take a look at this graph from Retail Research on spending from mid-November to the end of December.
Optimise For Mobile-First Indexing
Since last year, Google has been moving towards mobile-first indexing and according to its latest research most sites lose half their visitors while the page is loading. With this in mind, it’s worth checking your site’s score with the Google Index and checking you’re not losing traffic ahead of starting serious Christmas campaigns.
Extra Reading; head over to Moz for a rundown of Mobile-First Indexing, how it works, and its impact on SEO.
Using Facebook Ads Effectively at Christmas
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Know your buyer persona(s)
Last year, my Facebook relationship status was ‘Engaged’ and I was consistently serviced an ad from Etsy that incorporated this image (or similar):
For £20-£30, this is a great gimmick gift that works perfectly for the demographic of engaged couples looking forward to planning their wedding. Alternatives that also work in this Instagram age include matching pyjamas and knitted jumpers.
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Understand the different product ads
With so many options, new features from Facebook can get overlooked. The platform launched collection ads in the spring of 2017 and it still isn’t used as much as it could be by many brands – particularly SMEs.
It allows you to tell a more visual product story on mobile and gives people the chance to discover all about your brand and products directly on Facebook with a fast-loading ad set. Once they have been influenced, the journey is then completed on your website.
This is just one option, another is overlays for dynamic ads. This makes it easy to customise creative templates for any time of the year, be that Black Friday, Easter or Christmas.
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Offer Incentives To Close The Deal
Whether you’re looking to increase new customers or strengthen customer loyalty, the addition of a discount or other incentive can really seal the sale. Research suggests that 91% of customers prefer visiting a retail site if offered a discount, and those with a deal tend to spend 24% more.
Alternative options include:
- Free shipping
- Free gift (usually relative to order size)
- Newsletter sign-up offer
Referral Promotions For Customer Loyalty & Increased Sales
Word of mouth is still one of the best sources of gaining new customers, and if you can give something back to current, happy customers in order to gain more then it’s a real win-win for brands. Businesses like Hello Fresh do this consistently but everything from clothing to jewellery to book stores can get a boost from doing this.
Email Marketing To Current Database
Rewarding those on your newsletter more often works in two ways: making them more likely to open the majority of email marketing looking for other deals and converting those considering a new purchase. Campaigns targeted around Christmas and new products or features you have on offer can be well marketed to your existing database through email marketing.
Looking for other Facebook tips? Find out more with:
- The Go-To Guide To Facebook Page Templates
- How Valuable Is Facebook's Ad Targeting?
- How To Add A Facebook Tracking Pixel
Jonathan Bell
Social Media Manager
