How ready is your e-commerce business for the holiday season? With e-commerce a “must” for brands this year, getting ready for the holidays requires a hard look at your online sales strategy. Read on to find out what to consider!
How ready is your business for the holiday season? You’ve been around the block already. Do you know how much to expect in sales and how to fulfil the demand?
With e-commerce, a “must” for brands this year given the lack of in-store foot traffic plus the downward pressure on the economy, getting ready for the holidays this time around requires a hard look at your ecommerce strategy.
1. Creativity is Great, But Don’t Forget Channel Distribution!
E-commerce requires a balancing act between marketing and operations. On one hand, you want to focus on getting your message out. On the other hand, you need to consider multiple ecommerce marketplaces if you want real visibility.
In fact, as consumer expectations have changed, marketing and operations have started to merge. Even choosing what marketplaces to sell on is now a marketing decision because your mere presence on those sites is an opportunity to showcase who you’re trying to reach and what you’re all about.
Without a doubt, brands these days have been innovating left and right in the world of ecommerce. And now, to stay competitive, you have to be on multiple ecommerce channels. Then and only then do you hunker down to get the marketing language “just right” to reach the shoppers on each site.
2. Keep Your Marketing Messaging Simple
Speaking of marketing messaging…remember to always err on the side of simplicity!
Simple does not mean cliché.
We know that it’s easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of holiday marketing. But if you see a message more than once, it’s probably a concept to steer clear of. Cliché does not make for sticky marketing.
Once you’ve steered off the cliché path to the holidays, brevity will be the next thing to take into account. Whatever you have to say, the message that will resonate deepest is always the most succinct version of your marketing language.
To do this, try speaking to just one pitch, or one emotion, or one desire in each ad.
And we’ll leave it at that!
3. Be Prepared For More Competition This Year
According to research by Nasdaq in 2017, 95% of shopping will be in some way facilitated by ecommerce in 2040.
Wow!
And just think—that projection was made before the mad rush to e-commerce in the face of the global crisis of Covid-19.
This year, without any doubt, is a confusing one for retailers. There’s more competition online. And at the same time, terrible economic realities are putting downward pressure on spending everywhere.
Be prepared this holiday season for more competition, but also be considerate of the reality the world is facing and don’t resort to cutting the competition down in your marketing. This year isn’t about cut-throat marketing—it’s about speaking the loudest to what your target consumers want and need.
If this sounds too abstract or even feels a little alien, here’s what we mean:
- Speak to the consumer by touching on their needs and wants instead of bashing the “other guy.” What “itch” does your product “scratch?”
- Optimize your product listings for every channel. (This is a big one, so we wrote the whole next section on how to go about it.)
- Be smart about what platforms you sell on. For starters, that probably means more than one ecommerce marketplace. But at the same time, you can’t launch everywhere willy nilly without strategy and time devoted to each channel. Choose your channels according to the consumers who tend to shop there (i.e., elect the platforms whose shoppers are your target client).
4. Ensure You Have Optimised Product Listings
Optimized product listings will mean something different platform-to-platform. And if you’re selling on multiple e-commerce marketplaces, it will be essential to enrich your product data appropriately for each.
The holidays are coming, though, and this is a beast of a task! As soon as you start turning stones in your product data, you will find inconsistency after inconsistency. And your data is so scattered in the first place! What’s a brand to do?
Between the inventory on the ERP and the sales in your CRM, not to mention all those spreadsheets, is this really a practical thing to focus on for the holiday season this year?
Yes.
Not only is it practical, but solutions like product information management (PIM) software were specifically designed to do it. Instead of spending months digging up and compiling product data to smooth out errors and fill in missing information, you can be ready with updated and enriched product data in weeks.
Don’t leave listings incomplete or inaccurate, or your holiday sales will be falsely inflated with what will just come back as customer returns.
Bonus: Don’t Forget About Your Existing Customers!
Chances are that visitors who land on your online storefronts will include both new and returning customers. But these two visitors have different needs and expectations, meaning you’ll have to reach them differently, too.
The pathway to purchase for an existing customer should include promotions that make them feel special. Remind them what they bought before, and try to tickle that recollection of why they chose you in the first place.
The lowest-hanging fruit for sales this year will be your existing client base since you already have their email addresses and have proven yourself to them at least once before. Just knock on that digital door!
So… Are you ready for the holidays?
This year, more than ever, consumers will be figuring their holiday plans out just weeks (if not days!) before the holidays hit. There are so many unknowns. Who will be able to visit? Where will families be able to travel? How, when, and where should people buy all their gifts? Will they have to ship them, or will they be able to give them out in person?
Among all this uncertainty, you can position your brand as an option that consumers can count on. Ensure you’re accessible on the right ecommerce platforms, make it as easy as possible for consumers to find what they want, offer “just right” shipping options for added client kudos, and treat every visitor with the attention they deserve.
Give them that one rewarding experience next to all the other things they’re worried about.
The holiday season might formally start with Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but the actions you can take start even earlier. Even if the season snuck up on you and is already here, these ideas can be implemented for the benefit of your brand and your customers as you sail through the end of the year.
To find out how we can help you with your Website + Marketing, using our unique location marketing platform called Top4, get in touch today www.top4marketing.com.au
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Source: digitaldoughnut
