The highly organised amongst us will have already finished their Christmas shopping, but for the majority, we’ll be panic buying right up until the 23rd of December. This means that as a retailer, you have a great opportunity to secure extra sales in the lead up to Christmas. We identify some top tips on how to drive those extra sales over the next few weeks using digital marketing strategies.
Advertise on Facebook
You might have a great organic following on Facebook, i.e. your page has a high number of ‘Likes’. However, with Facebook’s latest algorithms they’re making it harder for your posts to get seen organically in your newsfeed, so it’s becoming almost a necessity to advertise on Facebook. You might want to select a couple of products that you think would be a great Christmas buy. You should then think about who would be most likely to purchase these items as a gift. You’ll need a great product description that makes it almost impossible for the intended buyer to scroll past it on Facebook. Powerful and striking imagery should also be used for ultimate effectiveness. With all of this in mind you are almost ready to set up your Christmas campaign. We find that adverts created to direct traffic to the product web page have a high conversion rate and secure sales, so when choosing a campaign type the traffic campaign is a good one to go with. Follow Facebook’s instructions for setting up your campaign, including the important elements above Set a sensible budget (you don’t want to spend more than what your sales will earn you) and then wait for those Facebook driven sales to come pouring in. Power tip – use the Facebook URL builder to create a unique URL that will help you identify and measure the success of your campaign when analysing Google analytics.
Blogging
Use your blog as another platform to talk about your Christmas products. Remember, sometimes people need inspiration and advice when choosing a gift for Christmas. Use your blog as an opportunity to explain a little bit about the product, who the product would be ideal for, what its benefits are and so on. If you are selling let’s say for example Curlers, you could create a blog that provides a step by step guide of how to curl hair, or even a video blog demonstrating the curlers in action. You can really get creative with the blog, especially if you have the ability to create a video blog: this can work really well, as people like to watch other people.
Keeping your blog updated regularly with relevant keywords, will also be great for SEO. Make sure that when you upload a new blog, you keep a list of keywords in mind and fill your meta tags out accordingly. This will help your website list organically when people search for similar phrases on search engines like Google, which will ultimately end in more traffic to your website and hopefully more sales just in time for Christmas.
Website Banner Updates
Time is a premium, especially when it comes to searching the internet. You probably have many competitors within your industry, so it is important that your business stands out. Having an optimised, responsive and great functioning website can be a good start. If you’ve managed to get traffic to your website, now you want to do your best to keep it there and get the viewer to engage with you. No doubt, people will take a look at your home page, so during the lead up to Christmas, why not alter your home page banner to include a special offer or Christmas bundle. You could use video or a professionally designed graphic, to capture interest and to display what your business has to offer. Make sure you change your banner to reflect the time of year, so if you do put a Christmas offer live and advertise it on your banner, remember to take it down as soon as Christmas is over.
If you need any help as Christmas approaches in regard to driving extra traffic, then do not hesitate to contact the team at Carrick today and we will be more than happy to help you secure those additional sales.