For most people, the holiday season means shopping, eating good home-cooked meals, planning vacations and sipping on the latest holiday drinks while catching up with friends and family. But for the digital marketers out there, life is completely different during the holiday season.
In the digital marketing sphere, the holiday season is the most competitive time of the year, getting things right over the festive period can make or break your brand. The revenue generated during the holiday season is the lifeblood of many businesses.
During the holiday season, there are opportunities galore for digital marketing. This is that time of the year when people set out to buy gifts for friends and family, they might also decide to buy something for themselves. Nobody can resist indulging in retail therapy during festivities. You can utilize digital marketing to increase in-store, as well as online sales. The idea is to add a twist to your usual digital marketing campaigns to reflect the holiday season.
To help you get the most out of the next few months, we asked some marketing experts to share their tips to stay ahead of the game during the holiday season. Everything is covered here, from what kind of content you should be creating to how you should be targeting your ads. Here’s to the holiday season!
Sam Hurley, Founder, Optim-Eyez
Sam Hurley is a lateral-thinking digital marketer who holds a solid experience in both agency and client-side settings. He is the Founder of the eagerly anticipated: Optim-Eyez platform.
Tip:
“This really depends on your industry – However, the following is a surefire method (for any business) to gain customers over the holidays.
Personalization:
It’s important to use this ‘human’ technique all year round, but the festive season certainly matters:
A selection of retailers generate 40% of their annual revenue during the holiday season.
[Source: NRF]
Deliver the right and the most attractively priced deals at the best time and tailor it to the individual.
Utilize all the data you have at hand; using marketing automation software (such as Marketo, Hubspot, Infusionsoft, etc.) to score website visitors based on their engagement and habits. Display or send them material they are likely to be interested in seeing(with tactical encouragement to buy).
Gain customers this way, and you have a great chance of retaining them.
Think of the way Amazon cleverly operate – and emulate whenever possible.
Everybody loves to feel special, especially throughout the merriest time of the year. Personalization makes this happen.
And yes! You should be using AI to sell more, just like Amazon…
The beauty of Artificial Intelligence? It allows granular personalization at scale, without the need for constant human input/ labor.
This is mighty and powerful and already sets you apart from many competitors!”
Find him at: optim-eyez.co.uk
Steve Wiideman, Founder, Wiideman Consulting Group
Steve Wiideman weans businesses away from old-school agencies, with a revolutionary self-empowering SEO roadmap. He specializes in strategic planning for multi-location and franchise brands and can create powerful key strategies.
Tip:
“When planning ahead for a holiday campaign, launching a Best (Product_Category) Gift Ideas for {Year} page at least 6 months in advance can really accelerate sales, attract links, and give the advertising, and social teams some collateral to work with during the holiday season.
Bob’s Watches did this in 2013. They still currently rank #1 for “Rolex Gift Ideas”, and for a reason: great content. Combined with remarketing, and awareness phase advertising, this single page can be a massive driver of new business over time.”
Find him at: wiideman.com
Chris Makara, Founder, Chris Makara
Whether it is coming up with SEO or social media strategies, developing websites, managing team members, or compiling multiple data sets into Excel or Google Docs, he is well-versed in all the aspects of the digital world.
Tip:
“My favorite tactic to attract customers is to already sell to existing ones. And you can do this through remarketing on Facebook, Google, etc. Additionally, you could build out custom audiences by uploading emails of your customers to Facebook and other channels to better target them.
You will also want to increase your spend budget during this time while remembering to lower it after the holiday season has passed.”
Find him at: chrismakara.com
David Leonhardt, President, The Happy Guy
Washington bureau chief of The New York Times David Leonhardt in Washington, DC on August 5, 2011.
David Leonhardt is the founder and president of The Happy Writing Services. He has been successful in assimilating a team of professional writers who can help business owners revamp their content for the better.
Tip:
“The thing about the holiday season is that despite all the joy and hall decking, it is a lot of work. Any way to position your product or service as something that will ease the load should be a winner:
- – Make it easier to prepare for guests.
- – Make it easier to shop for the guests.
- – Save time and enjoy the holidays.
- – Make quick cash to pay off those Christmas bills.
- – These are the messages that should best resonate with people as the Holidays approach.”
Find him at: THGMwriters.com
Dave Schneider, CEO, Ninja Outreach
David Schneider is the co-founder and CEO of NinjaOutreach, an all in one prospecting and outreach tool created to streamline the process of connecting with influencers. Ninja Outreach also offers expert, done-for-you outreach services for those who want to outsource their influencer marketing campaigns with professionals.
Tip:
“Holiday season themed content packed with some giveaways. Facebook video ads should be good for this, because when people are on a holiday, you can bet they would be on social media (not their work email), uploading or checking out their friend’s content. That is the place you should be targeting them. Hashtags should also be right for the holiday, like #ChristmasGiveaway for example.”
Find him at: ninjaoutreach.com
Adam Gray, Co-Founder, Digital Leadership Associates
Adam Grey is the co-founder of Digital Leadership Associates, this firm helps organizations harness the business opportunity created by social media to accelerate their business in a way that is safe, effective, and profitable.
Tip:
“At Digital Leadership Associates, we believe that “digital marketing” is sort of dead (or at least dying), falling responses rates, the advent of GDPR and the latest Apple software updates which effectively kills the Google partner network for Apple users means that many companies are going to need to radically rethink their digital marketing because much of it simply will not work(or will not be legal). The answer is, as it so often is, social media.
Building a loyal following through social channels won’t happen overnight, but once it is happening the very idea of holiday season being different from any other will not be relevant.
Digital Media Associates is a small company but we get several pieces of inbound every single day. This has happened because we do not sell to customers or prospects, we help them to buy from us. We do this by making sure we are always sharing, good, helpful, honest content with them which not only keeps the conversation going, it builds trust and loyalty.
Success in social media is not difficult, it just requires thought and perseverance.”
Find him at: social-experts.net
Viveka Von Rosen, Co-founder, and CVO, Vengreso
She is known internationally as the “Linkedin Expert”. She has perfected her Linkedin experience over the last 10 years and transforms it into engaging and informational training with the tools and strategies that are needed to succeed on Linkedin.
Tip:
“Let’s face it – the Holiday season is a full-on rampage of sales and marketing tactics. So standing out amongst all the noise, glitter, and holiday festivity can be a bit of a challenge. I think the #1 “tactic” is to get up close and personal. With all the business and travel, getting to meet with client and customers one-on-one is not often an option. So you have to find ways of connecting virtually. One of my favorite tools is OneMob – which allows me to personally send a video email to my clients. Not only can I send them a video, but I can create a holiday landing page/ template designed just for them. For pennies and quickly. Human interaction like that can really make a difference during a season that has become so commercialized.”
Find her at: vengreso.com
Marcus Miller, SEO & PPC Consultant, Bowler Hat
Tip:
“These questions are super tough to answer. It is so easy to just default to the latest fad or trend in digital marketing SEO, PPC, Social, Content, Video, Mobile, you get the picture.
When it comes to digital marketing tactics, organic search is my #1. But, building up good organic visibility takes time. There is a lot you can do yourself and we have a set of DIY SEO tips on the Bowler Hat blog. But SEO is not always the fastest tactic. If you have authority but technical issues you can likely make some ground. If you do not have the authority I would park that.
Really the answer is not about any specific tactic. In fact, the answer is about strategy. What is the best tactic for your current situation, industry, and audience? You really cannot throw a general answer out there for this kind of question. The answer is always, it depends.
(OR)
These questions are super tough to answer in a generic way. The problem is – the right tactic for any business, is the tactic that best suits the situation and objectives of that business. At Bowler Hat, we would generally use the SOSTAC and RACE frameworks for digital marketing strategy.
So my approach would always start with strategy. Determine who your customers are and how you reach them. Then that will provide you with the best tactic to implement during the holiday season and throughout your marketing for 2018.
If I had to pick one tactic totally blind – I would always start with organic search via SEO. If you can scale organic search you can generate more exposure without scaling costs. This is not easy and certainly not right for every business or every situation but if SEO is a good fit, then it is a killer tactic. Whether you can implement this successfully now for the holiday season – that is something that can only be answered by looking at your site. If you are keen to improve your organic search results and are game to get stuck in we just published a structured set of SEO tips on the Bowler Hat blog that will help you improve all areas of your SEO. If you are completely new to organic search we also have some beginner SEO tactics you can implement to improve your results from organic.
The best tactic for your business for this season is the tactic that is achievable and gets you in front of your ideal customers.”
Find him at: bowlerhat.co.uk
Lukasz Zelezny, Founder, Lukasz Zelezny
Lukasz Zelezny is an SEO and Social Media Keynote speaker in London. He is an expert in social media and is responsible for the organic performance of a number of companies.
Tip:
“In SEO which is my area of expertise, you must be prepared way before the season. That simply means that you must work hard constantly during the whole year. There are plenty of tactics that will work for the holiday market. Let me share one. In the UK for example, it is very likely that people will be looking for “School Holidays 2017” or “Bank Holidays 2017” when the time will come.
Consequently the next year, the keyword will slightly change to be School Holidays 2018 or Bank Holidays 2018. In 2019 same and so on.
Now to aggregate links over time you should avoid from referring to a specific year in the URL. It may sound obvious but a lot of webmasters often do this mistake. So instead of example.com/bank-holidays-2017 use example.com/bank-holidays/ And instead of /school-holidays-2017/ use /school-holidays/.
That /bank-holidays/ page will remain there forever (until the end of the world or the website) and content only needs to be slightly tweaked when required (when the next year will come). Thanks to this you will aggregate links as every year you have the same URL.
Find him at: zelezny.uk
Jordan Kasteler, Founder, Jordan Kasteler
Jordan Kasteler has been avidly involved in internet marketing and SEO since 2001. He is an independent consultant and entrepreneur, his primary focus is on developing linkbait content and promoting it with social media.
Tip:
“My #1 tactic to attract customers through digital marketing during the holiday season is to use Google trends and SEMrush to see when they spikes and in traffic for certain keywords so that you can be prepared. Moreover, you can also attract customers by tailoring your ad copy toward buying someone a “gift”. Most people aren’t shopping for themselves so the consumer journey is not the same. Let them know that their friend or family member will love the gift.”
Find him at: jordankasteler.com
Nate Shivar, Founder, ShivarWeb
Nate Shivar is a marketing educator and consultant. Through ShivarWeb he aims to help DIYers, freelancers and small businesses build better websites, do more effective marketing, and create more profitable businesses.
Tip:
“Extreme personalization. People want something “unique” but they also want shopping to be easy. Use content, ads, and social media targeting, personalize your gift lists and suggestions as much as possible.”
Find him at: shivarweb.com
Rebekah Radice, Founder, Rebekah Radice
She helps entrepreneurs to build a rock solid marketing foundation to win more customers, increase revenue, and gain the competitive edge. Her entrepreneurial roots, instincts, and unstoppable energy create a powerful force for strategic business growth.
Tip:
“Your single biggest secret weapon during the holidays is video. Use it on your blog, social media and in your email marketing. Think about everything your audience will experience over the holidays – family, food, shopping, baking. Create videos that share special offers, exclusive deals and unique insight around those topics. Your goal is to create a real connection between your business, those experiences and the holiday season.”
Find her at: rebekahradice.com
Ted Rubin, Social Marketing Strategist
Ted is a leading Social Marketing Strategist, Keynote Speaker. He believes that return on relationship is the cornerstone for building an engaged multi-million member database and community.
Tip:
“Retail relevancy, especially around the holiday season, is all about simplicity. You make her life easier. She will buy from you again, again and again. Simplicity is the new EDLP(everyday low price)!”
Find him at: tedrubin.com
Harris Schachter, Founder, OptimizePrime
He is an internet marketing expert and an all-round marketing geek. He provides internet marketing and SEO consultation for clients nationwide.
Tip:
“During the holiday season, basic persuasion techniques are an excellent go-to because of the combination of everyone being at the bottom of the funnel for e-commerce and people wanting to buy gifts that are cool/trendy/in-demand. For example, scarcity can be used in ad copy with limited quantities or prices for a limited time, or even count-down on a landing page. Social proof can be leveraged through reviews and testimonials, and even in product descriptions. Social messaging and self-identification are excellent in ad copy too. For example, “The best gift-givers know (insert product) is perfect for that someone who has everything.”
Find him at: ptimizepri.me
Eagan Heath, Founder, Get Found Madison
Eagan strongly believes in entrepreneurship and the good it can do for the world. His goal is to help other entrepreneurs grow and improve their businesses with creativity and logic.
Tip:
“Product businesses should target gift-related keywords in their search marketing and emphasize great gift ideas in their social media marketing.”
Find him at: getfoundmadison.com
Tommy Landry, Founder, Return n Now
Tommy Landry has over 25 years of experience in marketing and business strategy at companies ranging in size from small to enterprise. He helps organizations of all sizes improve their website visibility, traffic, and lead flow.
Tip:
“During the holiday season, it is important to catch potential buyers at the right time and place. They are actively shopping, and typically for very specific products.
In order to hyper-target these prospects who do not already reside on your mailing list, you need to find a way to step in front of them when they are shopping. This requires lead gen, and more specifically, PPC advertising. Facebook ads are particularly useful for targeting based on demographics and interest areas. Google AdWords also offers an “in market buyer” targeting option, which tries to identify people who are already looking for similar products on Google search and Google shopping.
So go with the most immediate and measurable marketing tactics for your quick-hit holiday promotions. Pay Per Click advertising either Facebook or the main search engines (Google Adwords/Bing AdCenter).”
Find him at: returnonnow.com
Marji Sherman, Founder, Sherman Social
Marji Sherman combines expertise and experience with her lifelong passion for strategic communications to create the best social media marketing campaigns for her clients.
Tip:
“Develop a unique perspective on the holiday season that only your brand has. The trick about attracting customers during such a popular time of the year is making sure that your branding is not so general that it is getting lost in the rest of the messaging. Determine what you can uniquely offer, and create an out-of-the-box strategy around your differentiator. This will help your message pop against the backdrop of all of the other common holiday messaging themes. You can have the most targeted digital campaign in the world, but if you are saying what everyone else, it will get lost in the noise.”
Find her at: shermansocial.com
Lolly Spindler, Founder, Crea Content Marketing
Lolly Spindler helps businesses in creating a comprehensive content marketing strategy by finding their target audience online and giving them the content they crave.
Tip:
“Make sure your marketing is timely and relevant. Unearth your target audience’s pain points during the holidays and how your product or services can help alleviate them!”
Find her at: creacontentmarketing.com
Bryan Clayton, CEO, GreenPal
Bryan Clayton is the CEO of GreenPal which is best described as Uber for Lawn Care. He is in charge of GreenPal’s strategic direction and growth to become the platform that powers the lawn care industry.
Tip:
“Quick tactic that others may not have suggested on how to gain new customers with SMM during the holiday season. Facebook GROUPS. Especially local Facebook groups.
No matter your niche or vertical there is an FB group that you can participate in to contribute to the discussion, answer questions, and develop a presence to refer people to your business, often times when they are looking for exactly what you offer.
FB just also launched a dedicated mobile app to support their group’s communities so now it is easier than ever to manage the groups that you participate in, monitor the conversations, and participate while on the go throughout your day.
We have found this tactic to be very effective for our marketplace. We monitor local groups and neighborhood’s groups, and when anyone is asking for a recommendation on a lawn care service, we kindly let them know about the GreenPal community. We track success and 60% of the time we make a recommendation, they signup for our service.”
Find him at: yourgreenpal.com
Venchito Tampon, Marketing Director, Sharp Rocket
Venchito has many accolades to his name, he has been featured at Moz, Inbound.org, Forbes, and Technorati. He is a motivational speaker who provides leadership training in the Philippines.
Tip:
“Start creating content that is geared towards the holiday season. Use Ahrefs to find brand-related keywords + Christmas/holiday. Check if there is a content gap (no content assets yet created for that particular topic) then be the first one to produce a content piece on that. For content promotion, you can reach out to industry bloggers for a social/share or editorial link/promotion from their blogs.”
Find him at: sharprocket.com.ph
Sean Si, Founder, SEO Hacker and Qeryz
Sean Si is the CEO and Founder of SEO Hacker and Qeryz. A start-up, data analysis, and urgency junkie who spends his time inspiring young entrepreneurs through talks and seminars.
Tip:
“I have always been a long-term kind of guy with the bigger picture always on my mind so I have never really had a holiday strategy to speak of. I have a tried and tested strategy that I have always used, however: Publish content that can rank for competitive keywords. Build the links. When the traffic comes, capture the leads and do everything you can to convert them.”
Find him at: seansi.org
Brian Massey, Managing Partner, Conversion Sciences
Brian Massey is a skilled computer scientist who understands the opportunities of data-driven marketing. He helps businesses in generating more revenue, more leads and more sales from the traffic visiting a website.
Tip:
“The #1 tactic to attract customers through digital marketing during the holiday season is through adventurous messages. Why aren’t more companies adventurous in their ads? Because they do not want to increase risk during the most important season of the year. The good news is that we have a safety net. This safety net is so reliable, that it is now more dangerous to be conservative during the noisy holidays than try to be bold, adventurous messaging. Do not wait for the holidays. Try out adventurous messages – through ads, social campaigns, email – pre-testing them with user test and A/B test rounds. Test winning messages at the beginning of the high-traffic holidays and harvest higher sales based on what you have learned.”
Find him at: conversionsciences.com
Karl Kangur, Chief Executive Officer, MRR Media
Karl has over 9 years of experience in the digital marketing sphere. His core expertise lies in Search Engine Optimization, advertising, and business strategy.
Tip:
“One word: Giveaways
Giveaways are a great way to boost traffic and showcase your offering but also give you a way to reward your loyal subscribers and clients. While the prizes are still up for grabs, traffic is generally steady as long as you are leveraging your social media channels – Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin, for example. Traffic will also always spike at the time you choose the winner.
Keep it in mind, traffic will stop after the campaign but if you keep your giveaways regular and promote them consistently, you will create a constant, predictable stream of new traffic throughout the holidays. It is also best to funnel these people to your email list, so you can benefit from them throughout the year.
Before launching a giveaway campaign, ask yourself these questions:
What is your purpose? To increase traffic? To target specific leads? Increase your social media following? Gather emails? Increase brand awareness? Know your purpose and make it measurable.
What type of contest? Determine what you want contest participants to do for you. Get a tattoo of your brand? Follow you on Twitter and tag a friend? Submit a photo?
What prize would most appeal to your target group? It can be a premium prize like the latest iPhone or something basic, like a branded mug. Choose according to your budget and market base and align it with what you want from those entering the contest.
Extra tips:
Plan your giveaways far in advance if possible to give you and your team enough time and a large enough budget for a prize or enough time to get a great sponsored prize.
Make sure the rules are clear.
Leverage the right social media tools and channels and use them consistently throughout the campaign.
Do the draw for the winner(s) on the day you said you would, do not disappoint your contest participants.
Now that all the fun is done, you must track and analyze all the data.
Did you meet your goals?
Take the data and learn from it to improve your next giveaway campaign.
Find him at: mrr.media
Visakan Veerasamy, Content strategist, Referral Candy
Visakan is an excellent content strategist with a deep specialization in producing content. He has written hundreds of blog posts and edited much more.
Tip:
“The important thing to understand about the holiday season is that lots of people are under pressure to buy gifts. And everyone (myself included) struggles with coming up with good gift ideas for at least some of their friends. So you should think of your “holiday season marketing” as doing your potential customers a favor, by helping them see how your products are a good fit as gifts for their friends.
Come up with interesting, entertaining content. I have seen a few Facebook video ads in the past year that were really good. You can also use discounts and offers to compel people to buy, but I think the “why this is a great gift for your friends” angle where you should focus your attention. Create funny blog posts, videos, ads- help people imagine themselves delighting their friends with your products. I think “behind the scenes” type photos and videos do particularly well since people are so desensitized to traditional ads.”
Find him at: candybar.co/blog
Andrew Akesson, Head Of Digital, Venn Digital
Andrew leads an independent marketing agency with a knack for brave ideas and simple solutions. They have helped many organizations through their digital marketing services.
Tip:
“Give consumers a reason to feel they are getting value for money. Black Friday and Cyber Monday have changed consumer behavior, as people now expect to make savings around the festive period, so if you run an e-commerce website, ensure that you are adding promotional text like ‘special offers’ or benefits like ‘free shipping’ to your PLAs.
Offers should be backed up on site through design, so look at a/b testing early to ensure that you have the most effective and efficient way of displaying the savings to be made, in a bid to reduce the cost per sale generated through PLAs.”
Find him at: venndigital.co.uk
Marie Haynes, Founder, Marie Haynes Consulting
Marie Haynes has been helping businesses learn how to improve their Google presence in ways that comply with Google’s guidelines for the last 10 years.
Tip:
“I would say that the most important factors in digital marketing are authenticity and usefulness. If you are producing content specifically for the holidays. Then I would make it a goal to only produce the type of content that really amazes the people. It is not enough these days to just be as good as everyone else. In order to stand out, whether it is for SEO purposes, social media or even offline marketing, you need to do things that make people remember you and want to engage with you.
A great way to do that is via user-generated content. Rather than writing another post about the best Christmas gifts of the season, see what you can do to get your customers involved. One thing that works great is to find ways to get your customers to send in a video showing unique ways in which they used your products. Another would be to have customers share stories about why they buy from you. The key though is to make a piece of content that truly is interesting and helpful to people.”
Find her at: mariehaynes.com
Chris Hornak, CEO, Blog Hands
Chris has been a digital marketing expert for over a decade, through his site he provides businesses with quality content. He provides you quality work of an in-house writer at the cost and flexibility of outsourcing.
Tip:
“Of course, a long-term content marketing strategy that grows SEO traffic and builds an email list is always recommended but if you are just now trying to think of driving traffic during the holiday season you are likely looking for a short-term solution. Facebook Advertising (I would also recommend giving Quuu Promote a try) is an excellent way to laser target customers quickly, but you need something to entice them with.
Create an offer (whitepaper, free trial, free gift, etc.) and develop a blog post a week that will relate to that offer and includes a CTA in each blog post for that offer. Once their email is captured send them a series of nurturing emails that educate as well as explain the benefits of your product.
This strategy will help you drive short-term results as well as create content that will drive long-term SEO results. Giving you the best of both worlds.”
Find him at: bloghands.com
Connect with him:
Kane Miller, Marketing Director, BlendBee
Kane Miller is the marketing director of an innovative organization called Blend Bee. They are the perfect stop for people who like their tea in a peculiar way. The tea leaves are blended according to their individualistic tastes and requirements.
Tip:
“At BlendBee, around the holidays we like to send our email list a coupon, typically 20% off or so. This usually gets a good response. But then, we also create some eye-catching social media graphics that our customers can post to their social channels, or share with family and friends. These contain unique affiliate links, so our customers will be rewarded for any orders they send our way. It is truly a win-win.”
Find him at: blendbee.com
Jamil, Cloudways
Jamil Ali Ahmed is a SEO Manager at Cloudways – A SEO friendly web hosting platform. He has a vast experience in SEO, Social Media Marketing and is passionate about Growth Optimization. He is an amateur sprinter and loves social work.
Tip:
“The problem with Holiday season is that the attention of the shoppers is (exclusively) directed toward online stores, and as such digital marketing tactics such as content publication and repurposing doesn’t really work that well. However, you could use the focus on shopping to your advantage. I recommend using social networking for delivering coupons and offers directly to the potential customers. This way you could leverage the power of social media to ensure that your online store captures a bigger share of the Holiday shopping pie.”
Find him at:cloudways.com
Maria Johnsen, Founder, Maria Johnsen
Maria Johnsen is a hyperpolyglot entrepreneur, best selling author, influencer, speaker, programmer and multilingual digital marketing expert. She offers her clients with efficient multilingual digital marketing services.
Tip:
“If you are on a low budget use content marketing and social media marketing. If you have advertising budget use Facebook, PPC and Google Adwords PPC in order to land sales in the holiday season.”
Find her at: maria-johnsen.com
Jarratt Isted, Co-Founder, HelpDocs
Jarrat is the Co-Founder of HelpDocs, it is an organization that makes documentation a piece of cake for businesses. By building software from the ground up, they have developed tools and processes to make documentation really simple.
Tip:
“I think influencer marketing is a great channel to reach customers around the holiday season.
With the introduction of Instagram Stories earlier this year and the new creative ads they are introducing (Boomerang, Slideshows, etc.) It seems like a great opportunity to showcase product alongside influencers. There are also platforms like Scrunch which make it far easier to connect with these people.
Get in touch with influencers to help market your product and get some festive images and copy lined up. Make sure they are actually interested in your product – otherwise it will be obvious it is inauthentic. Create a campaign with them and make sure to include videos seeing as they get a lot of visibility on platforms like Facebook.”
Find him at: http://helpdocs.io/?ref=jarrattsig
Shane Barker, Founder, Shane Barker
Shane Barker is an accomplished digital marketing consultant. He has built an impressive list of accomplishments in the digital marketing sphere. He focuses on helping young companies to build and optimize their business from napkin sketch to revenue.
Tip:
“The best way to go about attracting customers during the holiday season is through a combination of tactics instead of using a single tactic. First of all, you need to have an offer in place on account of the holidays. This could be anything from free shipping and discounts to free gifts. Your competitors will be offering sweet deals and you need to make sure that you stand out.
You can then drive awareness about the offer by promoting it through targeted ads to a relevant audience. You could even collaborate with influencers to promote the offers and attract the right audience.”
Find him at: shanebarker.com
Oleg Korneitchouk, Director Of Marketing, Smart Sites
Oleg is a full-stack marketer who is able to connect to the technical aspects of SEO, the creative facets of design and the importance of achieving business goals. Basically, he builds and promotes websites for businesses.
Tip:
“To answer your question, the #1 tactic is to be prepared for the holidays. Prepare your holiday giveaways/promotions, schedule newsletter blasts, prepare a calendar for your blog & social media properties, set aside a larger budget for PPC & display marketing, determine if you will be targeting any new market segments, create any additional graphics and run a website stress to make sure you can handle all of that traffic. It is much easier to plan and prepare in the slower months before the holiday season instead of during the rush.”
Find him at: smartsites.com
Mike Kawula, CEO-Social Quant, Co-Founder – Dinner Table MBA
Mike is an entrepreneur who is associated with two very innovative organizations. He is the CEO of Social Quant, which is a site that can help businesses in improving their visibility on Twitter. He is the co-founder of Dinner Table MBA, which focuses on helping families become more confident, successful and self-empowered.
Tip:
“As the Chinese proverb goes:
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
Do not wait for the holiday season to get started in marketing your business on digital. The noise increases during the holiday (as do ad prices) and it is very easy to not only get lost in the sea of ads, but if you do not know what you are doing, you will waste a ton of money.
People do business with people they know, like and trust.. so start building the relationship online today. Set aside 30 minutes a day (no more) and pick 3 different communities online that have your audience. This could be in Facebook groups, Reddit, forums, Linkedin groups, Twitter and so on.
Find 3 communities with a large audience and go engage with each one for 10 minutes a day. If you provide value and build your name, asking for business will not be an issue during the holidays.
If you are reading this and the holiday season is upon us, then go to Twitter Advanced Search and search for people having conversations around your niche. This could be people asking questions or mentioning your competitors. This approach has driven me easily over 7 figures in sales and it’s almost immediate when done well.
Best part.. it is free!”
Find him at: socialquant.net
Brandon Hopkins, President, Diamond Links
Since 2004, Brandon Hopkins started working on effective strategies for SEO and later reputation management. He helps businesses in getting high-quality links from a variety of platforms, domains, and IP addresses.
Tip:
“All of my work is focused on long-term results. I do not do any PPC advertising so my strategy for the holidays is the same as the rest of the year, we make clients rank organically. If you are a holiday retailer when we have worked all year to get your ranking for your phrases. Most retail clients do more volume during certain seasons, but the approach is sustainable and works all year.”
Find him at: diamondlinks.net
Jeff Sauer, Founder, Jeffalytics
Jeff is an independent digital marketing consultant, speaker, and teacher based out of a suitcase somewhere in the world.
Tip:
“To attract customers during the holiday season, I would create some sort of giveaway offer that provides a free product to a lucky winner. Money is tight during the holidays, so people want it free. I would then put everyone who signed up into a funnel and introduce them to my product offerings, and provide a special, yet profitable, discount for their purchase.
Since the customers were acquired inexpensively (promotion), instead of through advertising (expensive), there would still be a similar margin, even with the discount.”
Find him at: www.jeffalytics.com
Bill Achola, Founder, Bill Achola
Bill is a digital entrepreneur who helps small organizations and entrepreneurs create the right content and build their brand through content marketing.
Tip:
“The best tactic is Youtube marketing.
Why?
Because, it hosts a tremendous amount of online content on a wide range of subjects, making it one of the most popular social media channels to attract quality customers.
Secondly, it is the most powerful platform for conducting effective influencer marketing campaigns on a regular basis.”
Find him at: billacholla.com
Casandra Campbell, Founder, Minimalist Marketing
Casandra is an entrepreneur and internet marketer. By employing proven case studies and tested tactics, she helps small businesses grow into larger, more profitable businesses.
Tip:
“If you have a compelling offer, the holiday season is a really great time to start running paid ads. There are more people competing for ad space so the costs tend to go up, but customers are motivated to buy and it is worth it to get your offer in front of them. It is important to make sure you have strong systems in place to keep customer acquisition costs low during this time. Use abandoned cart sequences to convert for customers, use retargeting to drive upsells, and use email marketing to get customers buying again in the new year. If you have solid sales funnel set up, the higher advertising costs will be well worth in the long run.”
Find her at: casandracampbell.com
Patrick Coombe, Founder, Patrick Coombe
Patrick is an internet marketer by profession and is self-employed since 2009. He has mastered the art of SEO and PPC, he has an immense passion for SEO and can help businesses achieve great success through his skills.
Tip:
“For holiday promotions, I would focus on Facebook Advertising. Traditional methods like SEO, Adwords, are great and bring in droves of traffic, but my personal favorite is Facebook ads. With Facebook ads, you can start with a few ideas, run them for a week or so and see what works. Find the best then capitalize them. The great thing about Facebook ads is if your ads good they will gain their own status, likes, comments, etc. The only thing to watch out for is if you start to see a lot of negative comments, drop the ad. I have seen tons of advertisers (i do not know why) keep running ads even though they are getting threads of negative comments.”
Find him at: patrickcoombe.com
Erik Emanuelli, Founder, Passive Income
Erik is a pro-blogger, social media marketer, and freelance writer. He considers himself as the citizen of the world as he loves traveling. His site gives information about how to build passive income.
Tip:
“Understanding your customer is important for the holiday season. Do not waste your efforts on campaigns that do not work for your kind of client. Depending on who you are selling to, you will need to invest money on a specific type of advertising as opposed to another. Retargeting is a powerful tactic. These ads are displayed across the internet to your recent visitors. These users are more likely to convert, as they already visited your website.”
Find him at: nopassiveincome.com
Jason Acidre, Co-Founder, Grit
Jason is an expert when it comes to SEO, content marketing, and link building. He helps brands all across the globe to increase their website traffic and revenue.
Tip:
“Do not create new landing pages for holiday-based campaigns (if you are doing it annually). Just make sure you are continuously updating its content and offerings when the situation requires. As you can also use these holiday-based content to attract and capture more leads, especially through the days nearing the holiday season.
This way, you would be able to preserve your landing pages ranking value and link equity – making them more visible through search.”
Find him at: https://grit.ph/
Justin Herring, Co-Founder, YEAH! Local
When you’re working with Justin, you’ll have everything you need to not only plan the best online marketing strategies but also to execute these strategies to earn more profits and get more clients!
Tip:
“If a website already has high domain authority I would write an in-depth blog post about the product or service you are selling. If you can niche it down enough you should be able to rank quickly.
If your website is not in that position then the next best would be Google Ads or Facebook Ads to promote the blog post mentioned above. Add a couple content upgrades to get them on your email list and then email them continually throughout the holidays.”
Find him at: https://yeah-local.com
Hannes Johnson, Product Lead & Growth Hacker, TripCreator
He is a computer scientist with a passion for digital marketing. This powerful combination gives him a unique perspective on the ever-changing realm of the internet, how people use the internet, and how best to deliver results for businesses.
Tip:
“It’s a bit tricky declaring “the #1 tactic to attract customers through digital marketing during the holiday season” since it depends on what product/service you’re offering, who your target audience is, what resources are available to you, etc. But one thing that could work for many businesses is setting up ad campaigns through Google and Facebook. Then you can do several experiments to discover what creatives (text and images/videos) and targeting get you the best results.
To stand out (in the holiday ad-valanche) you can ask yourself a few questions to come up with creative ad campaigns:
- – What would surprise and delight the people I am trying to reach?
- – How will people’s life improve by purchasing my product/service?
- – What makes my product/ service unique?
You could also run a parallel remarketing campaign to increase the odds of people converting. That can be a powerful combination – one campaign to bring people in and another campaign to bring people back (those that haven’t converted yet).”
Find him at: tripcreator.io
Emory Rowland, Co-Founder, Leverable SEO
Emory has a passion for search engine optimization. He has delivered many successful SEO projects over a span of ten long years. He focuses on working closely with his clients to develop a custom SEO strategy that garners results.
Tip:
“I like tried and true tactic of developing content that answers gift buyer questions or objections. This type of content can attract holiday searchers for years to come.”
Find him at: leverable.com
Chris Dreyer, Founder, Rankings.io
Chris Dreyer is the founder of Rankings.io and when he formed this company he had one goal in his mind and that was to provide the best SEO services to lawyers, to help them obtain more clients, cases, and revenue.
Tip:
“As it relates to SEO, the best thing businesses can do to attract consumers during the holiday season is to target holiday specific searches. Consumers are often looking for deals during the holidays so if you can create pages on your site that focus on phrases that people are using, you are more likely to capture that traffic. You can use one of the keyword tools out there (personally I like Ahrefs Keyword Explorer) to find phrases that people are using or have used in the previous holiday season. Google Trends is great for seeing spikes in search traffic for specific holiday-related keywords. The trick is knowing what people are searching for and then providing that content to them.”
Find him at: https://rankings.io/
Vladimir Gendelman, Founder & CEO, Company Folders, Inc.
Vladimir Gendelman is the Founder and CEO of Company Folders, Inc., winner of multiple awards, including ranking in Inc.’s list of 5000 fastest growing private companies in America three years and counting. He is a thought leader in print design, and has published a variety of articles in major publications, including Forbes and Time.
Tip:
“The only difference between the holiday season and other times of the year is that customers are typically in more of a buying mood, which is obviously something you’ll want to capitalize on.
With that in mind, it’s still important to make sure you research your audience to know what they are looking for and what questions they are asking and create the resources they need to solve their problems.
Use social media to share and promote your content and special offers by using images with a unique illustration style and bold, eye-catching colors and designs. Most importantly, create a design that is usable and simple.”
Find him at: companyfolders.com
Remember that your holiday marketing should serve as a strong ending to the year and as a springboard into the next. The relationships that you build and strengthen now will serve you throughout the year. So which of these tips did you like the most? Have you ever run a successful holiday marketing campaign? Let us know in the comments section below!
