As the tail end of the year is approaching, businesses are bracing themselves for the holiday mood. Holidays not only bring joy for the customers but also to the businesses, creating the most significant opportunities for them. Holidays are the time of the year when people love to spend time with their near ones, rejoice, celebrate and give gifts to each other. With the surge in the festive mood, every year, there is an increase in online product searches and sales.
With the abundance of competitors present in the market, there comes a need to stand out. To attract your customers to your brand and drive traffic to your business during this holiday season, you need to do some detailed preparations for them. For instance-
- Create strategies to enhance your brand visibility.
- Tell your customer about your uniqueness.
- Give them a strong reason to choose you over your competitors.
- Create offers that they can never deny.
- Try to gain customer’s confidence.
- Do not let your customer forget about you.
- Try to create a smooth shopping experience for your customer.
To do all these preparations and bind the customers to your brand, here are some proven strategies that consistently work. Always remember that services during this time not only increase your holiday sales but also gives you a chance to create a long-lasting impression on your customer, which can have a major impact on your future business. So, pick the best-fit strategies for your business, and make this holiday memorable for you and your customers.
Table of Contents
12 Proven Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Business During the Holidays
-
Revamp Your Website with Festive Look
The foremost thing noticed by a customer about your store, be it a physical or online store, is its appearance. The looks not only pleases the customer’s eyes but also plays as a deciding factor in the customer’s journey. So, when it comes to increasing traffic to your store, it can be a powerful tool.
Have you ever noticed the decor of the brick and mortar stores during the festivals? You must have. It glances like wholly colored in the shades of the celebration. The decoration gives the message to the customers regarding the festive offers they can get.
The same is the case with your eCommerce store. Revamp your website design according to the festive season. The festive design has great potential to increase the footfalls to your store. There are multiple ways to give your website a festive look, such as you can use-
- Decorative fonts.
- Customized festive themes and background
- Festival related images.
- Decorate your brand logo.
-
Be an Early Bird in Promoting your Holiday Offers
The holiday craze starts weeks before it comes. People start preparing for the holidays quite early so that they can enjoy their holidays to the fullest. For this, they start searching about festive related topics like the gift and decor ideas, best upcoming offers, and best collection, etc., relatively soon.
If you also want to take advantage of this holiday season energy, you need to get found on time. Content marketing can be helpful here. Plan out your content marketing strategy that fits well with the customer’s requirements.
Content marketing can be beneficial for business promotion. However, if ranked well on the search engine and reached on time. The higher you rank in SERP, the more are the footfalls and conversion rates. But, as the ranking cannot happen overnight, you should plan your content marketing strategy before the holiday season arrives. This way, your content will get ample time to get ranked on the search engine, hence easily found. -
Optimize Your Content for the Mobile Devices
63% of traffic to retailers and 53% of sales come through mobile devices. – SaleCycle Economic Year Review
Smartphones are the most preferred platform for online holiday shopping, which is increasing with every passing year. According to Deloitte, the use of smartphones for holiday shopping has ascended more than any other device, i.e., by 17% since 2017. Being used so extensively, one should consider it while designing their eCommerce websites.
8 out of 10 customers do not prefer engaging with content that displays poorly on their devices. Hence, if your website does not display well on mobile devices, the customer might leave it within seconds. And during the holiday season, this may lead to some major losses. So, before the holiday season arrives, make sure to optimize your content and website for mobile devices. This will not only be beneficial during the holiday season but also in the future. -
Walk with the Social Media Trends
Globally, there are more than 3 billion active social media users, spending around 142 minutes per day. Considering the numbers, social media can be the best place to promote your business. 66% of users find it convenient to Like or Follow a brand on the social media platform for updates. So, placing advertisements on social media pages can get you a lot of user attention.
Along with the advertisement, social media discussions can also be a great option you can look forward to. Generally, during the festive season, people are likely to discuss the social media platform regarding related topics and issues. You can join these trending topics and help them in resolving the issue through your product/services. Participating in the discussion not only helps you in gaining customer’s confidence but also enhances your brand visibility and traffic. -
Promote Your Holiday Content with Emails
The power of email marketing is no longer hidden from anyone. Businesses are using it to connect to their customers and keep them updated about their products/services. During the holiday season, your email can be the best tool to remind your existing customers about your brand and also update them about the latest festive offers.
Grabbing new customers is a good idea, but retaining the existing one is equally important. In fact, according to Neil Patel, the likelihood of the current customers trying out your new products/ services are 50% more than that of the new ones.
You can send festive greetings accompanied by the offers and discount coupons. Use impactful subject lines in your emails that compels the customers to open your emails. Or, suggest some gifting options for the holidays. This tends to encourage customers to visit your website and make a purchase.
For more email marketing tips to increase your website traffic in the Holiday season, Check this out. -
Optimize your Content for Search Engines
The two most important drivers of digital marketing are content and SERP. The only way to promote your business on the digital platform is to create effective content and optimize it well to perform on the search engine. If the customer does not find your content, how is he going to consider it?
Hence, you should create compelling content and optimize it in a way that it gets noticed and also receives a higher SERP ranking. The content can be anything ranging from blogs to advertisement content, website content, and promo pages. Optimized content results in increasing traffic to your business. So, instead of solely focusing on when you create content, also be careful what you create.
For instance, you can optimize your blog and promo pages, using search-friendly titles and high-performing keywords in your content. To get an insight into the good performing keywords, you can use Google Trends or plugins like keyword surfers. Let’s say if you search about Christmas Gifts, these are the most searched keywords that can be included in your content-
-
Offer Free Shipping or Customised Deliveries
Who can say no to offers and freebies? Offers and freebies work as a sure-shot way to increase website traffic and product sales. It tends to attract the customer to try out your product and services. Freebies can be anything like a small gift, an extended subscription, or even free shipping.
47% of Shoppers do not like to pay for the shipping charges. – Wordstream
Hence, during the holiday season, you can offer free shipping to your customer. Also, as the holiday season lasts for a limited time, timely product delivery is of significant concern to the customer. To help them with this, you can offer customized shipping options and make their shopping experience better. Small gestures like these can result in huge profits. -
Cross-sell and Up-sell
The holiday season can be the best time for Cross-selling and upselling your products. It is a time when the customers are more likely to make a purchase. Therefore in this duration, they consider your recommendations more than any other time of the year. You can take advantage of the holiday season for Cross-selling and upselling your products.
For example, if a customer has bought a guitar, they might require a guitar stand for them or maybe a guitar cover. You can recommend complementary products that are most likely to be purchased by the customer.
Cross-selling and upselling require in-depth analysis. You need to be informed about your customer’s preferences and buying history. Through this, you can make appropriate recommendations such as a complementary product or an upgraded model of the product. The relevancy of the product recommendation decides the click-through rate of your product and hence the website traffic. The more relevant is the recommendations, the higher are the chances of it being purchased. -
Offer gift certificates
Gifts always delight everyone and can be extremely beneficial to increase sales during the holiday season. What if you don’t know what to give to your customer as a gift?. Or what if the customer is not interested in the gift which you want to give them. In this case, even the most effective formula of gifting might not help you to grab your deals.
Hence, the best solution for this is to allow your customer to choose his gifts himself. Give them a gift certificate instead of a gift. The gift certificate can work in two ways. It will not only encourage the customers to visit your website but also allow you to cross-sell your products. For example, provide an offer on the gift certificate telling your customer to buy a particular product or service and get something free. -
Repurpose your best performing contents and run CRM ads
The best way to recreate a success story is to use the same formula again to succeed earlier. You need not experiment every time to create success, especially at critical times. All you need to do is pick up your best formula, modify it a bit, and use it again.
The same thing works with your content marketing strategy. During the holiday season, when you can make the most profit, you need to show your business in the best light. And content marketing can be beneficial here. The content you create reflects your business’ identity, creating an impression on the customer and deciding their next step with your business.
Hence experimenting with the content during this critical time is not a good idea for your business. The best approach would be to go with the strategies that once worked for you. You can repurpose your best performing content and use it again for marketing. You can also use this content to create CRM ads to attract buyers across social media channels. This way, you can increase traffic to your business without much hassle and risk. -
Use a compelling CTA
CTA is one of the most important elements of your website that contributes to the success of your business strategy. CTA proves to be very useful in increasing your website visits as well as sales.
As soon as the user goes through your content the immediate thing that he searches for is the CTA button. CTA not only benefits the business but also prevents your customer from losing sight. It guides them about the next step that they should take. Hence you should be very cautious while drafting your CTA content. And during the holiday season, it becomes even more crucial.
In the holiday season, just like you, your competitors are also active with the promotions and sales of the product. They are in the same race to attract customers to their business. Hence to stand out and turn the traffic to your website, you should try to create an extremely compelling CTA for your website. -
Sense of urgency
Have you heard the fact that the human brain processes faster during the pressure/urgency? This can be useful for your business as well. You can include elements to create a sense of urgency through your content during the holiday season. With a sense of urgency, the customer tends to make the decision faster, leading to higher conversion.
The sense of urgency can be created in numerous ways, such as- Countdown timer
- Impactful subject lines
- Alert about the end of stock
- Phrases like ‘Hurry’ or ‘Limited time’.
- Highlighting the problem faced by the customer.
Bonus Tip: Check out the previous year marketing insights
“The only source of knowledge is experience.” – Albert Einstein.
Experience can be extremely helpful in our decision-making for the future. Before formulating a new marketing strategy during the holiday season get insights into your previous marketing strategy during the time. Jot down the areas that needed improvements as well as the ones that performed well.
These insights prevent you from making the same mistakes and also provides you some of the proven ways that you can use again. Also, try to get insights into the customer data such as their search and purchase history. Based on this analysis you can make more informed decisions and shape your actions accordingly.
Conclusion
Do not let the spirit of your holidays fade away!
The holiday season is the most awaited time of the year for both the customer as well as the business. During this time the customers look forward to grabbing deals which can add to their excitement and enjoyment for the holidays. At the same time, the businesses try to create lucrative offers and increase their visibility among the customers through various marketing strategies.
This is the most productive time of the year for the business which should never be missed or underutilized. Therefore a full-proof marketing plan and expert dealing is something that one should swear by. Hire an expert marketing team who will not bring your wondrous ideas into action but also create innovative plans that will take your business to another level.
