When it comes to the holiday season, it’s important to start your advertising early, as 22% of shoppers start their holiday shopping in October. That is why our marketing agency Omaha team is writing this article right now.

The holidays are a great time for businesses to boost their sales. Everyone is shopping for gifts both online and in-person. Through holiday marketing campaigns and boosting social media posts, your company can strategically win over new customers. You can use the holidays to better grab the attention of holiday shoppers and make stronger connections with them. Start preparing for the holiday season with these tips from our marketing agency Omaha team!

Allocate enough spending

You want to be sure that you are allocating enough spending toward your PPC campaigns and boosted social media posts. A good way to know how much to allocate is to look over last year’s results. Find out which channels worked well, what campaign types performed the best and what promos drove the most conversions.

If you find that something worked really well, stick with it, but don’t be afraid to try something new as well. Know that you will likely be spending more on ads during the holidays to maintain or grow your impression share than in other months. Decide what campaigns will need an increased bid, whether it be your Google Shopping ads, PPC campaigns or social media posts. It’ll be more spent upfront, but you’ll see a good ROI.

Include holiday-focused keywords

You can use SEMRush, Google Trends or a similar platform of your choice to find relevant keywords. Adding these keywords to your campaigns will help them perform at their best. It’ll put your content in front of what people are already looking for, improving your clicks and conversion rate.

Consider using popular holiday keywords such as “stocking stuffers” or “gifts under $25.” You might even discover some product-related keywords you had not thought of before, which could make for a good campaign for a specific product. It might be a good idea to make manual bid adjustments on your campaigns to target more keywords, rather than using automated bidding.

Build a firm audience

Once you have chosen your spending and keywords, you can begin to build your audience. You want to make sure you target gift-givers, window shoppers and last-minute shoppers. Many shoppers will wait until a last-minute sale to purchase, and you can specifically target them with display ads. Be sure your ad copy motivates them to buy. See how Target met last-minute shoppers via mobile services!

You also want to make it easy for your customers to purchase your product. Customers are not shopping for themselves, they are shopping for others. That’s what makes this time of year different from the rest. You have the potential to convince these shoppers that their friend or family member would love this specific gift from your store.

Think of creating top-of-the-funnel gift guides to assist them. It’s also important to remember that lots of people are busy during the holiday season, and most of them will be shopping online. Use ad extensions to highlight sales, free shipping or a free gift with purchase.

Use social media

You cannot look beyond where everyone is. Social media is a great way to personalize your brand and drive brand engagement, especially during the holidays. Consider creating a Christmas-themed logo and updating your profile images. Along with holiday posts, wish your customers a good holiday season.

You will want to keep the product feeds on both your social media and website in good shape as eyes will be looking. Refresh your descriptions and titles to be sure they’re compelling and include keywords. Make sure every detail is correct, from size to color and price. Also, plan for products running out; you don’t want to have an ad running for an out-of-stock item. Be ready to pause them and feature something similar.

Have your holiday marketing campaigns ready with the best marketing agency Omaha has to offer!

Optimizing your holiday marketing campaigns isn’t just a good idea, but rather how you’re going to stay ahead of your competition and maximize sales. Many choose to shop online for the ease of same-day shipping and in-store pickup. So creating these campaigns and tailoring them to your gift shoppers is worth the hustle. Reach out to your local digital marketing experts for help this holiday season!