Take time to create your holiday marketing plans in advance!
The last thing you want is to pull an all-nighter right before the Black Friday and Cyber Monday craze.
Hey, it’s Nora from Printful's marketing team!
Last year Cyber Monday generated $7.9 billion in sales and became the biggest online shopping
day in US history.
And that was only one day in November.
With Black Friday and a handful of other spending occasions in December, online retailers like
you stand a chance to make the holiday season your most profitable time of the year.
While the holiday season holds a lot of opportunities for businesses to grow, you're not gonna be
the only one trying to get the attention of online shoppers.
To be ahead of the competition, you need a clear action plan for the months to come.
Leaving everything to the last minute will not only be stressful, but it’ll also cost
you lost sales.
To make sure this doesn’t happen, find time to sit down and follow the steps in this video
for the smoothest holiday season yet.
Before we begin, make sure you subscribe to our channel and tap on the little bell icon
to get notified about our latest videos.
That way, you can get updated on the latest marketing and ecommerce tips for every occasion,
not just the holidays.
Create a timeline
While Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the stars of the season, there are other shopping
occasions that shouldn’t slip your mind.
Here are a few you can research and put on your calendar:
Canadian Thanksgiving if you are selling in Canada, Halloween, American Thanksgiving,
Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cryber Monday, Green Monday, Free Shipping Day, Hannukkah,
Christmas Eve and Day, Boxing Day, and New Year's Eve.
Once you have decided on your holiday season highlights, get in touch with your suppliers
and ask them to specify the order deadlines.
Those are the⁠ days by which your customers should place their orders to receive them
in time for the festivities.
At Printful, we notify all our customers when we publish our shipping deadlines for Christmas,
so keep an eye out for them.
Put these dates on the calendar as well, plan your marketing around them and use the dates
as part of your promotions.
To make sure your customers understand what order deadlines mean, you can plan an announcement
email and schedule reminders for loyal customers, incorporate deadlines in all of your marketing
copy and add the deadlines to your social media profiles or cover photos for the holiday
season.
Decide on your holiday specials
Next on your to-do lis⁠t is deciding what types of deals you will offer this holiday
season.
Pick one, or mix and match to find what works for your audience, for example:
You could offer a percentage or dollar discount, free shipping, do a flash sale, giveaway or
contest, create a promo code or offer a discount to loyal customers.
Once you’ve made your mind about the deals, think about the products to put on the pedestal.
Are you going to promote your best-sellers, or will you try to get customers interested
in something a little more slow-selling?
Got anything new planned?
If you’re looking to add holiday-themed products to your store, consider trending
products of the season, like sweaters, beanies, socks, mugs, posters or canvas prints.
Prepare your store
Some of your marketing efforts will need to be set up on your website—be sure to prepare
for that ahead of time.
Try out and set up those discounts and coupon codes, retargeting pixels, abandoned cart
recovery emails, exit pop-ups and web push notifications.
Whichever feature you decide to use, set it up ahead of time.
You want to have some wiggle room to test it so everything works when shoppers rush
to your store in a couple of months.
While you're at it, make sure everything on your site is running smoothly, especially
your checkout process.
Go through the whole thing yourself to make sure it’s short and intuitive.
You also want to double-check your product descriptions and care instructions, store
policies like privacy, shipping and returns, contact and subscription forms and the About
Us page.
If after running technical maintenance you notice that something needs improvement, make
changes right away to avoid updating your site during the holiday season.
Craft social media copy
In the next couple of months, you’ll have to create a lot of social media posts to promote
your holiday specials.
Write the copy for a good chunk of them ahead of time and you won’t have to worry about
getting the tagline just right the night before.
The most popular social media channels for ecommerce businesses are Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram and Pinterest.
When creating copy for your holiday social media posts, remember that each channel is
used for slightly different purposes.
For example, Twitter is a platform where people voice their opinions, discuss public events,
or let off some steam.
Pinterest, on the other hand, is purely visual and is used for design or lifestyle inspiration.
Although the two social media platforms are similar, their user demographic doesn’t
exactly match.
So, it’s fair to say that what’s popular on Pinterest, won’t be as engaging on Twitter
and vice versa.
To get an even better picture of what content will get more attention on your social media
accounts, examine your audience’s behavior on each channel paying extra attention to
user activity peaks and top performing content.
Don’t spread yourself thin trying to be visible on all platforms.
Instead, pick your target audience’s favorite and focus all of your energy on it.
Does your target audience spend quite a bit of their time on Instagram?
Then work with that!
If you need some extra help, you can check out our video on Instagram marketing, link
in the description.
Write emails
Next, you have your holiday campaign emails.
Writing them in advance will help you keep your voice and tone consistent - you don’t
want to rush them and forget something important.
Here's a few ideas for your holiday emails: * Order deadlines announcement and reminders
* Product/offer of the week * Sale preview
* Free shipping campaign announcement and reminders
* Gift guide * And new product launch
Prepare the visuals
People remember up to 80% of what they see, and only about 20% of what they read.
If you want to stand out from the crowd this holiday season, invest some time into creating
eye-catching imagery for your marketing campaigns.
Depending on what you have planned for the holiday season, you might need to create visuals
for product showcases, email campaigns, social media posts, social media covers, blog headers,
email headers, email content, store banners, pop-ups and ads.
The great thing is, you don’t have to take all the photos yourself.
Use the Printful Mockup Generator to create and download stylish lifestyle snaps of your
products or try out Printful's photography services.
If you need more general visual material, browse websites like Pexels, Unsplash, and
Pixabay to get beautiful royalty-free images and make sure to also check our video on free
Adobe Photoshop alternatives you can use to create stunning imagery for your store.
Links to all of these resources are in the description below.
Just remember, whichever road you take, use images and graphics that are relevant to the
product or deal you’re offering.
Schedule your campaigns
Once you've got your content ready to go, grab that calendar you made and start scheduling
your campaigns according to your plan!
For the best results, don’t just share your content whenever, schedule it to go live at
the time your audience is most likely to read and interact with it.
First, emails.
Based on the data of 14 different studies about the best email sending times, the best
days to send emails are Tuesdays, followed by Thursdays and Wednesdays.
As for the send times, you should schedule your campaigns around 10 AM, 8 PM to midnight,
2 PM or 6 AM.
Second, social media.
The best time to schedule your marketing content on social media varies from platform to platform.
On Facebook it's Monday to Wednesday at 12 PM, on Twitter - Monday to Wednesday at 12
PM or 1 PM and Instagram - Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at 12 PM.
Once your campaigns are scheduled, you're all set!
Just be sure to block out time in your calendar during the holidays to answer all the customer
questions, comments and replies.
Doing so will boost your productivity, reduce stress and, most importantly, keep your customers
engaged with you and your brand.
There’s a lot to do in the months to come, so I recommend that you start now!
You can find a checklist of all seven steps and the resources I mentioned to help you
along the way in the description below.
Is it your first holiday season, or are you an experienced player in the game?
Let me know in the comments below!
I hope you enjoyed that video.
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videos on our channel to help your store become more successful.