The holiday season is the biggest shopping frenzy of the entire calendar year. Companies launch fierce ad campaigns in an effort to out-perform the competition and capture as much consumer spending in their niche as possible. With such fierce competition for consumer dollars, marketers need to know the trends that influence consumer spending during the holidays. Here are five trends that will drive sales during the 2015 holiday season.
Optimized Web Presence
You’ve undoubtedly seen and read all the stats about mobile searching and purchasing on behalf of consumers. However, are you aware that 57% of consumers abandon a website if it does not load properly within 3 seconds? In order to avoid losing out on more than half of your potential customers, you need a seamless, fast website that allows consumers to surf, shop, and purchase without suffering from lagging performance or missing features.
Get Smart
With all the focus on promoting products during the holiday season, companies often overlook the value of educational holiday marketing content. Your company should provide web content and marketing campaigns that have an educational spin to them, rather than strictly providing product-centric content designed to sell a specific item. In fact, 66% of businesses believe educational holiday marketing content is a boon to site traffic and the overall bottom line of the business.
Better Images
Your e-commerce site probably relies on the use of stock images to promote a product along with a general description of its uses, benefits, etc. When it comes to holiday marketing, you need to step your game up with better images. Replace those stock photos in your holiday advertisements with editorial-style images that show the product in a lifestyle application. It’s far more effective than a stock photo because creates a better connection for the consumer.
Don’t Forget Video
Speaking of multimedia formats, the majority of businesses plan to invest a significant chunk of their content budget during the 2015 holiday season in video. In fact, 47% said they’ll focus on creating video content to accompany marketing campaigns, with 22% choosing interactive pages.
Segment Your Campaigns
All men may be created equal, but all shoppers are not. When you’re offering special holiday campaigns, focus on the brand-loyal consumer who shops frequently with your company. When you offer special loyalty campaigns to the entire consumer base, you spend a lot of money targeting consumers that often just look for deals but never act. Your repeat customers are more likely to act on a deal if you offer them a special holiday deal that isn’t available to the general shopping public.
Read More: Boosting Your Small Business Brand with Effective Holiday marketing