What NOT To Do Post Holiday Marketing

Last year, consumers spent $885 billion (yes, BILLION) shopping online in 2021. 32% of those total sales occurred during the holiday selling period (October, November and December).

As we begin the 2022 holiday season, that piece of information is important to keep top of mind. Now more than ever is the time for marketers to revisit their marketing strategy along with the onsite experience their brand is providing to both existing and potential customers.

Naturally, with online holiday sales growing year over year, it’s of the utmost importance to make a great first impression on your website visitors (and the thousands of first-time visitors).

Due to your marketing efforts and the busy time of year, people are visiting your site. Great!

Now you need to get them to take action, which can be a whole different challenge. After all, the average time users spend on a website is 15 seconds.

15 seconds to capture their attention, engage them, provide them something of value, etc.
Take a look at these guidelines, if your web design checks these off, you are most likely going to see your visitors engage and take action on your website. ‍

‍Simplicity:

Get rid of unnecessary design elements and make sure your site is extremely user-friendly.

Hierarchy:

Layout your site so visitors naturally gravitate to the most important highlights.

Navigability:

Make your site’s navigation simple and obvious.

Consistency:

The look and feel of your site should be in sync throughout.

Accessibility:

Your site should be mobile friendly!

Conventionality:

Use elements and designs that people are familiar with.

Allowing customers to easily navigate your website is HUGE. Think about it, at least once (most likely a lot more than once) you've stumbled upon a website that was messy, unorganized, and most of all, confusing. I bet you didn't stay very long on that site, right? We thought so.

So, once those guidelines are set into place, you're ready to hone in on your target audience, and most importantly find out what they want.

Don't forget, it's the holiday season. People are holiday gift shopping, so their purchase is not always of interest to them, but to someone else they are buying for.

^ That right there. Keep that in mind.

At this time of year, you don't know exactly what the customer wants and who they're shopping for. When someone purchases new golf balls for their dad, and then gets hit with those dreaded re-marketing advertisements for golf balls, it's an annoyance. Little does the marketer know, the consumer who made the purchase actually hates golf.

Know Your Customers

So with that being said, hitting customers with those post holiday marketing advertisements is what NOT to do to your audience.

Imagine if brands took it a step further to get to know who they’re speaking to and asked a few questions that could provide strategic gift recommendations, saved consumers time and delivered relevance while holiday shopping.

Questions like “Who are you shopping for?”, “What kind of budget are you working with?”, “How would you describe the person you’re shopping for?”, or “What are their hobbies and interests?”

This methodology enables a priceless value exchange between brand and consumer. It provides a personalized shopping experience for customers both at the time of purchase and the future as brands activate the data they’re collecting to provide an enhanced, hyper personalized interaction for future campaigns. Brands can save valuable advertising dollars and build more trust by delivering relevant messages to their different audiences based on the information they explicitly shared (i.e., the data they provide you as a brand).

Interactive Gift Guide

So, with that being said, let us give you a solution to all of this.

By having an interactive gift guide quiz on your eCommerce website can help companies solve gift-giving problems and holiday shopping stress. In these quizzes, customers answer questions about their recipients, and the answers narrow down the selection of potential/relevant gifts from the store.

Questions To Include

Along with asking the initial questions already stated, think about asking your audience questions like “What is the occasion?”, “What is the person's gender?” or “What is your relationship to the person (parent, co-worker, friend, spouse?)”? These can all go a very long way.

In fact, customers are 3x more likely to make a purchase after answering these questions.

Having an interactive gift guide quiz on your website provides a personalized shopping experience for the consumer. At the time of purchase, brands activate the data they’re collecting to provide an enhanced and hyper personalized interaction for future campaigns. Brands can save valuable advertising dollars delivering relevant and accurate messages to their different audiences.

By taking the time to ask consumers a few questions, companies can:

1. Provide relevant product recommendations
2. Capture valuable first party data and zero party data the customer explicitly provides to them
3. Activate the data to become smarter and more cost effective marketers.
   

Not only does having an interactive gift guide quiz on your website boots you sales, conversion rates, engagement rates, etc., but it also is extremely to build. In fact, it can even take you less than 10 minutes.

Check it out!

How to build a gift finder in under 10 minutes:

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This holiday season, STOP sending irrelevant remarketing ads and START getting to know your customers better. CLICK HERE to put your gift finder quiz into action today.