Can you believe it? Santa season is coming! For your brand, it means that you only have 19 more days to make your strategy work and get on your customer’s wishlist. But what is your content strategy saying about Christmas? Is your company taking advantage of this popular temporary season and applying it to its brand strategy? Sure, you have some Christmas decorations and a little hat over your logo on your social media posts, but at this point you have to ask yourself, is that really enough? Do you consider that a real Christmas strategy? If so, we need to have a serious talk, boo. So, don’t be a Scrooge and let’s get into this.
After Cyber Monday being the heaviest day on digital sales, your brand is now on a thirty-day war between Cyber Monday and Christmas. Why is this important? Because you want your brand to stand out from the others and sell some good Christmas gifts before 2018 ends.
According to the book Holiday Shopping 2018 A Strong Economy Sets the Stage for a Spending Surge, 2018 US holiday ecommerce sales are expected to grow 16.2% this year, summing up to $123.39 billion. So how much of holiday e-commerce spending will be m-commerce? E-commerce will be increasingly driven by mobile commerce, which is expected to jump 32.6% and will account for 44% of holiday ecommerce spending.
After Cyber Monday being the heaviest day on digital sales, your brand is now on a thirty-day war between Cyber Monday and Christmas. Why is this important? Because you want your brand to stand out.
Photo courtesy of Lizzie Darden (@lizzie_darden)
Now, let’s take a step back and get on our time machine, because it’s time to go back to Christmas season 2017. Get on your DeLorean and go back in time, because data is value and we need to learn from our mistakes and successes from past seasons. What was your top item last year on web sales? What item was low on views and clicks? By analyzing your data, you can review the steps that you can replicate and what you can improve. Because data is what, kids? Fundamental.
If you want to review all your past data, nothing like a quick view in Google Analytics for you to review, analyze and learn to be 2018 Christmas ready. If you need a little push, here’s a couple tips on how you can start preparing yourself:
Optimize for mobile
Take advantage of email marketing
Look into driving SEM and PPC
Influencers, influencers, influencers, baby!
As usual, let’s break it down with that last one. Influencers can help increase user engagement with a brand in several key ways. They can:
Influence (Duh?). They can give that organic feel we love so much by tagging your brand and using high quality but very natural posts featuring your brand. This will help increase brand conversations on Instagram which are really important for the algorithm. By tagging brands in their posts and featuring the product in an authentic way, influencers help increase conversations about the brand on Instagram.
In the Instagram community, an influencer’s followers are more likely to see your brand surfaced in the Explore tab if they liked and commented on a sponsored post by an influencer they follow. They’re also more likely to follow your brand and see your tagged shopping posts surface on their feed.
Create. To increase the chances of being followed on Instagram or capturing the attention of potential customers or followers, your content needs to be king. High quality photos and videos that feel authentic to the channel are more likely to generate engagement. People say authenticity is important when deciding what brands to like and support. Authentic influencer produced content can be re-posted by brands on their feed to give people the social proof that they need to want to support your brand. Again this is the organic feel, because it’s not portrayed as sponsored or even paid. That’s why we know see more collaborations with influencers more than ever.
“There’s the perception that influencer marketing is solely for brands with deep pockets, but this isn’t necessarily the case. Increasingly, there’s a growing trend towards brands collaborating with non-traditional and micro influencers, who don’t demand nearly the same price tag as well-established digital talent.”
— James Murphy, Chief Executive of ad agency Adam & Eve DDB.
If you feel like your brand is not feeling the Xmas feeling, let us know! We know we’re ready! Let us hook you up with a badass Influencer Marketing strategy, our #GNBSQUAD is holiday sale ready and we can create that magical feeling for you. Take a look at our roster, choose your favorite elf and see how we do.