ONLINE MARKETING: What Should You Do Differently During Holidays

Although it’s hard to imagine holiday shopping and presents, the season is quickly approaching. And even though you might still be sipping on Pina Coladas by the pool in the heat, if you want your business to truly thrive in the boom months, you need to start considering different ways to change your online marketing to fit the season and capture the attention of the maximum number of customers before your competitors do!

The following tips and trends were gathered to help your business reach highs it’s never reached before in the coming months. Even if your business has always “peaked” during the holi-days, the trends each year change, and it is important to stay up to date with your customers to stay relevant and on their minds.

Optimize for Mobile Users

Mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile. It is the way of the future, your business NEEDS to jump on this if you haven’t already. 51% of the visitors to your site will be made via mobile devices. That’s half of your potential customers you could be sending away if your business does not have a mobile friendly or responsive web-site (see our responsive website blog). More than a quarter of the GLOBAL online transactions were made on mobile devices. That is an incredibly huge number of transactions, and it’s only grow-ing!

How You Should Prepare for the Season!

Your competitors are catching on to this and budgeting accordingly. It is projected that mobile advertisements will account for more than half of ad spending in 2015. So what do you do to target mobile users?

- Make sure you have a responsive website. Mobile users will bounce from site to site quickly if it is too difficult to navigate or understand from a mobile device. - Make ads specifically for mobile devices. Use clear imag es, keep it simple and concise. If you are doing a video ad, studies have shown that vertical video ads have a better completion rate on mobile devices. - If applicable for your business and beneficial, invest in an

App for smartphones. Apps are not perceived as advertise ments, because they offer some value or functionality. The user will voluntarily download the app and literally open the door to this communication platform for you, but it has to be available for them to do so. On average users spend about 82% of their time on mobile devices on their apps. - Create a mobile Geo-Fencing campaign. What is this? Well, basically when users are within a specific proximity to your business (your geo-fence), the consumer will be served with a specific ad for an in-store purchase.

Beware of the Savvy Shopper

With all of the information readily available to consumers now a day, as a business you have to expect that your clients will absolutely be knowledgeable in the product or service you are offering. As a business, instead of being intimidated by the well-in-formed consumer, you can actually take advantage of it! Before making their holiday purchases, shoppers referenced 12 sources of information and the time spent researching businesses increased to 5 hours and 46 minutes. What does that mean for you? Increase your online presence to make sure that when buyers are research-ing, your business is coming up! Making sure your business is coming up first in search rankings and that your digital storefront is getting the maximum exposure online will all help your business be found over the competitors! Staying in the forefront of consumers’ minds during the research process will most likely lead to a sale.

Plan Your Deal Campaign

With all the research that goes into purchases, consumers are on the hunt for great deals. Updating your advertising cam-paigns to reflect your latest promotions will lead your business to optimal growth.

The holiday shopping period stretches over several months, with some consumers beginning as early as October. Begin by knowing your target market. Who is most likely to buy from your business? That will help determine what kind of deals to offer and when to offer the deals. After gathering those facts, it is important to blast it all over the digital world. Sync your promotions with your online campaigns to make sure that all users ev-erywhere know your offers.

Online shopping has definitely, and continues to, outpace growth in traditional retail. As this trend continues to grow, the busi-nesses that do not make their online presence known will gradually decline. As a business you may always peak during the holiday season, but with internet marketing your can peak at new levels that your business may have never experienced before. And even though it is still summer, it is important to build your digital store-front so that you’re not too late when the holiday season hits!

Call us today at 248-990-3179 or use our contact form to setup a free consultation and online marketing analysis. We can let you know if your West Palm Beach business is being viewed by the most consumers and help you to improve your internet marketing efforts! We are your one stop shop for SEO, Websites and all other things Digital!