The holiday season is a busy time for many shoppers and businesses alike. It is also an opportunity for business owners and marketers to boost sales before the year ends.
Shopping for the holidays officially starts with Black Friday leading up to Christmas and New Year. Now is the right time to strategize your holiday internet marketing efforts, especially if your competitors have already begun planning theirs.
Don’t miss out on promotional and sales opportunities this season. Here are five internet marketing strategies you can employ to make the most out of the 2021 holidays.
1. Use Google My Business
Google’s local search results now allow business owners to include promotional sales or offer posts in their listings. This is a great feature that provides many benefits, especially if you are active with your Google My Business profile.
You can create and share offers, new or popular items in stock, or announcements directly with people. A “View Offer” action button will also be included in your listing. These posts will serve as additional information in your map results, which is extremely vital for local SEO efforts.
This feature enables you to connect with your existing and potential customers. When they have more access to your business information and updates, your customers are more likely to choose your business over competitors.
Adding posts through your business listing on Google search and maps can boost your relevance to improve ranking and clickthrough rates. To use this feature, go to your Google My Business profile and click on ‘Posts’ to add your holiday offer.
2. Aim for Year-Round Holiday Internet Marketing
You should aim to make your web pages and content “evergreen,” meaning they can thrive and continue to be relevant no matter the season. This provides you with higher chances of growing your traffic over time.
With that said, your holiday marketing efforts should not be limited to Black Friday or Christmas. Still, there are several different ways to host holiday landing pages to ensure they will be evergreen.
You can host your current holiday page using the same URL as the previous one. This is beneficial to have a relevant and strong page just in time for your next sale. Or, you can opt to use different URLs for different holiday sales.
It is up to you to decide whether you want a single page that centers on a particular holiday for your business or have individual pages for each holiday. If you prefer to retain your past offers online, you can just move them to a new sub-page.
3. Target SERP Features
In SEO, a search engine results page (SERP) contains different website links that the search engine considers relevant to a user’s query. The contents of SERPs can include organic or paid results and SERP features.
A SERP feature is not a traditional organic result, but it can make your page stand out among the other results.
The most common SERP features you can find on Google include:
- Featured snippets
- Knowledge panel
- Local pack
- Sitelinks
- Reviews
- Images
- Videos
- FAQs
- People Also Ask (Related questions)
Ranking for particular keywords can put you up against larger competitors. Instead, you can choose to target other areas of the search engine results that other companies are less focused on.
Since every query is unique, there is an opportunity to create optimized content for your seasonal marketing strategy. Think of how users refine their queries and aim to target them.
4. Take Advantage of Google Trends
Google Trends is another useful tool for business owners and marketers to help elevate their holiday internet marketing tactics. This keyword research tool reveals valuable insights based on Google’s actual search data.
Since many companies are competing for shoppers’ attention this season, you should engage your customers in key decision-making moments. Understanding the latest holiday trends can help you better reach and connect to them.
Google Trends allows you to unlock and extract real and accurate keyword volume data. These insights are especially helpful for developing keyword strategies to promote your webpage.
Other functions of this tool enable accurate segmentation of keyword data. This helps you discover new and trending terms and which locations to focus your holiday promotional efforts.
Below are some ways to maximize the Google Trends tool:
- Compare keywords to get more accurate traffic data.
- Evaluate keyword data by short-term or long-term period for customer insights.
- Use the Related Topics and Related Queries features.
- Narrow down keywords according to a category to obtain more accurate data.
- Refine keyword data to uncover various search intents.
5. Remarket Ads
Search ad campaigns let you show your ads across Google’s search results. Although it provides more visibility for people searching for your business, it can also be costly.
However, you can still put your ads via the Display Network even if you are on a budget. This is done through remarketing.
With simple remarketing, you can display your ads to people who have visited your site. It is much better if you place your ads on the exact section they have been to. This is a low-cost method to present your holiday promotional messages to customers.
Another strategy to consider is by uploading your customer lists and remarketing them to Google. You can also remarket to people similar to those in your audience or list.
By combining your remarketing efforts with email campaigns, your promotional messages are sure to reach your customers at various touchpoints.
Start Planning Now
Before the holidays kick-off, now is the right time to work on your holiday internet marketing campaign. These useful strategies will help you get started, so you can test, fine-tune, and implement them for your next big sale.
Unsure where to begin when it comes to internet marketing or just too busy running your business? No worries, hire the internet marketing experts at Sayles Industries today to help boost your online sales this holiday season.
