Is It Too Early to Start Planning Your Holiday Campaigns?

Spoiler alert: the answer is “No!”  This year digital sales during the holiday shopping season will be bigger than ever. As noted in this Entrepreneur article: 

“Insider Intelligence’s U.S. Ecommerce Forecast sees digital sales growing by nearly 18% in 2021 compared to 2020. Brick-and-mortar retail is also predicted to grow, but only by approximately 6%. The forecasters believe that the growth will continue after the pandemic subsides as it is likely to be a permanent shift in consumer behavior.”

Every year, most retailers see a majority of their sales during the period leading up to and including Cyber Week, the days around Thanksgiving and the following Cyber Monday.  With this expected growth for e-commerce, digital marketing strategies during the holidays should be defined and developed as early as possible.  This article highlights the importance of this for a few specific channels.

• Search-engine marketing (SEM): Unlike search-engine optimization, or SEO which often has a long lead time to deliver results, it’s not too late to start optimizing SEM campaigns for holiday. As noted in the article, “Generic keywords will be useful throughout the year, but during the holiday season, it is important to narrow them further and target customers even better than normal.” 

• Email: This tends to be a large channel for retailers during most of the year and they should be designing compelling content now for their holiday communication. Inspiration is a big part of holiday shopping, including finding unique gifts or great deals, and retailers can be optimizing email content and messaging to capture customers when their intent to spend is highest.   

• Social Media: As this article states, sales this channel is expected “to increase by more than 35% this year to more than $36 billion.” This is another opportunity for retailers to target the right customers during the holiday.  To do this they need to analyze where their campaigns perform best with their target customers because the same campaign may not be effective across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.  

As someone who has worked in ecommerce for the last 10 years, I can confirm that retailers are thinking about holiday tactics as early as June and July every year.  Black Friday through Cyber Monday is basically the “Superbowl” of retail and companies would be best served by focusing their holiday messages on relevant content and in the right channels for their business. 

Digital Marketing Pitfalls

By Blaire Townshend

In a Forbes article written earlier this week, Neil Patel outlined a list of harmful digital marketing practices to avoid. As someone new to the world of digital marketing and curious about the pitfalls therein, I found this list to be quite valuable. Patel’s recommended against the following:

• Failing to identify your target audience.
• Not having a strategy at all.
• Forgetting about mobile.
• Rejecting SEO.
• Not doing any conversion optimization.
• Trying every digital marketing tactic in the book.
• Using every social media platform available.
• Paying for followers.
• Link building.
• Neglecting content marketing.
• Having not marketing budget.
• Expecting huge results in no time.

Though much of what Patel writes is simple and straightforward, even these suggestions bear remembering—it can be easy to make simple mistakes in the current digital marketing craze that has swamped the industry. My three most significant takeaways from Patel’s article were:

Simplify • Strategize • Systematize

Patel argued that novice digital marketers are wont to try out a whole range of tactics without effectively discerning why and if those tactics should be used. He said that it can be tempting to get over-excited, and to try using as many platforms as possible. He instead suggests that marketers begin with a detailed strategy—backed up with a realistic budget—before deciding on any tactics. He also suggests that marketers simplify their marketing channels, doing the market research necessary to determine what their target audiences use and reacting accordingly. Patel warns of the energy and commitment that many types of digital marketing—particularly social media—demand, and that potential users be realistic about what they are able to commit in terms of finances, staff, and time. Finally, Patel urges patience, noting that success in digital marketing does not happen overnight—especially success that stems from systematic, methodical planning.

Patel, Neil. "12 Things Not to Do When Using Digital Marketing in 2016." Forbes Entrepreneurs. Forbes, 10 Mar. 2016. Web. 16 Mar. 2016.

Using Human Communication To Unlock Your Digital Marketing Potential

"Using Human Communication to Unlock Your Digital Marketing Potential" speaks about the differences in how brand communicate and spread their marketing messages online given the sheer amount of technological mediums we have now to reach out to consumers. Sometimes brands forget that there are humans on the other side of that computer screen or iPhone.

The article begins by bringing up the concept of considering social media "followers" and those you are reaching out to online not as impressions or likes but as actual people. Then, consider how you would reach out to someone to spread information about your product or to excite them about your product or service.

Towards the end of the article, the author gives more general advice in how to create a compelling, strong marketing campaign both in general and online. One of the key points they bring up is the struggle brands have to remain relatable to their customers. A strategy that many brands have implemented, including Progressive with "Flo" and AT&T with "Lily", is to create a relatable, everyday character who communicates the brand's message in a way that's easy to understand by consumers and kind of quirky.

I would recommend reading this article as it provides a strong overview of a good marketing campaign and brings up several interesting points about how to remain human online.


Article Link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/miketempleman/2015/09/04/using-human-communication-to-unlock-your-digital-marketings-potential/