Seasoned Ecommerce Experts Offer Holiday Marketing Advice

Digital Marketing / September 12, 2022

As a digital marketing agency, we’ve gone through many Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays over the years. We’ve helped dozens of large ecommerce stores hit their target during the busiest season of the year. To help other businesses plan their holiday marketing strategy, I’ve asked some of Bloom’s ecommerce experts for their advice on how to smooth sail the holiday shopping season. 

Here’s what they had to say!

Advice #1

“One of the best pieces of advice I can give would be “grab wallet shares quickly”. The holiday shopping season starts earlier every year. According to reports, even Amazon will hold a special event in October called “Prime Early Access Sales” to convert users ahead of competitors.  

From my experience, the brands that see the most success over Q4 are brands that extend their sale period prior to the Mega Shopping Days of November. But, make sure your messaging conveys a sense of urgency and scarcity – don’t wait, or you’ll miss out on the best deal of the year.”

– Jeff Johnson, VP of Media

Advice #2

“Make things easy for your shoppers. Covering the fundamentals like fast website load times and great user experiences across desktop and mobile versions of your site will drastically impact sales and revenue. Planning ahead to handle increased traffic volumes is a smart move to avoid any website downtimes or load issues that can frustrate shoppers.

Since people are hunting for deals during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, details like prominently displaying price savings can positively impact conversion rates. Suggesting complementary products and services as add-ons can enhance a shopper’s experience with your brand. Making it easy for shoppers to share deals with friends and family can increase sales with minimal effort and help your deals go viral on social media, leading to even more sales.”

– Xurxo Vidal, Chief Operating Officer

Advice #3

“Be mindful of competition during BFCM. All big retailers aim to take a share of consumers’ wallets during this time. Don’t let your digital marketing campaigns get lost in the Black Friday Rush. Come up with exciting sales, show a sneak peek, offer free shipping, grow your Black Friday email marketing list far in advance.

Regardless of the size of your marketing budget for BFCM, I strongly suggest against launching a new brand or product, or collection during this time.”

– Marina Yaburova, Paid Media Team Lead

Advice #4

“Brands who begin the hard work for early customer acquisition back in July see better results. They’ve leveraged (historically) cheaper CPMs and acquisition costs in off-season and then target their customers when it matters most. They’ve developed trust and visibility with their clients, making them their first choice when shopping season arrives.”

– Olivia Taddio, Strategy Lead

Advice #5

“The key is planning and learning to trust the algorithm. Most of the platforms are moving away from audience over-segmentation towards automation and prioritize the accounts & tactics that allow the algorithm to do its job. In the previous years, we always allocated most of the budget towards acquisition in the months leading up to the Holidays Season and then relied heavily on the Remarking audiences. Nowadays, after iOS14 update, we are dealing with much smaller remarketing audiences and higher performance results in pure acquisition. So it is crucial for marketers to accept this new era of digital advertising and give the platforms everything they need to succeed. That includes creatives variety, smart content hooks and thoughtful budget allocation.”

– Maria Egorova, Performance Supervisor

Advice #6

“The competition becomes extremely fierce on both social platforms and search engines when October comes around. The cost of acquiring new customers becomes very high. Therefore, we highly recommend that you maximize your remarketing audiences early on. You can grow your audience pool by driving traffic to your website, using Facebook Lead Generation campaigns and App Install campaigns.

With a strong remarketing audience you’ll be in a better position to push, at a lower cost, your holiday offers to people who are already familiar with your brand and therefore more likely to purchase from you.”

– Alexandrine Pigeon, Practice Lead – Search

Advice #7

“Planning in advance is going to be key to your brand’s success. Identifying the type of promotion you would like to run as well as the KPIs you would like to achieve will help with the direction and execution of the campaigns/initiatives leading up to the event. Having your campaigns prepared in advance with the proper structures and creatives will eliminate any last minute updates, which could result in potential mistakes and a decrease in performance.”

– Jamie Benchimol, Director of Client Services

Advice #8

“Set your KPIs in advance and operate with a flexible and fluid budget mentality. Create “What If” scenarios using your KPI thresholds – for example, scenario A could be: as long as we are meeting X revenue target, we are comfortable spending up to Y budget. With these scenarios in place, you are setting yourself up for success by being proactive, not reactive. One of the biggest mistakes I have seen brands make during big promo periods is overplan their budgets down to the week, day, even hour. If you see that your campaigns aren’t picking up immediately, don’t pull back right away – be patient and allow the algorithm to do its work, remember that the auction will be overloaded at this time!

The more restrictive you are with budgets when the time comes to launch and optimize your campaigns, the more likely you are to lose out on revenue during these key moments, and you don’t want to leave any money on the table while your audience is in peak buying mode. “

– Zoe Kerrick, Group Account Supervisor