Top Holiday Marketing Tips for 2015

Mobile, emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy, and per­son­al­iza­tion key for hol­i­day retail suc­cess.

Pat Hong By Pat Hong from Linkdex. Join the discussion » 0 comments

Brands and retail­ers are prepar­ing for anoth­er hol­i­day retail sea­son. This year, mar­ket­ing suc­cess­ful­ly across a range of plat­forms, and mak­ing the most of emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies will be cru­cial for retail­ers look­ing to post healthy rev­enues. Recent reports from Google Think, and Ken­shoo, indi­cate that this year, ensur­ing a seam­less mobile offer­ing, lever­ag­ing new plat­forms and tech­nolo­gies, and pro­vid­ing per­son­alised con­sumer expe­ri­ences, will be essen­tial for brands look­ing to win hol­i­day suc­cess.


Last year, Ken­shoo released their Glob­al Online Retail Sea­son­al Shop­ping Report 2014, which high­light­ed the impor­tance of four key mar­ket­ing prin­ci­ples:

  • cre­at­ing a seam­less mobile-opti­mized expe­ri­ence
  • lever­ag­ing Prod­uct List­ing Ads (PLAs)
  • dri­ving engage­ment via social
  • and using past insights to inform strat­e­gy

The report, which iden­ti­fied key oppor­tu­ni­ties and insights for the 2014 hol­i­day retail peri­od, pre­ced­ed a bumper peri­od for retail­ers. And while the four points are still high­ly rel­e­vant for cur­rent mar­kets, Ken­shoo have fur­ther updat­ed their mar­ket­ing tips for the hol­i­day peri­od (full details to fol­low).

A recent arti­cle by Google has also high­light­ed key focus areas for dig­i­tal mar­keter. In “Four Gold­en Mar­ket­ing Tips for a Crack­ing Online Christ­mas” the report high­lights the impor­tance of mobile, and online video, espe­cial­ly in the con­text of major hol­i­day mar­ket­ing cal­en­dar days such as Black Fri­day.

Over­all, the con­sen­sus is that this year, mar­keters will need to lever­age mobile, emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy, and per­son­al­ized expe­ri­ences for hol­i­day retail suc­cess. But first — a reminder of the key stats and fig­ures to give an idea of what retail­ers can expect in the com­ing few months.

How important will the 2015 holiday period be?

Last years Q4 retail results paint­ed a pic­ture of aston­ish­ing growth for retail, fuelled par­tic­u­lar­ly by dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing chan­nels. Ear­li­er this year, momen­tol­ogy col­lect­ed 100+ hol­i­day shop­ping sta­tis­tics show­ing just how impor­tant dig­i­tal chan­nels have become.

For exam­ple, accord­ing to sta­tis­tics from com­Score, e‑commerce sales for the 2014 hol­i­day retail results increased 15 per­cent on desk­top, reach­ing more that $53 bil­lion — a size­able increase from the $46.5 bil­lion spent in the November/December peri­od in 2013.

A sim­i­lar report, IBM Corp.’s Dig­i­tal Ana­lyt­ics Bench­mark found a 13.9 per­cent increase in online sales over­all, and also iden­ti­fied that mobile devices played a larg­er role than ever before, account­ing for 45 per­cent of all online sales in 2014.

Ear­ly pro­jec­tions for 2015 indi­cate that this year’s hol­i­day retail peri­od will exhib­it even stronger growth. As report­ed on inc.com, Deloit­te’s lat­est retail hol­i­day sales project $965 bil­lion in sales for the peri­od between Novem­ber and Jan­u­ary, rep­re­sent­ing a 4 per­cent increase over the equiv­a­lent peri­od last year.

For mar­keters cur­rent­ly gear­ing up their cam­paigns, here are our top tips for the com­ing months.

Top Holiday Marketing Tips for 2015

1) Focus on the Customer First.

Ken­shoo’s top mar­ket­ing tip for the 2015 hol­i­day mar­ket­ing sea­son is a pru­dent one: make sure the cus­tomer comes first.

Per­son­al­iza­tion of con­sumer expe­ri­ences is one of the most effec­tive ways of ensur­ing a fan­tas­tic brand expe­ri­ence. Using data to inform strate­gies, to reach shop­pers at the right moments with com­pelling mes­sages. Tech­nol­o­gy has enabled new oppor­tu­ni­ties and mar­keters can, for exam­ple, “con­sid­er using paid search clicks to auto­mat­i­cal­ly cre­ate Face­book cam­paigns”. By using new tech­nolo­gies and plat­forms such as this, brands can invest in new oppor­tu­ni­ties to cre­ate fan­tas­tic user expe­ri­ences.

2) Push early to meet consumer demand and saturate your campaign messages.

Accord­ing to the Google study: “Christ­mas starts in Sep­tem­ber.” The state­ment, which is based on search data, shows the impact dig­i­tal con­sumer jour­neys have had on con­sumers, where­by con­sumers are think­ing about their hol­i­day shop­ping ear­li­er and ear­li­er each year. and search vol­umes also increas­ing each year. In fact, the data indi­cates that by Octo­ber, 40% of Britons will have com­menced their Christ­mas shop­ping.

3) Mobile optimization will be absolutely critical.

Last year, Christ­mas sales via smart­phones and tablets were up 55 per­cent, and 37 per­cent of online sales (or 8.9 per­cent of all total retail sales) were made direct­ly via a mobile device*. Per­haps one of the most telling stats that Google found, was that in 2014, con­sumers who shopped across mul­ti­ple chan­nels and devices spent four times more than those who did­n’t — a telling sta­tis­tic for mar­keters look­ing to max­imise rev­enues by invest­ing in mul­ti­chan­nel.

4) Get ready for the biggest Black Friday yet.

2014 Black Fri­day sales sur­passed $1.5 bil­lion in rev­enues in the US. In the UK, £810 mil­lion was spent online, mark­ing the biggest day for UK online sales ever. Retail­ers have every oppor­tu­ni­ty to ben­e­fit from this uplift, and a telling sta­tis­tic was last year retail­ers offer­ing dis­counts saw an aver­age sales uplift of 180 per­cent*.

Mobile account­ed for 55 per­cent of all queries*, and IBM dis­closed that almost half of all the online pur­chas­ing dur­ing Black Fri­day in the UK was on mobile – out­per­form­ing the US. This year, Brands will have to ensure sys­tems are in place to han­dle the huge amount of traf­fic, and that both web and mobile sites are opti­mized to per­form.

5) Emerging Channels and Formats are key to gaining a Competitive Advantage

Ken­shoo high­light a num­ber of emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies that offer mar­keters new oppor­tu­ni­ties to ampli­fy cam­paigns. To name a few: buy but­tons on plat­forms such as Pin­ter­est, Twit­ter and Google, Insta­gram Ads, and Yahoo Gem­i­ni (the brands new native mobile adver­tis­ing offer­ing).

Google have again high­light­ed that online video will a key bat­tle­ground to win con­sumer hearts and minds. Last year online views of Christ­mas themed adver­tise­ments were up over 3,000 per­cent from the pre­vi­ous year. Video is a great plat­form for emo­tion­al con­tent, which is fast becom­ing a key objec­tive for brands to pro­duce and stim­u­late engage­ment. The search brand sin­gles out YouTube as key plat­form, with watch time increas­ing 60 per­cent on the pre­vi­ous year.

6) Capitalize on Shopping Campaigns and Dynamic Product Ads

Specif­i­cal­ly for mar­keters engag­ing in cross chan­nel efforts, Ken­shoo high­light an oppor­tu­ni­ty prod­uct-spe­cif­ic adver­tis­ing efforts, such as Face­book’s Dynam­ic Prod­uct Ads.

Accord­ing to Ken­shoo “the lat­est enhance­ments enable more tar­get­ed up-sell and cross-sell oppor­tu­ni­ties show­ing com­ple­men­tary prod­ucts to past pur­chasers” and mar­keters can use the chan­nel to extend reach into the Face­book Audi­ence Net­work to engage users across the mobile app ecosys­tem.

Sim­i­lar­ly, with 52 per­cent of retail search­es on the Yahoo Bing Net­work unique to Bing, mea­sur­ing a cal­cu­lat­ed mar­ket share of 29 per­cent, cre­at­ing Bing Shop­ping Cam­paigns (which allows the import of Google cam­paign struc­tures) can add a lucra­tive addi­tion­al chan­nel.

Getting ready for the holidays

A key take­away for mar­keters cur­rent­ly plan­ning hol­i­day mar­ket­ing cam­paigns will be in ensur­ing dynam­ic and cross-chan­nel mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives, that lever­age adver­tis­ing and dis­play tech­nol­o­gy from emerg­ing plat­froms. This will cre­ate an expe­ri­ence that per­son­al­izes con­sumer jour­neys and ensures the max­i­mum impact of hol­i­day cam­paigns.

*Stats from Google Four Gold­en Mar­ket­ing Tips for a Crack­ing Online Christ­mas.


Are you gear­ing up your hol­i­day mar­ket­ing cam­paigns? What are your top tips?

Pat Hong

Written by Pat Hong

Editor at Linkdex/Inked, Linkdex

Pat covers the SEO industry, digital marketing trends, and anything and everything around Linkdex. He also authors Linkdex's data analysis and reports, analysing the state of search in various industries.

Inked is published by Linkdex, the SEO platform of choice for professional marketers.

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