Quick Halloween Marketing Ideas to Boost Sales This Holiday Season

Quick Halloween Marketing Ideas to Boost Sales This Holiday Season

Are you wondering what quick Halloween marketing ideas will boost your sales up this Holiday month? Don’t worry at all as you have just come to the right place for all your answers. Instead of jumping directly onto Marketing ideas for Halloween 2019, let us first take a quick look at last year’s marketing trends and predicted present trends.

In this article, you will find various solutions to all your queries about ecommerce marketing strategies and how to boost your sales during holiday seasons using social media marketing and current business trends.

What is Halloween?

Halloween is an annual ghostly holiday celebrated on October 31st every year. This 2019 it falls on Thursday, October 31. It came into observation along with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. On this day, people light bonfires and wear scary costumes to stall away ghosts.

Celebrating Halloween is an ancient practice, but with time it has become trending. According to a research in 2018 by the National Retail Federation (NRF), 175 Million American’s celebrated this scary time of the calendar. They, on average, spent 9 Million Dollars for celebration.

What They Buy for Halloween?

This quarter the estimated Trick or Treat holiday shopping trends are

  • 68 percent of Americans plan to celebrate Halloween this year. Top spending categories for 31st October 2019 are:
  • $3.2 billion on Halloween costumes,
  • $2.6 billion on Halloween candies
  • $2.7 billion on Halloween decorations, and
  • $390 million on Halloween greeting cards
  • What They Buy for Halloween:

This 2019 October edition holiday has gained popularity because it is an affordable holiday. Right from kids to adults, each and every person loves to celebrate this spookiest day of the year. Shoppers look forward to Spooky items that are bang for a buck.

90 percent of Americans buy candies for trick or treats, spending about $2.6 Billion. Around 75 percent buy decor, and not more than 70 percent spend on costumes.

Top five trending costumes for adults were:

A witch, vampire, zombie, pirate, and Avengers character.

While for children, the costumes were Princess, Superhero, Batman, Star Wars character, and Witch.

In recent times shoppers even buy weird costumes for their pets. The five most popular pet costumes were Pumpkin, hot dog, bumblebee, devil, and cat (for dogs).

When Should You be Ready for Halloween?

  • 6% of shoppers will start shopping before September.
  • 28% of shoppers will start their shopping during September.
  • 41% of shoppers are likely to get done with their shopping in the first week of October.
  • 25% of the shoppers wait until the latter half of the October month in search of more profiting offers.

If you have not yet started with ecommerce marketing, it is never too late. You can begin with it even now.

What channels you should use to sell your products?

Social Media channels are considered to be the most effective channel for marketing during holiday seasons every year. Most of the traffic for your business flows in through these online channels like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Pinterest.

We have included an image below, which helps you analyse how online media has influenced purchases and increased sales over a few years.

socialmediahalloween

Here are a few Halloween marketing ideas that would boost your sales this Scary season:

1. Customizing Your Website:

Customizing your Website is the best way to start your business strategy for this ghostly season. It is an excellent ecommerce strategy. You can customize your Website in various ways.

Here are the best customizing options for your Website:

It is the best way to attract customers, and be a part of this creepy Day celebrations. Even Google uses this method.

  Source: Google

  • Use a Spooky Favicon:

Favicon is nothing but a tiny icon that appears on the top of your browser’s tab for your Website. Though customizing favicon seems to be a small change, it has a significant impact on attracting the audience.

  • Add a Scary theme:

Apart from the logo and favicon, what gives your Website festive feel is the theme. If you are willing to get into the holiday theme, you must revamp your Website by giving it the holiday edition touch. This themed Website modification is for providing your visitors holiday season spirit.

Source: Walmart

Apart from these few customization’s, what could really attract customers to your websites are the use of Chatbots. Chatbots are conversational agents on your site. With the help of chatbots, you get a chance to wish all your customers who visit your website and create an emotional bond with them.

   2. Launch Limited Edition Products:

One Halloween business marketing idea used by many chocolate companies and other brands is they launch limited edition products. This practice of launching customized products keeps fans eager for your companies collections. This practice increasing brand value and trade.

There is an added advantage when the product also targets Christmas. Starbucks, in 2003, launched Pumpkin Spice Latte flavor. This product might not have been wholly linked with this scary day.

Source: Starbucks Coffee Company

However, this flavor is available only during the months of September to December. Along with many other limited-time products, it has become a trendy item. This product is selling more than 200 million units over the last 15 years.

Plan your limited edition products in such a way that they are unique and catchy.

   3. Bring back fun with Halloween contests:

User-Generated Content (UGC) is a successful way to attract customers. Running a themed Halloween social media contest for your Company or business is the best way to get UGC.
This scavenger hunt time is all about Halloween outfits, pranks, fun, and entertainment. By launching such themed festival contests, you can bring in a lot of organic traffic.

            Source: Mochi shoes

Social media algorithms are being modified over a period of time. The algorithms for Facebook are prioritised for posts with meaningful interactions i.e., post which has a greater people engagement (comments, likes, and shares) appears on top of your feed. For Instagram, the algorithm is set to feature new posts on the top.

Hence to avoid such risks of a failed campaign, promote the contest through paid media. This contest idea is to not only get UGC but also to generate brand awareness to a new audience.

For these spooky media campaigns, you can give corporate gifts to the top one to three entrants. Otherwise, you can have one main prize and provide coupons to all entrants to redeem at the store or online.

   4. Offer Spooky Deals or Discounts:

This creepy day is the time where 40 percent of the buyers start their holiday shopping.

When you club coupons, deals, or discounts with holidays, your customers, it encourages them to take up these luring offers. This 2019 Halloween is one that will not ‘trick your customer but will only ‘treat’ them.

 Source: Canva

You can give discount vouchers, coupons, or deals on the themed products of your Company. Else you could do the same for all commodities depending on your companies retail strategy.

Offering discounts or coupons just around the holiday season can lure customers into shopping for more than they would have.

   5. Customize your Social Media Pages:

You can create your vouchers, images, and other similar products in the same manner.

Just like your Website, try customizing your online pages into creepy themes. This ecommerce trick attracts customer’s attention to your establishment. Customizing social media sites is an essential ecommerce methodology. On the other hand, it is a great Halloween marketing idea 2019.

Customizing is necessary as the current trend is all about web networking. Most of the traffic flows through your online channels. When you add a little pinch of holiday touch to your social accounts is always welcomed by the customers.
You can customize your online pages using Dot Template.

 

   6. Launch theme-based Media Marketing Campaigns:

Source: Dominos

After customizing your online channels, you should tailor your social media posts too.

As trick or treat occasion is not as huge as Christmas, you need not have to customize all your online posts. Yet, you should have at least two Halloween posts a week during October and September.

Your themed campaign shouldn’t be only about these one or two themed posts. If any other thematic promotions of your organization are running, promoted them too. Use regular web posts and standard online advertising for promotions.

Online advertising can be done using Google, Amazon or other social media.

Generating Social media campaign templates is very easy.

  • Create an Edit account.
  • Choose professionally created templates from their library.
  • Upload your personalized photos or you can select from their images.
  • Add filter and text.
  • Save the template and share it with others.

   7. Run a Themed Email Marketing Campaign:

Source: media tumblr

Adding a small theme to your email campaign can boost sales, or bring in brand awareness for your firm. When you link festivals to industries such as health, security, or other services, it adds benefits.

Dentists and doctors can share emails about the risks of overeating candy, or the type of candy children should avoid.

A company selling security services could share tips on how to stay safe during trick-or-treating.

A restaurant can share details of exclusive food items and discounts at their place.

One email marketing tip is to include a sized image for sharing on social media. This image can feature one or two tips that allow people to share among their family or friends.

An essential point for you to keep in mind is that you shouldn’t change the frequency of your email marketing. Changing the frequency rate can turn the mails into Spam.

You must always aim at boosting your email conversion rate while you are doing email marketing.

   8. Link this spooky day to your business:

This holiday season can boost up sales for Realtors, Restaurants, and Real estate.

#1. Halloween marketing ideas for REAL ESTATES:

Like other ecommerce businesses, Real Estates can also use a few strategies.

  • You can run a themed email campaign sharing details of your market history, ongoing projects, and why you are unique.
  • Launch deals and special offers for 31st October.
  • Run online creepy home decor contests in the neighborhood.
  • Attach a business card to your trick or treat candies and pumpkins.
  • Send corporate gifts to both old and new clients and make them feel special.

You can use Edit to create your business card designs or flyers.

Top 10 Halloween corporate gift ideas are:
  • Mini Ghost candles
  • Carved Pumpkins stickers
  • Ghostly molded chocolates
  • Horror shot glass sets
  • Customized goody bags
  • Flickering fright lights
  • Personalized cards
  • Flavored box of ghost Cookies
  • Party flavored candies
  • Customized witch survival kits
    .

#2. Halloween marketing ideas for Realtors:

  • Customize cards and send them to the whole neighborhood.
  • Send wishes via email to all your potential customers as well as prospective customers.
  • Write blog posts linked to the ghostly theme Like How to decorate your home this Halloween?, How to celebrate Halloween? Or What to wear this Halloween?

Source: Passion For Savings

Top 10 Halloween party themes for decoration are:
  • Haunted House
  • Willy Wonka
  • Scary Carnival
  • Superhero
  • Graveyard
  • Scavenger Hunt
  • Vampires
  • Pumpkin blast
  • Monster gang

#3. Halloween Marketing Ideas for Restaurants:

The food industry is an evergreen business during all holiday seasons. For this Scavenger hunt time, here is what you can do.

Design a tasty menu using scary names or combinations.
Launch limited edition food items using Pumpkin as the main ingredient.

Top 10 Halloween food recipes are:

Halloween-CupcakesSource: Peppy Kitchen

  • Pumpkin Caramel cake
  • Eerie eyeball pops
  • Eyeball pasta
  • Pumpkin hummus
  • Spooky fruit punch
  • Maggoty Apples
  • Caramel Apples
  • Mac-o’-Lantern and Cheese Bowls
  • Mummy hand pies
  • Graveyard Cup Cakes

Decorate your whole restaurant in a scary theme.
Launch special offers, discounts, coupons, combo offers over food items.

Burger King, during this trick or treat season, launches a spooky campaign every year called, “Halloween Horror Nights.”

Burger-King-Halloween-WhopperSource: Burger King

   9. Host an Event

“What should we do for Halloween?” is the question everyone would have on their minds. Answer their call by hosting an event under your banner. Your event could be a simple Halloween theme contest or a blockbuster show.

One best idea of an event is the Pumpkin Carving Contest. The Carving can be about themes for your Company or Name of your firm. Hosting an event is an impactful ecommerce idea for small businesses.

But whatever you plan for, propagate the event as early as possible so people can block their dates for it.
Promote your event via emails, web channels, or any other media according to your budget.

If you feel that hosting an event is not a cup of your tea, you can always take the help of event managing companies. Top Event Management companies in the USA are Sensis Agency, Bigfish Communications, Blanc and Otus.

“It’s not Halloween unless you go to @horrornights at Universal! Thank you #UniversalHHN for the tricks & treats with some of my favorite people 🎃🖤👻 always a blast.”

source Instagram profile : ddlovato

10. Write Seasonal Blog Post:

Writing a Halloween theme content is an attractive way to grab customers’ attention. You can write about various topics like History behind this Spookiest year? What to wear, How to Celebrate and other related season topics.

Writing about the small articles, and publishing them online increases organic traffic. Along with the post, you can add about the ongoing Halloween 2019 ecommerce campaign or deals you are offering for 31st October. Use SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Tools for optimizing your blog.

Call to action is a necessary step when you are providing customers with such content. Most of the customers tend to look for a call to action once they feel the blog interesting. Hence you should always guide such leads to your merchandise page.

Blogging is an essential SEO (Search Engine Optimization) recommendation. When your SEO ranking improves, it makes your site rank higher. If you have no idea about how to do SEO or other digital marketing technical works, you need not worry; you can follow the easy SEO guidelines.

   11. Use Hashtags:

halloween hastags

Hashtags are the basics of all social media platforms. Hashtags organize similar events, ideas, and trends together. When you check for that particular hashtag, you can view all related posts at a single platform. Adding hashtags like linked with this creepy night like #happyHalloween, #trickortreat, #HalloweenCostume, add an advantage.

Social media channels are full of videos and photos for these specific hashtags.

A hashtag contest is the simplest way to gather user-generated content (UGC). It increases brand awareness and reaches a new target audience.

If you are facing a problem in creating hashtags or want to cut some time in creating hashtags you can generate trendy hashtags using: Seek metrix for Instagram and Facebook and Hashtagify for Twitter.

   12. Plan for Giveaways:

Free Giveaways are the best way to gather UGC. It is the human tendency to get anything that is FREE. Free Giveaways help in exposing your brand to other customers. When you implement such marketing ideas, people are most likely to participate.

When you plan for giveaways, include aspects such as share, tag, or like our social media pages. This helps in free promotions and increases organic traffic.

Source: Modcloth

Never do a bogus giveaway. When you announce a giveaway, there should always be some or the other item which would reach the winners. When false campaigns are run, customers lose trust in you and would not recommend buying from you in the future.

Giveaways gifts need not be costly. They can be anything related to that particular holiday and promote your brand. For giveaway ideas, you can refer to Give away monkey site.

Here are some of the easiest and effective Halloween social media contest ideas for giveaways:

#1. Run a photo contest:

Photo contests are among mostly loved contests on the web. These contests get your entrants involved in the contest themselves. Running a photo contest helps you in collecting user-generated content (UGC). This content you can use in your future for retail purposes.

Apart from these outfit photos, another vital aspect of this ghostly day is weird makeup photo updates.

halloween make up ideasSource: pinimg

Top 10 Halloween makeup ideas are:
  • Poison Ivy
  • Zombie
  • Vampire
  • Scare-Crow
  • Pennywise
  • Joker
  • Killer clown
  • Harley Quinn
  • Annabelle
  • Creepy Ghost

#2. Run a referral contest

A social media referral contest helps you generate social engagement. A referral is where your giveaway or company page is shared. When participants refer your Company with others, they help in promoting your brand. This is a fantastic way to build a social following and spread the word about your brand to others.

#3. Share entries

pepsi contestSource: Pepsi Nepal

Sharing Entries on Facebook and Instagram has been a best practice for giveaway campaigns. These share entries contests firstly involve the purchase of your Company’s goods. Secondly, they help in the free promotion of your brand on social media. It increases sales of your brand as well as brand awareness.

   13. Team Up with Similar Campaigns:

Teaming up with similar 2019 Halloween social media campaigns is a wonderful ecommerce idea for small organizations. You can create promotional materials that highlight what each Company is offering. This extends the target audience to large portions targeting both organizations. This idea can come to implementation at any point during the year. Yet, it works very well during significant promotional periods.

Conclusion:

So, these are a few tricks which you could put in place this quarter. Remember, these marketing strategies are not limited only to E-commerce. They can also be used for realtors, real estates, apartments, and restaurants. Also, the only mantra to boost your business sales is by planning it accurately.

We hope that these marketing ideas are of great help to you this holiday season. If you have other ideas of marketing, do share it with us.

We also would love listening to your stories about how this holiday season marketing. So, do write to us in the comment section below or contact us.

Best wishes to you and your Company this Spookiest day of October, Happy Halloween!!!

A complete guide to E-commerce Strategies for Holidays 2019

A complete guide to E-commerce Strategies for Holidays 2019

We all are aware of the First Purchase we made if we compare the first purchase and now then you see a lot of changes. The perpetual advancement in the technology and changing phase in the Politics made e-commerce an analysis aspect for the customer as well as the seller. E-commerce came immediately and omnipresent. It can be shopped anywhere and everywhere. We can say that our digital shelves have become longer and larger, welcoming more e-commerce strategies for holidays.

What is E-commerce Strategies?

E-commerce Strategies is a buzzword, mostly the wholesale or the retail business that is traditional have faced this and depending on e-commerce. To many people, it is a simple process of establishing the offline business into the online platform.

Engaging people into your fancy Websites and creatively build e-commerce pages, that will allow the business person to sell all over the internet.

ecommerce strategies for holidays

If we follow the recent Global Shopper Story that takes into account the opinion of 10,000 shoppers there are many key points found:

  • Omnishoppers are very crucial for the market that includes
  • Showrooming: here you see in the store and then buy from the online retailer
  • Webrooming: here usually, people searching the online and buy in the showroom.
  • Click and collect: people here buy online and go to the showroom to pick it up
  • Scan and Scram: Check the product in-store but buy it online from another retailer
  • Click and Ship: You check the product in the store but buy it on your mobile phone for your personal convenience

In today’s busy life both digital and retail world’s play a very vital role, while the omnishoppers may like to shop online in most of the time, but people also like to shop offline only when they have enough time. It is usually, about the experience and the discovery they can in the offline stores.

There is no less competition for the online sellers, because if we check the records then it is estimated that, 24 million e-commerce websites are there in the whole world. It seems like yesterday when the concept of e-commerce strategies blossomed in the business people’s mind.

As there are 24 million e-commerce website, out of which 650,000 stores are generating more than $1000 sales annually.

What is the current state of e-commerce?

The e-commerce state has shown an incredible growth curve if we check the last few years, the CAGR is even expected to grow to 11.1% from 2018 to 2025. One of the most popular activities in the whole worldwide includes Online Shopping. While the popularity may vary from region to region.

ecommerce sales

You can clearly see, the tremendous growth in the e-commerce marketing strategy that intensifies the competition in the business. If the competition intensifies this means that people are going to get more options to chose. It gives customers a chance to chose from even the niche categories and this can involve even both high and low level of purchase.

Increasing competition in e-commerce has led Brands attention predominantly towards user acquisition. Usually, innovative user acquisition strategies attract a number of people, however, this also requires a lot of sizeable investment. You may think, that once a customer comes up the battle is won. However, it is not, it involves post-acquisition work that has a different insight.

Once a customer comes on board, there is a high chance to drop off. Normally 70 percent of people drop off after a week and 96 percent of the users churn within 90 days.

We can surely say that if user acquisition is not coupled with successful user engagement and a perfect strategy, then there will be no results.

How can e-commerce attract new customers?

Nowadays, attracting customers is a huge task, and every e-commerce strategies involve these steps as every e-commerce business requires it. The first step to this is the having E-commerce automation checklist. Follow the below steps to have the best E-commerce strategies experience to your customers.

Ecommerce Automation

Ecommerce Automation helps you to automate your online store, similar to the supply chain, inventory management, and marketing automation systems. It includes only three simple workflow steps.

  • Trigger: For the beginning of the workflow, select a trigger, like Order Creation
  • condition: To keep the workflow going, set a condition, like Spend $500
  • action: Set an action that needs to be taken place, like Tag the Customer

This includes a few checklists that the marketers should consider for automating the e-commerce store.

Increase the customer worth

It includes having a marketing strategy in communication with your targeted customer. Reward the customer if they make more sales, gives discounts occasionally, set geo-specific promotions.

  • The first segment the audience according to their interest, and include personalized marketing communication. Segment the customer with the items they buy or add in the cart.
  • Send small handwritten notes who spend the most time on your website
  • Send a customized email, based on purchase history or when the items are in the cart are abandoned.

Increase average value with incentives

Always try to make the people stick to your site, and increase the time they spend on your e-commerce website

  • For every individual customer calculate the average spend on order.
  • Try to set threshold time, the time more than the average time they spend on the website. Offer the customers some gifts to add products to the cart and achieve the targeted time.
  • Target the incentive to drive conversions

Occasional offers to the customers, mainly target the customer birthdays

ecommerce strategies

source: milled

  • Send the customized Birthday mails, earn the customer loyalty that helps to make the customer stay with you longer.
  • Geo-specific gift, filter the customer by region, place, and interest.

Decrease the cost of customer Acquisition

If you do e-commerce automation you will see a decrease in advertising spends, and reduce the customer churn, that will gradually increase the ROI of the campaigns

  • Keep a check on the campaigns, and pause those which are not giving any results, order more inventory before you run out of it, pause the campaigns until you are restocked.
  • Always keep in contact with your team, regarding every issue through channels such as Slack, Milanote, Trello, to avoid any miscommunication.

Deducing customer churning

  • Have criteria to pull out the customer, like time each customer spends, and the time is taken since the last session, last login, last purchase.
  • When a customer doesn’t show any action for some days, then start a win-back campaign for them.

Increase Conversions

You can boost your Conversions rates using this e-commerce strategies automation, make your site customized for your viewers, improve the search functionality of your website, add push notification to increase multiple purchases.

Increasing searching and merchandise the store

Give your customers a continuous merchandise shopping experience and make the shopping process easy and smooth

  • Show the options which are of the same color, fit, brand to continue the continuous product discovery
  • Add all those SKUs that have a similar description in the appropriate collection.
  • Add the collections tags in your site search solution, as it will be easy for the customers to filter

Push Notifications to increase the purchase

Browser push notifications are the best if you want to increase the customer’s flow and encourage them to buy.

  • Segment the customers according to their choices and purchase history.
  • Target those, customer who is always looking for new products.

Easy Payment options

Check the currency your customer prefers and tailor it accordingly for them.

  • Segment the customers according to their currency preference, based on their last purchase
  • Add promotions while they checkout, and while coming to currency add currency based on the countries.

What is Customer Experience?

It is a long journey that we are experiencing, and no journey is the same. Some people like to shop online, while others like to take advice from their family, friends, peers and then act. It is like a big puzzle that has different channels, that has both online and offline shops. However, it is up to the brands how they will create the best brand experience that is frictionless, customized and provide the customer best experience as possible.

New channels keep on adding so that the older ones could be replaced and give a better experience to the people. The higher the consumers are more the interaction is, and more the competition for the brands. Ideal customer experience should contain:

  • Customization
  • Quality Content
  • Omnichannel Experience
  • Streamlines checkout
  • Post-purchase experience
customer experience

source: fico

How can e-commerce strategies build a strong Customer Relationship?

According to some Consumer Survey’s, 48% of the consumers left the site and made a purchase in the competitor’s site just because consumers experience a poorly customized site.

The key for a personalized experience is segmentation, it helps to create distinct journeys for the customers based on their shopping behavior. Whether the customer is a visiting the site for the first time or is a frequent buyer, there are few data points upon which a person and choices can be assessed. All these things will help create a custom persona for the customer.

66.7% of the top brands have a visually attractive homepage.

Suppose you have 3 categories of people coming to your site,

  • Let’s say the first category of customer to be “Type- A”, in this category, people are usually very busy and want to find the items quickly.
  • Then, the second category of customer to be “Type- B”, in this type, people are limited to a budget and use the navigation to find the right product that fits their budget.
  • The third and last category of customer, as “Type- C”, in this type, people are completely new and require a lot of information and content that will make them stick.

For Type-A category, you can add the “Add to Cart” button to all the products in the product listing page. Then for the second category “Type-B” have streamlined navigation and include more categories to the homepage. For the third category “Type- C” adding the user-generated content on the website, including all the how-to tutorials on the homepage.

You can for sure gain a good result, the conversion rate will increase to 10% and the revenue per visitor will increase to 14%

Strategy 1- Increase Loyalty by Personalized Promotions

The surveys say that 77% of consumers love discounts and encourage them to shop more. 48% of the people that discounts make them buy much faster and can take decision quicker.

gifts

source: pinterest

Do’s and Don’ts of Customer Experience

Write Bewitching Content

  • Do’s: Always have a variety of content, such as video, blogs, user-generated content, images, and infographics to make the people understand in details about your brand and the products that you are selling. There are a lot of infographic tools such as Visme are available which provide the best templates and tools to design amazing infographics.
  • Don’t: Remove all the irrelevant content, because it is one of the biggest reason, where 41% of the consumer’s back out from your website.

Engage using emails

  • Do’s: Post-purchasing sends the delivery updates and useful information related to the Purchase.
  • Don’t: Never, attack the customer with a lot of promotional emails, before they buy their first product.

Have promotions

  • Do’s: Place your promotions on the major locations on the homepage.
  • Don’ts: Avoid having inconsistent, promotions over social media sites, marketing page, and e-commerce sites.

Add “Finder” to find the store

  • Do’s: Include the detailed information such as the store hours, exact location, contact number, directions to store, in house services on the Store finder page.
  • Don’t: never add the Store Finder in the footer

Make returns easy

  • Do’s: Always have the return option in the product details page, so that it gives confidence that after buying a product, it turned out to be bad or wrong, they can return it anytime.
  • Don’t: Never add the return policy in the footer of the page.

Path Navigation to purchase

  • Do’s: The Purchasing path should be clear and easy for the customers to use, this encourages them to come back and buy again.
  • Don’t: Never launch a new website without proper A/B testing of various designs.

Strategy 2- User Generated Content (UGC) 

Engage your customer with high-quality images, videos and Infographics, in addition to this have engaging content. It is the best way to nurture and educate customers.

Usually, there are two types of content that help in brand leveraging: User Generated Content and Branded Content.

User Generated content are usually customer reviews, photos, videos, that allows the brands to share genuine and authentic content from the customers after they use the product.

Branded Content normally keeps the brands on the top when the brand is going through the down cycle, it tells about the lifestyle and story of the brand.

Not just the content, we can say an image speaks a thousand words than the content. If you have checked minutely then you must have noticed that the fashion-related people who are selling their products online, use a lot of images, in different angles, with some closeup image that showcases the type of stitches, color, type of fabric. The video included provides how to use the items, and how it is made.

21.4% of the consumers say that an appealing e-commerce strategies experience motivates them to come back again and again. While 85% of the customers said that Visual UGC that include images and videos are more influential than the branded content. As 95% of people believe in other consumers and their reviews who have already used it.

Leveraging a mixture of high-quality content that has images, videos, and user-generated on the homepage will let the people know about your brand and its products.

Strategy 3- Have the Right offer at the right time

These days people have stopped differentiating between online and offline shopping. The only thing that matters is the customer experience.

To avoid the channel conflicts, co-ordinate with all channels so that it doesn’t impact your physical location, be it with your retailers, or a seller or the brand stores those who are trying to sell at full price. In other words, you can say don’t cut down the brand store, by having a lesser price in the online store.

Check how the customer buys, track down his journey and identify at which point he is getting inspired. By using that inspiration deliver the same inspiration through the consumer-preferred channel.

offers

source: milled

According to one latest report, 74% of the people said they are more likely to make a purchase online if they can have easy returns and exchange in store.

Below you can find an optimal checklist if implemented will give customers the best experience:

  • High-Quality Product Images
  • A product description that is informative
  • Informative Videos
  • How to do- videos, tips
  • Add to cart button
  • Return Policies
  • Clear Pricing and Promotions
  • Customer Reviews
  • Complementary or recommended products, while buying products

Provide an easy return option, never forget to include return instruction in the order. On the e-commerce site of the brand, mention clearly all the return policies. This will remove the need of the call to action or any further customer support.

Strategy 4- Provide a smooth checkout experience

How many times have you seen that people come to your site, and add items in carts and leave abruptly? I guess too many. This clearly states that your website lacks in providing flexible payment options.

75% of customers complain about the lack of flexible payment options. Usually, brands fall as a victim investing heavily on the website videos and images, but lack in providing a smooth functionality or checkout process.

When you are planning to have an e-commerce site, both website outlook and functionality are very important. Always keep in mind, once the consumer adds an item in the cart, then have a clear checkout button both above and below the order summary. It encourages people to complete the action and also makes it easy to have the next process.

Add to cart

Source: Behance

Using Chatbots for conversation is also a good alternative, as using these will make the consumers feel someone is there listening. However, only 25% of the brands are only this Chats and Chatbot service on the checkout page.

Connecting the chat functionality to your website, most importantly to the Checkout Page, it provides the consumers an easy way to get clear their last-minute queries, before abandoning the cart page.

Strategy 5- Most Brands fail past checkout

The first action which most of the brands incorporate immediately after completing the check out process is sending the automated confirmation emails. Consumers read the confirmation emails, with outmost attention than that of the normal emails. It is a kind of habitual, as the email serves as a proof or a receipt.

On average, the consumers spend 4 seconds looking at a banner ad, then 7 seconds looking at a display ad, 14 seconds watching a commercial ad. While major time people spend watching unpacking their box which is estimated to be 45 seconds, in which people spend 22 seconds just removing the product from the box.

Strategy 6- Unboxing

If we follow the analysis of top e-commerce strategies of any website, then it has been seen that people get excited about the order delivery, unboxing experience, returning the item, and receiving refunds.

People are these days are too much interested in unboxing and check a lot of unboxing videos before they go to buy something. Before an item is bought, people go to the video and check the unboxing videos. So a well-designed unboxing video from the brand will increase the best unboxing experience creating an impact.

To give customers a better unboxing experience, do follow the below tips:

  • Make the packaging attractive, so that people get excited while opening it. The excitement in people will increase, and the engagement will increase to 64%, and the chances of more positive customers increases.
  • Always keep in mind, the size of the product you are sending, people usually complain that small products get big packaging. Due, to this one-fourth of the customers, think that the retailer is careless.
  • Usually, people think that packaging showcase, how much interested and careful the retailer is about the product he is selling. If it is good, then people use the product for their unboxing video experience.
  • Never do extensive packing, this frustrates the user. normally people want to reuse the packaging for future use. 95% of the people like to reuse the packaging if packing is good people tend to come back more.

How E-commerce Holiday Marketing Boost your sales?

Optimize your e-commerce website, at least 7 days before the D day. Start sending promotional emails, messages for the holiday. Have the influencers to promote it in social media channels. Holidays are the best time to

  • Get the top ranking
  • Increase your CTR
  • Improve your position in Search Engine Page Ranking

Reset your whole Website and every detail page, with a holiday mood, that attracts consumers to buy from you. It is good to run some tests on the schema that will apply to the on-page SEO with good traffic.

As the holiday becomes a ritual for shopping, increasing sales during these times become important and bring a lot of loyal customers also. Take advantage of the holiday and attract new consumers, boost sales and increase brand visibility.

If you avoid having a holiday marketing campaign, then for sure you will be overshadowed by your competitors, who will, of course, promote during holidays. Gradually, you will vanish in the huge crowd.

holiday list

The major, upcoming holidays this year, if targeted then it will help you in increasing your sales:

  • 31st October 2019-  Halloween
  • 11th November 2019- Veteran’s day
  • 11th November 2019- Remembrance Day
  • 28th November 2019- Thanksgiving Day
  • 29th November 2019- Black Friday Day
  • 2nd December 2019- Cyber Monday
  • 24th and 25th December 2019- Christmas Eve and Christmas Day
  • 26th December 2019- Boxing day
  • 31st December 2019- New Year’s Eve

Below you can read in details about some useful e-commerce holiday strategies that will help increase your sales.

Facebook Messenger Marketing

Up your holiday marketing strategy with Facebook messenger marketing. It’s currently one of the untapped channels that are truly a gem.

You can think of Messenger marketing as similar to email marketing.

But Messenger marketing’s engagement rate is 80% within the first hours, there are a lot of tools like Mobile Monkey, is available which will make your work easy.

The real benefits you can get from messenger marketing comes when you use Messenger chatbots, that allows you to send messages to your Facebook page fans.

Other than that, you can also:

  • Build a contact list
  • Nurture leads
  • Send drip campaigns
  • Segment your audience
  • Schedule appointments
  • Transition to a live operator on demand
  • Remarket to contacts
  • Perform e-commerce transactions

To create messenger chatbots, you’d need to build using an easy-to-use chatbot builder like MobileMonkey

Holidize your website

Converting your whole website to holiday mode triggers people’s holiday emotion that essential for that point of time. This makes visitors stay longer and spend more time with shopping enthusiasm.

It should be memorable, not just an ad in the product detail section or special offer sections.  Bring the emotional context to your website and to the elements present in it like the header, footer, CTAs, and even in the payment page.

Discounts and Sales

People expect a lot of discounts and sales on every product they are going to buy. Make sure that it is the first thing you have on your website. As you can see Black Friday is just a few days away, it is best to start promoting for the black Friday eCommerce sales.

Showcase the shoppers what they really require, as soon as they log in to your e-commerce site. This keeps them engaged and stops them from going to a competitors site.

 Email Campaigns

As Black Friday is on the door, start doing Black Friday Campaigning. Promote your brand, call out for your loyal customers, increase the customer experience by providing the best customer service.

  • Have emails for the early birds, encourage people to buy, provide amazing discounts for the limited time.
  • Send some exclusive discount codes, to avail the coupon.
  • Provide a discount code, after a purchase is made, so that people keep on coming.
  • Final email, send a greeting email for the Holiday.

Social Media Engaging

Use all the Social Media platform, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest to promote your Holiday Offers and deals in the social media platform. However, it is important to connect or communicate with the people in social media, because when a person watches it he becomes curious and has questions to ask.

Use the special Holiday Hashtags and encourages the Holiday atmosphere. Ask people to use the hashtags and gift them some giveaways, discount coupons or holiday offer.

Pinterest and Instagram work wonders for visual interactions. People mostly looking in both of there sites for gift inspiration, reviews, new ideas, best place to buy, greeting cards and entertainment.

If you want to keep following with the two channels then follow this:

Instagram Planner: It gives your complete year, holiday list, date and time, including the hashtags that you use.

Download the PDF here for Free: Instagram Planner for 2019

Pinterest Calendar: This will help you in sorting the year, with the holiday listing, date and time, with some marketing strategy ideas.

Download the PDF here for Free: Pinterest Planner for 2019

Conclusion

Usually, in all these implementations and improving the brand visibility somewhere, the Customer Experience Lags behind. While a lot of e-commerce companies have understood the importance of Consumer Experience and are looking for various options in which they can implement to increase the Customer Experience.

This is a complete guide for E-commerce Websites and the strategies that the companies can implement. Including the customer experience that most of the people forget, but is the key to keep your business going.

We hope that you like all these strategies and implement in your e-commerce site to increase the sales as well as the consumer experience.

If you want us to write, more about these different kinds of strategies to improves sales and experience, do write to us.

We will surely write more!