Strengthen Your Digital Marketing This Christmas
It’s going to be a tough Christmas for many this year. With the cost of living crisis starting to bite in winter, largely driven by the increased cost of energy, changes in inflation and the uncertainty in the UK economy. Customers are expected to tighten their belts as we approach Christmas.
“40% of consumers surveyed are set to cut Christmas spending “a lot” and cut back on discretionary spending right up to Christmas”.
Retail Week, 2022
The story is the same for SMBs, with business costs increasing and consumer spending set to decline it is more important than ever to make sure that you’ve got a laser focussed Christmas strategy and that you make every single penny of your marketing budget work hard for you.
Here’s a round up of our 5 tips to make the most of your Christmas marketing spend this year:
Start Christmas Early
We’re not talking about sitting down to Christmas dinner in November.
When consumers are faced with uncertainty they shop around, and start researching earlier. We may see consumers spreading the cost of Christmas over a longer period of time to help budget more effectively.
“Cost of living crisis is likely to elongate festive shopping even further in 2022”
Retail Week, 2022
Google is reporting that 17% of consumers have already started their Christmas shopping and 36% already have gift ideas.
Content and campaigns targeting customers at the research stage of the customer journey can kick off earlier this year.
Leverage paid search and social campaigns for products earlier than you normally would. Don’t feel that it’s too early for Christmas. Your customers may already be researching. Make sure that you are in the running when it comes to making their purchase decisions.
Justify Your Prices
As customers tighten their belts it’s increasingly important to communicate your brand benefits clearly and transparently with them. Expect to see customers researching more, bargain hunting and potentially trading down this Christmas.
Strategies vary depending on how your brand is positioned. If you are a luxury brand you need to try to avoid customers trading down. Highlight the quality, sustainability or innovative qualities of your products.
Take the example of a luxury chocolate brand, messaging could focus on the chocolate being hand-made, by artisan chocolatiers. Emphasis on the quality of ingredients and on the range of innovative gifting products.
Do this in parallel with pushing your entry level, price point products to maximise your sales.
“UK retailers will increasingly see people looking for bargains, and businesses need to look at how they are running sales events from now and into the peak shopping period”
Retail Week Connect, 2022
If you are at the other end of the scale, focus on tapping into sales and promotional events. Seasonal sales events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday are always popular but this may be even more so this year as customers attempt to bag bargains, hunting down the best deals.
“55% of shoppers surveyed planned on holding off on buying items until they were on sale”
Google, 2022
Data Driven Decisions
As digital marketers we should always be making data driven decisions. This Christmas it'll be important than ever to be super agile and make decisions based on consumer behaviour throughout the season. Testing, learning and refining your campaigns ongoing.
Focus on reducing waste from your marketing budget. It'll be more important than ever to wring every last drop of value from that marketing budget. We typically find cost savings in paid advertising by improving relevance, while reducing waste from poor targeting.
We saved a client 35% on their budget while maintaining the same level of sales. By tightening their keyphrase targeting on paid. Get as granular as you can and banish the waste.
From past experience, SMEs are able to be more agile than big retailers, so this presents an exciting opportunity.
“Data driven decision making allows for a more agile, sophisticated price and promotional strategy which will be an invaluable tool this Christmas and ongoing through the financial crisis”
Retail Economics, 2022
Talk in the Right Tone
Let’s be honest with ourselves, your customers are not going to be spanking the cash this Christmas.
Promoting a big splurge is very unlikely to resonate with customers this year. People are being a lot more honest about their financial struggles and why they may not be spending their money in the same way they used to.
So, this Christmas it will be really important that your tone of voice and messaging is inline with the feelings and sentiments of your customers.
Brands need to match this honesty and be empathetic to customer spending decisions. Customers are likely to focus on quality over quantity this year.
Focus on your value proposition, what is your promise to customers and what makes you really stand out from the competition. Really, why should a customer choose you? Try to understand their needs and position yourself to solve them.
The key is understanding your customers' is to tap into market research and analytics. Quantitative and qualitative data will help you to answer questions and understand the what and the why behind your customers. Make sure that your value proposition and tone shines through in your messaging across all digital channels.
Be empathetic with customers, many are having a tough time.
“A lot of work needs to be done to get the tone right with your Christmas customers given the cost of living crisis”
Retail Week Connect, 2022
Omni Channel Strategy
Remember earlier we mentioned “When consumers are faced with uncertainty they shop around, and start researching earlier.”
This Christmas it is important to ensure your brand has visibility at the different stages of the customer journey and across multiple touchpoints.
When customers are researching or shopping around expect them to use multiple channels and searches to inform those important purchase decisions.
It’s critical to have a joined up strategy, make sure you have the right channels in play and that when a customer ends up on your site you are providing them with the information and trust to help move them from “consider” to “convert”.
Customers need to be able to find relevant information and products quickly and easily. The checkout process needs to be completely frictionless.
Invest in conversion optimisation, even if it is basic conversion optimisation. We helped an ecommerce business to improve their conversion rate by 82% by improving the customer journey and removing barriers and bottlenecks.
Putting together a laser focussed strategy is the best approach for a tough festive period and digital marketing will be a crucial element; as customers spend longer researching their Christmas list and carefully choosing which products to buy based on value for money and quality.
Make sure you have the right channels in play with a cohesive customer experience to make it easier for customers to find the right information and buy; Use the data to justify decisions and remain agile throughout the Christmas period whilst reducing budget waste; Communicate why to buy your product over the competition whilst leading with entry level price points.
If you would like more information or bespoke advice on how to make most of your marketing budget then get in touch with us. We’d love to hear from you!