Christmas is almost here, but you don’t have a Christmas campaign in place.
The chaos of your Black Friday sale is over and you’re not sure if you have it in you to come up with something creative in December.
You also might be wondering whether people are even focused on shopping in December that much. Hasn’t everyone completed their Christmas shopping by now?
As it turns out—not really. Around 40% of shoppers do the majority of their shopping in December. There’s a lot of search for the best gifts still going on, which means you can skyrocket your sales once again before the year is over.
Another good piece of news is that holiday season sales keep growing each year. In 2018, it’s forecast to reach $123 billion, and that’s just in US:
It’s not too late to kick off a few final pre-Christmas efforts, and here’s why: there’s a ‘conversion cliff’ around December 17th and 18th.
This means that ecommerce traffic is consistently strong right up to Christmas, but shoppers stop buying around a week before—most likely due to the fear of not receiving their products in time for Christmas.
You still have time to get your online shop ready for this final pre-Christmas shopping frenzy.
What’s even better, you’ll have another chance to make Christmas sales even after the conversion cliff date, and that is on December’s highest traffic day: the day after Christmas.
Yep, you read that right! This is a huge opportunity for ecommerce retailers, so don’t fret if you haven’t seen results you were hoping for in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
Your post-Christmas offers can make you additional profit through to New Year’s Eve.
Wondering how to make the most of these rushes of shopping sprees in December? You’re in the right place—let’s jump into the four last-minute Christmas campaigns you can prepare in no time.
Run PPC Campaigns for Seasonal Searches
If there’s a type of Google search that peaks every December, it’s any version of ‘gifts’ or ‘gift ideas’ for women, coworkers, friends, pets, book lovers—literally anyone you can think of.
Look at any of the trends around these searches, and you’ll see they start growing around mid-November and peak right about halfway through December:
If you do any of these searches yourself, you’ll notice that all the results are some form of a listicle, such as holiday gift guides or 25 best gift ideas for [person].
Here’s the problem: if you haven’t created content that ranks for such search terms, it’s too late to create it and get it to rank now.
However, you can still act on these highly purchase-driven searches by creating a dedicated landing page or category.
To reach them, you don’t need to wait for your page to be seen and ranked by Google. Instead, you can run PPC ads to target these specific searches.
Let’s begin with some landing page examples to get you inspired.
The first example is from none other than Amazon. It’s called The Christmas Shop and it’s reachable right from the main menu at the top:
Obviously, not everyone has the resources like Amazon, so check out this example from New Look.
They simply created a product category called Christmas Gifts for Her just like any other category, and added products to it:
Finally, you can get as specific as you want to (and have time for), and a great deal of inspiration comes from Nordstrom.
They have more than 20 sections for gifts, including price limits, for him/her, and many personalities their shopper might be buying for:
It’s important to make this as simple as possible for your capabilities this December, so whether it’s a product tag, a category, or a full-blown custom-built landing page will be totally up to you.
Once your product page is ready, you can create a campaign inside Google Ads to target specific gift-searching keywords that match your products.
To create your campaign, head over to Google Ads and log in with your account (if you don’t have one, simply hit Start now and follow the prompts).
Under the Campaigns tab, click the plus sign, then New campaign. Select Sales as your goal and Search as your campaign type:
Then, complete the essential campaign set up by defining your budget, as well as start and end date to your campaign.
You’ll arrive at the ad groups screen, where you can enter all the keywords you want to target, one word or phrase per line:
Bonus tip: to figure out the best phrases to target, you can use Google’s keyword planner, as well as Keywords Everywhere—a Chrome extension that shows you monthly search volume next to each search term and all the related suggestions.
Finally, write your headline (up to three variations), description (up to 2 variations), and add your page URL. Review your campaign on the final screen and once you’re happy with everything, send it out into the world!
Create Hyper-Specific Remarketing Campaigns
There is a time and place for running broadly targeted campaigns that help you gain brand awareness and overall reach.
The run-up to Christmas isn’t one of those times.
This is the time to get extra focused on people who have interacted with your business in the past.
Some of the most valuable audiences at this time are those that:
- Visited specific categories and product pages, but never purchased
- Abandoned a cart full of products
- Purchased from you multiple times in the past
- Interact with your emails and Facebook ads frequently
The data you can leverage through your email service provider and the Facebook ads manager is invaluable when there’s such a short timeline for getting your sale in front of the right people.
Here are two main remarketing campaigns you can run to increase your sales this time of year. These require you to have the Facebook pixel up and running and/or a well-maintained list of customer and subscriber emails.
Target highly interested non-buyers on Facebook
Facebook lets you target people based on specifically how they behaved on your website.
Head to Facebook Ads Manager. First, you need to select a correct conversion from your Facebook pixel. In this case, you could choose Initiate Checkout as a conversion event because this indicates audience that has started the purchase process, but hasn’t completed it.
Below, you’ll be offered an option to use Custom Audiences. When you reach it, click Create New > Custom Audience. Then, select Website Traffic.
To reach those who have visited specific areas of your online store, such as category and product pages, select People who visited specific web pages.
Once you’ve created this audience, you can create an ad that specifically focuses on that product category and nudges the person to complete their purchase.
Segment your email list for unique Christmas promotions
If you’ve been sending regular promotions and offers throughout the year, and especially in the last couple of months, you can put the data from these campaigns to great use.
Your email marketing system diligently tracks who has been opening and interacting with your emails.
For your Christmas retargeting, look for 5-10 campaigns you’ve sent in the recent 2 or 3 months that have sparked the highest open and/or click-through rate.
Then, create segments made of people that opened or engaged with the email and send them campaigns with special offers similar to the product category or offer of the email they have originally opened or clicked through.
You can also do this on a super short timeline. For example, if you sent a promotion just a few days ago and someone clicked through but hasn’t bought, why not remind them they still haven’t completed their purchase?
Life Style Sports does this to me often, which is part of the reason why there are so many pairs of running shoes in my household:
Run a Christmas-Themed Influencer Campaign
One of the biggest challenges with influencer marketing this close to Christmas is attributing a spike in sales to the influencer rather than the Christmas shopping madness.
You might be completely discouraged from doing influencer campaigns during this time of the year, especially if you haven’t seen measurable success from it so far.
If you have a relationship with an influencer you’d love to work with (i.e., you don’t have to go from scratch this close to Christmas), we have good news for you.
Because of how fragmented the shopping experience is on social media—and this includes influencer marketing—we’ve built jumper.
With jumper, you (and your influencers!) can easily turn valuable conversations and engagement on social media into sales and loyal customers.
We have a full guide on building profitable and easy-to-track influencer campaigns, so make sure to follow the steps in it to run your campaign from start to finish.
In the meantime, here’s what you need to know about the role of jumper in your influencer campaigns:
- You can create a fun, on-brand hashtag for each of your influencers
- When you set up that hashtag in jumper, you’ll also generate a link for the influencer that will lead directly to an automated checkout in Messenger or in a browser
- You can track sales for each of your influencers in great detail
In other words, you’ll remove about 66% of the friction that comes with jumping between social media and a full-blown website checkout, which will result in more sales, happier customers, and influencers eager to work with you again.
Make your influencer campaigns easy with a free jumper account.
Announce a Cut-off Day for Delivery in Time for Christmas
Since we’re so close to Christmas day, one of the most frequently asked questions from shoppers is: when is the last day to order and still receive my products in time?
If you don’t provide this information, they’ll move to your competitor that does.
The good news is that you can turn this piece of information into a campaign on any of your preferred marketing channels after you set a foundation.
Once you’ve identified what the cut-off date is, here’s how to make the most out of FOMO—the fear of (literally) missing out—that last-minute shoppers have.
Create a dedicated page for Christmas deliveries
Along with the gift guides, another search term that skyrockets during December is ‘[store] Christmas cut off’.
The only way you can turn these into clicks and sales is by creating a dedicated space on your website to answer this question.
Don’t just make this page for the sake of having something for your potential customers to click on.
Get as thorough as necessary and provide details such as shipping options and how they affect delivery times for specific locations.
Think of it this way: When your visitor sees this page, they should have no doubt around how long they have to make a purchase for their specific location and selection of products.
Announce your cut-off dates through email
Emailing your list with cut-off dates will make sure you’re targeting those that aren’t proactive enough to search for this information ahead of time.
They might be planning to shop soon, but keep putting it off, so an email that announces it can nudge them to buy.
Make sure that your subject line is clear and obvious; anything along the lines of ‘Last call to receive your order before Christmas’ and ‘You have X more days to order in time for Christmas’ will do the job.
Here’s an example from Orlebar Brown, a British clothing brand:
There’s Still Time to Make December Your Best Month
If you were panicking about Christmas sales until now, it’s time to implement these easy Christmas campaigns.
You will easily reach people who are in the last-minute Christmas shopping mode by:
- Targeting their searches with Christmas-themed shop categories and landing pages
- Talking to people who have shown lots of interest in buying from you in the past
- Making your influencer campaigns easy to execute and measure with jumper
- Spark FOMO with a cut-off date for final Christmas orders
Don’t forget to plan your campaigns all the way through to the end of December because the shopping won’t stop with Christmas. And don’t forget to celebrate!
