The Holiday season is slowly creeping in, but you won’t want to wait until the last minute to turn your digital marketing strategies up a notch. While your physical store or office may be gearing up for the holidays, is your website prepared? Have you thought about how you’re going to refine your digital marketing strategy?
It’s no secret that most consumers these days go through multiple channels before committing to any single purchase of a product or a service. Omnichannel marketing is more powerful than ever, and with Christmas just around the corner, it’s time to rethink your online presence.
Plus, with 2020 being the unprecedented (and frankly apocalyptic) year that it’s been, being prepared is now more important than ever. Besides, our team of 5 million will welcome the much-needed holiday cheer, so we might as well make the experience great for them! So, is your website ready for a boost? Here’s how you can optimise your online strategy for the upcoming 2020 Holiday Season.
Google recently launched a mini holiday hub for small businesses, chock full of insightful resources and handy tools for marketers and business owners. These are aimed to help businesses identify opportunities so they can prepare for the busiest (and most wonderful) time of the year.
We tested these tools and read these resources ourselves, and it’s safe to say they really do offer useful advice and insights, some of which we’ve listed below!
The Grow My Store tool analyses your website’s experience against the industry average and provides practical, actionable tips on how you can improve it. These include advice on how to imprive user personalisation, frictionless shopping, online customer service, etc.
We expect this tool will prove handy for small business owners indeed, as it provides a visual snapshot of what improvements need to be made on the site and why.
While Grow My Store currently only provides US based insights, it still pays to see how online shoppers are behaving. The Reach more customers tab provides industry trends on any retail industry, all you have to do is select which is most relevant to you, and Google Trends pulls up recent information on the top 5 topics within that industry.
Google’s curated a list of video tutorials, articles, and more on how small businesses can succeed online. These free Google training lessons cover topics from starting an online store to creating an effective social media plan.
This wouldn’t be a 2020 blog if we didn’t address the elephant in the room. Reckoning with the effects of COVID-19 may put a damper on our holiday spirits, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry when it comes to conducting business during a pandemic.
It probably goes without saying, but prioritising safety and consistent communication, regardless of alert levels in the country, is still a must. Next, make sure to have measures ready for if you’ll need to change your processes caused by social restriction, and have communication channels ready and prepare for the risks that the pandemic brings.
Lastly, you will want to service your customers as smoothly as possible no matter the circumstance, so stay as flexible as you possibly can and help customers with cancellations, refunds, and other customer service-related issues. After all, gifts will need to be sent out, and your services will still be required.
How long has it been since you last checked your keywords? Are they still relevant? What are your current rankings? What are your analytics looking like? What are your searchers typing in to find you?
It’s time to review your keywords to see what’s bringing in a high search volume and possibly update them. It also pays not to touch the pages that are already doing really well unless you’re making big positive changes, or you’ll risk losing your rankings!
Lastly, check the keyword seasonality for any holiday-related terms that may bring in a good volume using Google Trends.
Mobile-first indexing isn’t news – but with the Holidays just around the corner, it may as well be. Google most recent report ‘Masters of Mobile: Australia and New Zealand Report‘ revealed that 84% of Aussies conducted pre-purchase research on smartphones and 65% abandon a poorly designed mobile site.
Our biggest challenge, according to Google, is speed, with mobile sites within both Aussie and NZ loading at nine seconds on average. That’s much slower than the recommended three seconds, with 53% of mobile site visits likely to be abandoned if they load any longer than that.
Source: Think with Google
Here are three quick fixes from Google to increase site speed:
As we get closer and closer to shopping crunch time, people are more likely to Google for the products and services they’re looking for. When they find your Google My Business profile, you’ll want it to be updated with the latest offers, store hours, photos and posts so you can secure that conversion.
Google My Business offers plenty of tools that businesses can use to their advantages, such as creating product offers and content posts. People also go to Google for authentic reviews and photos (Google has been pushing for local contributions), so you want your business to stay updated and stand out from the competition.
It’s also smart to update your store or office hours to accommodate for the holiday hours – whether that’s late nights or closing days.
If you are not sure on how to optimise your profile, read our Google My Business Listing optimisation guide.
While that may sound easier said than done, there are plenty of ways to reach your audience. Whether that’s through a search engine or social media ads, or simply through organic hits, you want to be out there consistently.
Keep your ads updated, post eye-catching posts on your social media, and create interesting and valuable content that your audience will want to engage with.
If your digital marketing strategy could use a boost for the holidays and beyond, Pure SEO has a team of SEO, SEM, and experts who can help. Contact us or give us a ring at 0800 SEARCH to talk to one of our experts today!
Subscribe to our blog and get awesome digital marketing content sent straight to your inbox.
Your report will display in a new tab once you submit this form.
