Eliza Brashares, Darren D’Altorio, and Serena Peterson contributed to this post.
We might still be feeling the August heat, but–believe it or not–it’s already time to start prepping for the 2024 holiday season. Building a new customer acquisition funnel that will carry your brand through Q4 starts long before the turkey is stuffed and the egg nog is flowing.
The holiday season might start even earlier this year: most holiday purchases are still happening in November and December, but more and more shoppers are making a start on their lists in advance. Shopping events in October, like Amazon’s Prime Day (and Walmart and Target’s answering events), are now something consumers expect each year. Gen Z shoppers are the most likely to take advantage of these early shopping days to get discounts on holiday purchases.
The signs are looking good for robust holiday spending: most consumers (56%) are planning to spend the same amount this holiday season as 2023 and 36% are even looking to spend more. But value and sales are still going to be crucial for consumers still feeling the pinch of inflation and overall economic uncertainty.
With all these factors in play, competition will be steep. To win, brands need to start thinking about how to draw in new customers now–if they haven’t already. That’s why our experts have put together their recommendations on how to pull in broader audiences now, so you’re fully prepared to make the most of the end-of-the-year rush.
Rise to the top: get into the consideration set with a winning search strategy
As holiday shoppers begin to hunt for the perfect gift this season, brands that show up at the top of the SERP will have a major advantage. So how can you get your search strategy ready for new customers to find you in the biggest shopping event of the year?
Start small by revitalizing existing holiday-themed pages on your website, like gift guides or Black Friday Cyber Monday deals, with 2024 offers and keywords. You should also make sure you’re optimizing your meta titles, descriptions, and H1s for maximum search visibility.
If you don’t already have an evergreen page strategy for the holiday season, now’s the time to start crafting new content and category pages. It’s a good idea to create timeless content like gift guides or deal pages that can be reused in the future–just make sure they’re optimized with “2024” keywords for this year. Structure them for easy future updates and integrate them seamlessly into your site navigation.
Source: World Market
Once you’ve got the right pages set up and optimized, you should also be prioritizing strategic internal linking. Make sure your holiday pages are linked in relevant content throughout your site to boost their authority and improve search rankings. You should also consider adding holiday-themed banners or calls-to-action on high-traffic pages to showcase your deals across the site.
No team can do this work alone and get the best possible results; you need to align organic and paid search strategies to dominate high-value keywords, share holiday page launch dates with all of your paid media teams to synchronize PPC campaigns and social media promotions, and start experimenting with new social search options to maximize your brand’s visibility and reach.
On sale now: leverage holiday sales events to draw in new customers
More and more consumers are turning first to social to figure out gift ideas, look for peer reviews and influencer recommendations, and explore new brands before the true shopping season begins. You can’t just expect to show up in the late game and earn their attention and dollars; you need to start brand awareness advertising early–that way, you’ll be advertising to audiences who are already primed and familiar with your brand and products by the time they’re actually ready to make a purchase.
As the season ramps up and competition increases, ad costs will rise, so getting ahead can pay dividends. You can also leverage less expensive media buying objectives (for example, traffic or video views rather than conversions) to get back in front of people when the auctions get crowded.
Deals are a great way to draw in new customers looking to make their dollars go further. But don’t go overboard: many brands try to get fancy by building tiered promo calendars or different deals going live on different days (like twelve days of sale plays), but overcomplicating your sales offers can confuse your customers and make people can feel like they lost out on deals rather than excited to make purchases.
Instead, keep your sales simple and clear. Because you’ve already primed your audiences by starting early, these deals should inspire new and old customers alike to jump on the opportunity to buy. Lead with your best offer and promote it clearly to give your customers the best and most consistent experience. Site-wide sales with a consistent percent off are easiest to communicate and manage, and will often drive the best results.
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Source: MagicBrief
In addition to awareness campaigns, you should also leverage pre-sale promotions like countdowns, reminder ads, calendar alerts, and SMS notifications to drive hype ahead of a sale’s start date. Building anticipation and getting people excited about your sale can help make sure the launch is an unequivocal success.
In paid social campaigns, the highest performing days of a sale are usually the first day and the last day. So don’t drag your offer out too long or hold back budget to scale into the later days of a sale. Start strong on day one and keepy spend unbridled (as long as you’re meeting your target KPIs) until you start to see results diminish; then push urgency messaging in the final 48 hours of the sale.
If your brand can’t do steep discounting, you can still get in on the action with other offers, like free gifts with purchase, which add value and an incentive to buy without giving away too much of your profit margin. You can even gamify the experience with a referral bonus program–by mobilizing your customer base to drive word-of-mouth through a referral program, you can not only pull in first-time shoppers but turn them into repeat customers.
Spread your influence: reach new customers with a holiday influencer strategy
Another way to get on the radar with new audiences is through influencer partners. Online creators already have large followings ready to pay attention to their content, so if you can find the right partner for the audience you’re looking for, you can tap into that interest to get eyes on your brand.
Since the end of the year is such a busy time for social media, many businesses and influencers will have already built out parts of their holiday calendars by now. But even if you haven’t reached out to influencers specifically for Q4 yet, you might still be able to set up a last-minute partnership or work with influencers you’re already collaborating with for seasonal activations.
Tapping creators you already know can be a major advantage because they can be integrated into your wider marketing strategy while showing your audience that your partnerships aren’t just an end-of-year cash grab. Today’s consumers are looking for authenticity, and they won’t be interested in social media deals that seem like they’re based on marketing machinations rather than relationships.
Once you’ve found the right influencers, you should involve those partners in the creative process right away. To stand out from the crowd, you should view these partnerships as truly collaborative. If you simply try to impose your own vision without your partners’ input, you’re not just risking striking the wrong note for their audiences; you’ll fail to take advantage of your influencers’ built-in audience expertise.
There are tons of different ways to maximize your social media engagement, from organic tactics like giveaways and unboxings to bringing influencer content to your website via live shopping experiences or curated gift guides.
Influencer strategy will be especially important as social commerce gains more and more traction with consumers. Buying directly on social platforms will be top of mind this year, especially for Gen Z consumers: according to eMarketer, over 40% of Gen Zers say that they are likely to buy gifts through social media, more than twice the rate of shoppers overall. TikTok Shop made a splash in holiday shopping last year, and we’ll likely see that again in 2024. If your brand is leveraging social commerce options, make sure your influencer partners are positioned to drive engagement to those points of sale.
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Source: eMarketer
As you kick off your partnerships, consider discussing some of these ideas with potential influencer partners:
- Curated gift guides
- Unboxings
- Giveaways
- Affiliate codes/discount codes
- Limited-edition products
- Live shopping sessions
No matter what tactics your brand chooses to leverage this holiday season, remember that all of your channels, from search to influencer, share the same ultimate goal: reaching and converting the right audience. Make sure your messaging is consistent and authentic across all of your activations to gain and retain new customers this holiday season and throughout the year.