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Every year, Christmas seems to come and go in a flash. Savvy shoppers will have their Christmas shopping done by the time December 1st rolls around, and there’s the usual last-minute dash for the rest of us! Google reports that searches for “where to buy” peak during the last week before Christmas, so how can you reach these last minute shoppers online?
Local Inventory Ads
Local inventory ads allow you to promote products to shoppers that are nearby to your store, via a ‘local shop front’ on Google. While online shopping continues to grow, at this time of year there will undoubtedly be a number of shoppers looking for last minute gifts before it’s too late. With local inventory ads, you can promote your in-store inventory to local users as they search. Better still, there is still the option to ‘shop online’ – just as the example below shows.
This makes them a perfect ad type for Christmas, especially those who wait until Christmas Eve to start their shopping! To learn more about local inventory ads, check out our previous blog post.
Remarketing
With 40% of mobile shoppers leaving a website without converting, why would you not want to encourage them to come back again? You could use dynamic remarketing ads to show the products they viewed, and remind them who you are and that you have what they’re looking for. What about previous purchasers? If they’ve bought from you before, they’re more likely to buy again. Use this to your advantage to secure more sales before Christmas – just make sure you can deliver the goods in time!
Create a sense of urgency
As your last date for pre-Christmas delivery rolls around, let shoppers know that their time is running out! Add a countdown into your ad copy with a simple formula, to encourage more users to shop sooner.
Go social
If you’re utilising paid search on Google or Bing, have you thought about using social advertising like Facebook, Pinterest or Instagram? You could upload custom audiences such as your mailing list and use it in a similar way to remarketing on Google. Again, create urgency with creatives that let your audience know they don’t have long left to shop to encourage more purchases before time runs out.
The importance of Pinterest
Pinterest is an often overlooked channel for ecommerce and sales. The stats say otherwise.
3 areas where Pinterest can help
- Build brand awareness
- Use Pinterest to help people discover your brand, business and offerings
- Drive consideration
- Generating more traffic, leads and enquiries whilst growing organic search
- Grow sales
- Creating credibility and interest to target a defined, high-end audience base
The importance of Instagram
Instagram is fast becoming both a search engine and ecommerce marketplace. Dependent on your product, this platform is a must for both retailers and ecommerce practitioners.
4 marketing options on Instagram
- Photo and video ads
- Tell your story through a clean, simple and beautiful creative canvas. Photos can be in square or landscape format
- Carousel ads
- Add another layer of depth to campaigns, where people can swipe to view additional photos or videos in a single ad
- Stories Ads
- Complement your feed content with ads on Instagram Stories. Connect with over 400 million accounts using stories daily
- Collection Ads
- You can use collection to visually inspire and help your audience discover, browse and purchase products. Tell an integrated story with a product or lifestyle focus, through video, images or both
The importance of marketing on Facebook
There are over 2 billion potential customers on Facebook. Whatever your view on the platform, it is a highly engaged social network that can help with both brand and conversion marketing. From building an online business on the platform through to proactively reaching new customers, Facebook has a number of marketing options to help convert those last minute shoppers.
- Establishing your objective
- Are you looking for awareness, conversion or traffic? Setting this out first helps shape your campaign
- Choosing your audience
- Facebook allows you to target via a number of different metrics – age, location, interest and demographic
- Run across multiple devices
- With over six ad formats, you can get your brand to run seamlessly across multiple devices where Facebook is accessed – e.g. tablets, mobile, laptops etc
- Measure and reporting
- Tracking performance of your various creatives as well and looking at the best performing ads can be checked with the reporting tool in Facebook Ads Manager
Conclusion
There are many ways to reach last minute shoppers online, we’ve touched on just a few. In the main, using a joined up approach means that you can clearly define the marketing channels that are working and adjust accordingly.
For help with your marketing plans in 2019, get in touch with the team at our award-winning agency.
