As the hustle and bustle of the holidays sleighs its way in, e-commerce brands face a snowstorm of challenges—but also the chance to shine brighter than ever during the busiest shopping season of the year. No worries, we’re here to help! Let’s dive into the best tips for effective holiday marketing to get your business ready for a truly bright year-end. ✨🎄
In this blog, we’ll tackle five key areas of impact and opportunity for effective holiday marketing. From optimizing discoverability on search engines to delivering top-notch customer support, we’ve got you covered with strategies to boost sales for 2025 and beyond. Ready to sleigh this season? Read on! 😊
Snowball Your Way Through This Blog! ❄️
- Sleigh the Season: Effective Holiday Marketing Tips for Success 🌟
- 1. Improve On-Site Search & Discoverability 🔎
- 2. Walk Through Every Purchase Step 🛒
- 3. Add What Customers Requested Throughout the Year 🛍
- 4. Refresh Warehouse Layout for Efficiency 🏭
- 5. Get Ready for Returns 📥
- 6. Think Safety, Support, and Then Sales ☑️
- Final Thoughts to Sleigh Your Marketing This Season 🎄
Sleigh the Season: Effective Holiday Marketing Tips for Success 🌟
1. Improve On-Site Search & Discoverability 🔎
E-commerce websites can improve sales volumes by adding on-site searches, but only when that search works correctly. Getting it ready for the holiday shopping season is up first because you want people to buy quickly. 😊🛍
Consider holiday shoppers are on a mission —they want things quickly and sometimes the process can feel a little overwhelming, plus they’re now used to online shopping. This means faster Googling and jumping away from your online store when they can’t find what they want. The pandemic has only made these habits more common for all of us.
Here’s how to prep your store for the hustle and bustle of the shopping season with effective holiday marketing, website edition:
✏️ SEO
🌐 On-Site
🔎 Search
🛍 Products
🛷⛄ Don’t let Christmas shoppers simply slide by! Learn How to Optimize Your Website for the Holiday Traffic. Gift your business a successful holiday rush!
2. Walk Through Every Purchase Step 🛒
Ask yourself: “How does someone buy from your business?” Count the ways and all the steps for each. Then, go through them all yourself. Why? Your website needs to get all of the errors out before big sales. Think of it this way: errors can cost you, and they’re compounded by traffic spikes.
So, go through:
🛍 Product Selection ➡️
😀 Adding Items ➡️
✅ Checkout ➡️
🤔 Returns ↩️
…and any special actions buyers can take on your site. Including:
- Signing up for a newsletter.
- Redeeming a coupon.
- Abandoning a cart.
- Opening a chatbot window but not being responsive.
💡 Key Point: One immensely helpful option is looking for errors on pages and what’s generating 404 URLs. If your website relies on Google for data, Google Analytics and Google Search Console offer tools that highlight these issues.
Many e-commerce platforms now manage ad campaigns and on-site marketing. If yours does, ensure that expired deals are removed or deactivated. Clear away the popups, overlays, and other promotional items that aren’t related to your year-end sales. When you turn your year-end, on-site campaigns back on, test these too.
While you’re thinking about abandoned shopping carts, prepare a retargeting budget. Carving this out of your holiday marketing — most likely pay-per-click (PPC) spending — could spur sales growth. You just don’t want to let this be a runaway spend during the holidays because people browse and shop more, meaning a sharp increase in abandoned carts across the board.
🚀😌 Take your holiday marketing to the next level and set your store up for shining success in the new year! These are 15 Business Branding Trends To Live By in 2025
3. Add What Customers Requested Throughout the Year 🛍
You’re likely reading this article and a few others as you do a final round of holiday prep. Many will tell their audience to offer free shipping or two-day shipping as a blanket statement. While that’s effective in most cases, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right move for your business.
Say you’re shipping very heavy or bulky items like furniture, for example. Expedited shipping can massively increase costs and erode your margins when added on top of the discounts you’re offering during the holidays.
A good strategy is to look at the requests your business has gotten throughout the year. In other customers, take a look at feedback and what customers have asked for in 2024. Did they want deeper discounts? Faster shipping? Free refills? More deals on combination purchases? 🤔
Check for demands in your store and industry, plus what the coffers can afford. If you’re planning on making a change, communicate with partners to ensure they can help. When you’re uncertain or find that increasing discounts make it hard to control revenue, limit the promotions.
➡️ For example, you can:
💣
Run different options during Black Friday and December.
🤑
Save the best deals for existing customers and newsletter subscribers.
💸
Only have specials during weekends.
🚀✨ Try our free Profit Calculator tool to keep your pricing on point and your business shining bright!
💡 To Recap: For effective holiday marketing, make offers that work for your business instead of a cookie-cutter approach suggested in most other years. Need some inspo? At Placeit by Envato, we’ve prepared expert guides packed with marketing ideas for year-round success:
4. Refresh Warehouse Layout for Efficiency 🏭
Is your warehouse or fulfillment space ready for extra traffic? Do you have popular products located close to the packing stations with enough space in the aisles that multiple pickers can move without running into each other?
Many e-commerce tools can help you run analytics on sales and your warehouse layout. Use the services you have or crunch sales data yourself to determine your most commonly purchased products. Moving these closer to packaging stations allows your team to fill orders with just those items much faster. It’ll help significantly if you face a major increase in orders. 📈📦
Additionally, consider moving poor performers further away to free up additional shelves for your best sellers. This gives teams more maneuverability and can reduce accidents in the warehouse, especially if products require carts of forklifts.
🧐📦 Business expectations vs. business reality—how do they stack up? Dive into our guide for insights every entrepreneur needs!
5. Get Ready for Returns 📥
Here’s the thing: most businesses face customer send-backs after any holiday season. Just take a look at the stats! Holiday return rates average about 17.9% annually for e-commerce businesses. Don’t worry, though! Here’s what to do to handle to handle returns smoothly!
If You Don’t Accept Returns ❌
● State your non-return policy clearly on your website and other important touch points right now.
● Put links to refund policies on sales pages and ensure your chatbots, customer support, FAQ, and other sections explain them clearly.
● Give customer service agents a script to follow about returns — you’ll need it for a flood of emails, social posts, and calls.
💡 Quick Note: You don’t have to accept returns, but you’ll want a clear explanation so your support team can move through calls quickly.
If You Do Accept Returns ✅
● Clear a space for customer send-backs in your warehouse if possible. A large influx in returns will add to the work warehouse teams do with their normal inventory and order management. Thus, set up tables and intake areas to allow you to scan, check, and potentially re-shelve these goods.
● Test your e-commerce software for returns and train your team on how to use these tools to verify a return and refund a customer. The faster you can process orders, the happier these shoppers will be with the overall experience.
💡 Quick Note: Training also helps your team complete tasks quickly and avoids driving up your labor costs or slowing down fulfillment.
6. Think Safety, Support, and Then Sales ☑️
In 2024, brands and customers are rediscovering a need for safety first. Think about your products, sales processes, and fulfillment. People have questions and time to ask, so customer support demands are on the rise too. And all of these happen before you make a sale.
For effective holiday marketing, keep that in mind. Your customers want to feel safe and supported before they buy. Demonstrate this, and you’re likely to become a new favorite brand the stick with when things get back to normal.
💡😀 Next Up: Top 5 E-commerce Experience Strategies
Final Thoughts to Sleigh Your Marketing This Season 🎄
Well, that’s a wrap! While these tips on effective holiday marketing are meant to boost your brand’s success during the last big shopping season of the year, know that you can apply its strategies and learn lessons as you prepare to take on 2025.
As always, outline your strategy, test what works best for your business, and pinpoint any areas of improvement as you plan your next sale, campaign, or promotion. Remember that there are tools and resources for entrepreneurs like you looking to build a strong brand! Why not start with Placeit by Envato? Happy selling and here’s to a bright year-end! ✨
🎁☃️ Did you enjoy this blog? Let us know which tips are you planning to implement this year! For now, sleigh over to the next post to gift your business its best season yet: A Holiday Marketing Checklist to Boost Your Seasonal Sales
Meet the Author!
Jake Rheude is the Director of Marketing for Red Stag Fulfillment, an e-commerce fulfillment warehouse that was born out of e-commerce. He has years of experience in e-commerce and business development. In his free time, Jake enjoys reading about business and sharing his own experience with others.
