The holiday season is around the corner again this year, which means it’s time for the biggest sales events of the year. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the weeks leading up to Christmas make up the most significant buying season of the year, and this year will continue the trend that everyone loves buying things online.
In 2021, global ecommerce sales were $5.2 trillion, and they’re expected to grow another 10% this year to $5.7 trillion. And if that number doesn’t blow your mind a bit, they’re expected to be $8.1 trillion in 2026!
So how can SocialToaster help your brand take advantage of this buying frenzy? By following these best holiday sales best practices.
Craft a Seamless Buying Experience
With so many options available to consumers, it’s important that you make the buying experience as seamless as possible. This can look a few different ways, but one of the most important is having clean visibility around special holiday offers – you don’t ever want your customer to be confused or frustrated when navigating your website.
It’s also important to have a mobile-specific site built for your customers. Some of the features that work best for laptops aren’t the best for mobile devices. So a mobile-specific site should reduce any unnecessary text, avoid pop-up windows, and offer a big search bar so people can easily find what they need.
How Can SocialToaster Help? Two ways. You can use the SocialToaster platform to share your holiday specials and promotions with your brand fans – who can then share those promotions with their personal networks. Not only does this build awareness of your promotions, it also actively drives potential customers to your website.
Communicate Key Shipping Deadlines
We’re all guilty of pushing things off to the last minute – and thanks to Amazon’s two-day shipping, many customers may assume that they will be able to order things at the last minute for the holiday season.
That’s why it’s so important to communicate key shipping deadlines to your customers. For example, if you need an order in by the 22nd of December to make sure that it arrives by Christmas, you need to let folks know! This will make sure that they have all the information they need to get their orders in on time.
Plus, this can save you a ton of headaches in avoiding frustrating customers complaining that they didn’t receive their packages in time or a mad rush by your company to try and get orders out the day before Christmas.
How Can SocialToaster Help? Create content that advises your customers about your key shopping dates. Then send reminders and awareness posts through the platform to ensure they’re aware of these all-important deadlines.
The More Personable the Better
While online holiday shopping has become much more popular in recent years – and it has all sorts of benefits – it does tend to lose that personal experience of shopping in a store. Customers just don’t get the same level of personal interaction from online shopping that they used to – but they still desire it.
So try and make your customer experience as personal as possible. Offer great customer service, and follow-up emails that check in on how satisfied they are with the product. This will help customers feel more connected to the brand (and can also help drive future sales).
How Can SocialToaster Help? You can use the SocialToaster platform to segment your fans, then create and send personalized content to these segments.
Leverage User-Generated Content
One of the best ways to get your brand out there is by utilizing the power of user-generated content. This can be done by offering your most loyal customers the ability to earn points, prizes, and products by sharing your brand on social media.
The benefits of user-generated content are multifaceted, but the big things to remember are that this content is genuine and has a huge ability to reach a wide audience. Plus, it engages your customers and gives you the ability to re-share their content (as long as you specify this in the original messaging). And it helps to provide that personal touch to a brand that’s so important.
How Can SocialToaster Help? We all know that user-generated content is critical to a high-performing content marketing plan, but how can you ensure a steady stream of UGC? SocialToaster makes it easy to solicit your audience to create UGC on your behalf. You can even reward participants with fun swag or by earning points towards a larger prize.
Provide Content on Gift Ideas
One of the best ways to help drive holiday ecommerce sales is by providing content to your customers that help them generate ideas for a gift. This can be done through blogs on your website or as part of your social media campaign where you regularly post about these topics. You can also leverage influencers to help get your gift ideas out there. This way, your customers will think of your product first when they’re trying to buy a gift for someone they care about.
How Can SocialToaster Help? Use SocialToaster to share these gift guides with your fans and their social networks to drive visibility and engagement.
Learn from Your Past Holiday Campaigns
There’s an old saying: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. When trying to optimize your ecommerce sales for this holiday season, feel free to reuse what’s worked in the past. Did you have a social media post from two years ago that went viral? Reuse it! Rework it, update it, and get it out there again. People love being reminded of things that made them happy, so feel free to reuse your successful posts.
Ready to grow your social media audiences while driving holiday sales? SocialToaster is here to help. You can schedule a demo here to get started and learn more about our award-winning platform.
