Hard Times & Advertising for Holiday’s!
In light of the recent events in our economy, today I want to highlight some of the expert guidance I’ve found for those of us involved in Holiday online selling and marketing! Based on what I have researched and read, my perspective is two-fold right now:
1. Lower expectations – everyone from large publicly-traded companies to online marketing experts in the blogosphere have been lowering their expectations for Q4 of this year. Even our friends at the National Retail Federation have recently lowered their Holiday Season forecast to an over-all Holiday Sales gain of just 2.2 percent, that is the slowest growth-rate since 2002. So - focusing creatively on spending strategies is key right now! But this doesn’t mean stopping all spending on advertising, it means to pay more attention to being strategic! See the following link on the NRF Holiday Forecast:
Read the NRF Holiday Forecast here!
2. Be careful, but don’t stand-still – shoppers are going to continue to purchase holiday gifts this season, and they are going to need to find your store to do it! Carefully checking-off all the major “to-do list items” for the season, like making sure that your product landing pages and over-all site pages are completely up-to-date, your inventory & shipping systems glitch-free, that you are effectively touting any sales, price-discounts and special offers both on-site and within any data-feed marketing you are participating with and etc. are fundamental. Here is a link to the most practical resource I have found for retailers regarding strategic holiday selling:
Read more about strategic holiday selling here!
Also key is proceeding with a carefully planned holiday marketing campaign spend for your site! So where does it make the most sense to place your allocated online marketing dollars? I’d like to suggest placing a portion of those dollars with the site like Smarter.com! Smarter.com and other comparison shopping sites (CSE’s) like ours give you access to great ‘shopping-targeted’ shelf-space and generate solid sales leads at a fair cost to you! Following is the link to register your Smarter.com account today:
