The retail and eCommerce omnichannel consumer journey comprises numerous touchpoints. Among all, digital remains a significant touchpoint before a visit to a physical store since omnichannel customers research more online to reach a final purchase decision.

Undoubtedly, brands will flood promotional campaigns into digital channels and intensify competition during seasonal periods. As a result, leveraging digital in a brand message and capturing last-minute shoppers locally can serve as a twofold solution to strategically maximise sales in the seasonal battlefield.

LEVERAGE BRAND DIGITAL MESSAGE DURING THE SEASONAL PERIOD

With the advantage of having the festive spirit to enhance seasonal campaign revenue, digital marketers can also incorporate best practices into the brand strategy to maximise sales.

To begin with, advertisers are suggested to adopt seasonal imagery in promotional campaigns to match the audience’s emotion in all digital channels. By doing so, we can draw potential customers’ attention as the seasonal imagery will blend in with the audience’s surroundings and better connect with the audience’s emotional change.

More importantly, marketers need to strike a proper balance between seasonal spirit and brand image to maintain brand integrity. It is best to plan yearly seasonal content to emphasise the omnichannel audience’s key brand elements throughout the annual holiday messaging.

Another practice is to utilise user-generated content (UGC) to make the seasonal brand communication more emotionally charged. It adds a human touch to the brand since content by the existing users can tug at the heartstrings more effectively and strengthen brand loyalty in the long term.

A user-generated strategy can cherry-pick quality content in user reviews and social posts. If marketers do not have a sufficient pool of user-created content, there are a few things they can do to entice more interaction from the audiences. They can encourage the audience to post more by designated brand hashtags in social media to enlarge the content pool or organise more social media contests with awards to the winners. After all, well-represented UGC content enlightens the brand engagement rate and maximise sales in the seasonal period.

CAPTURE LAST-MINUTE SHOPPERS WITH LOCAL DIGITAL ADS

According to Google, it is interesting to see that consumers only completed half of their Christmas shopping in early December this year. It indicates there are still enormous sales and revenue opportunities from the last period leading up to the seasonal holiday. Therefore, digital marketers, particularly in retail and eCommerce industries, should seize the revenue opportunity from last-minute shoppers by local digital ads to influence the undecided local audience to make offline purchases with more significant local brand visibility.

To maximise brand visibility locally Search, YouTube, and Maps across Google platforms are essential digital local sources for shopping throughout the festive period. Additionally, maps become more critical to support those last-minute visits to the stores. It indicates the significance to harness Search, YouTube, and Maps to win local or nearby last-minute shoppers and secure local visibility around your physical stores. As store visit is the core KPI in local campaigns across Google platforms, digital marketers need to set a correct store visit value and adjust conversion settings in the Google Ads accounts.

Location is the backbone of all local campaigns, so marketers should have an up-to-date business profile with details such as opening hours and reviews if they have a Google My Business account. Digital marketers can offer location-based messaging and exciting reasons for last-minute shoppers to come and visit the stores.

All in all, a consistent annual brand strategy with strong local digital ads can be one of the recipes to maximise seasonal sales and revenue for brands. By doing so, potential consumers can understand your brand value and act on your promotional campaigns in festive periods over the years.

Are you interested in a twofold omnichannel strategy to maximise seasonal sales? Feel free to reach out to the PPC Team at MediaGroup at [email protected]