Oct 20 Ecommerce Holiday Marketing Tips for Q4 Success

The fiscal year is coming to a close, and the most crucial quarter is about to begin. What sort of plan do you have in place to ensure your business makes the most of the holiday season to optimize sales and marketing strategies? As your business has adapted to the changes brought on by the pandemic, have you created a plan for how this shopping season will be different?

The fourth fiscal quarter, often referred to as Q4, is a pivotal time in retail eCommerce as many people create their holiday shopping lists and head to their favorite stores. It’s a time when brands can gain mass awareness, connect with new customers, and drive sales that could double annual earnings.

These days, brick and mortar sales almost always underperform next to Ecommerce, and the recent shifts in the market have fast-tracked the need to develop and execute a digital marketing strategy even more. The market continues to skew more towards online shopping, and there’s more competition than ever for the customers’ attention. You must find new, engaging ways to encourage them to choose your business over your competition!

Do you know what makes a holiday eCommerce strategy successful? Whether you’re a small or mid-sized brand who’s looking to improve their holiday strategies, these solutions can help you run a successful Q4 campaign and capitalize on the biggest season of the year! Read on for powerful holiday marketing tips you should implement before it’s too late!

5 Holiday Marketing Tips: Challenges and Solutions

Creating a Q4 Ecommerce strategy comes with many common obstacles that you may currently be facing. From lack of adequate planning to fiscal strains, getting a plan in place that will lead to a fruitful season can be overwhelming! These common challenges and solutions can help alleviate some of your planning stresses so you can have a festive and successful holiday shopping season!

Challenge #1: Lack of Q3 Planning

When October arrives and you’re still planning your Q4 strategy, you’re already behind. Without a firm digital strategy to support your promotional campaigns, you will lose the competitive advantage you could’ve had by collecting data in Q3. 

It takes time for new customers to trust a new brand and decide to make their first purchase. It can then take anywhere from 4–6 months for them to decide to shop again. By introducing your brand to new people early on, you will have a broader customer base to retarget in Q4 when they’re more eager to shop.

Solution: Adjusting & Adapting Planning Strategies

Beginning in Q3, start collecting essential data to further create a market acquisition plan and any other necessary data to further increase your brand visibility. By adding enough new consumers to the pipeline, you will be able to market to a new group of potential customers in Q4. 

Doing this can have a significant impact on the return from retention in Q1& Q2 the following year. Consider increasing your budget in Q3 to focus on growing your visibility and creating brand awareness. 

Challenge #2: Marketing Budget Blunders

Improper budgeting throughout the fiscal year can leave you scraping for scraps to create a digital marketing strategy in Q4. If you overspend early in the year and fail to consider the increase in advertising costs during the holiday season, you could miss out big time!

Solution: Plan Your Budget Our for the Whole Fiscal Year

Start planning at the start of the new fiscal year to ensure you can effectively allocate your budget. What you might think is a healthy Q3 budget could be cut in half as Q4 costs increase. It helps to plan for and closely monitor these shifts as the holiday season approaches.

Challenge #3: Technical Difficulties

There’s nothing worse than being hit with technical difficulties during this pivotal shopping time. Common issues like websites crashing because they can’t handle the influx of browsers, promotional codes not working, servers failing, and more are avoidable with the right strategy. 

Solution: Increased Customer Service

A well-crafted plan for disaster mitigation and additional customer service during this time is something you should try to plan ahead of time. By expecting issues and assessing your current operations, you can determine if you need to bring in additional support to ensure a stellar customer experience for each visitor.

Challenge #4: Lack of Advertisement Options

Consumers won’t want to look at one particular ad over and over again. If a consumer sees an ad more than twice, it can often annoy or turn them off from your brand entirely. If you’ve failed to plan for variety effectively, you could find yourself with repetitive digital assets that could cause ad exhaustion in your viewers.

Solution: Creating Digital Asset Variety

Begin planning a variety of digital assets that can be used for brand awareness campaigns and promotional 4th quarter marketing approaches. When you create multiple versions of the same ad, it will be easier to introduce new and exciting images to your audience and improve the impact the entire campaign has over time.

Challenge #5: Fiscal Strains Caused by COVID-19

COVID-19 affected the entire world. In just a few weeks, many retailers experienced shutdowns, shipping delays, employee losses, and the constant uncertainty of further closures in the future. If your company was hit hard and is still struggling as the fiscal year comes to a close, the thought of stretching your budget to market more can seem impossible. Black Friday and Cyber Monday will look completely different this year, but you have to have a plan in place to make the most of this shopping period!

Solution: Adaptability

As many businesses now know, you must stay adaptable as the industry shifts to accommodate these changes. A global pandemic isn’t something that you can ever plan for, but it’s possible to keep the potential for mind issues when creating your fiscal expectations. All brands must have the capability to adjust for worst-case scenarios like production facilities or ports having to shut down again.

Consider diversifying your production chain to give you the ability to maintain your flow should you experience further shutdowns on a local or global scale. When you have a sound system in place for logistics and chain management, your brand can operate swiftly should disaster strike again.

How to Create a 4th Quarter Ecommerce Marketing Strategy

When it comes to creating an effective Q4 eCommerce marketing strategy, it helps to start planning early. When the fiscal year begins, you should prepare for each quarter by scaling your budget to accommodate business expenses and marketing costs for your specific industry. For retailers and those offering unique products and services, Q4 should always get the bulk of the budget if possible to give you visibility and ample wiggle room to create effective marketing campaigns.

Ideally, Q4 planning is completed in Q3, and all the proper steps and expert help should be secured as early in the quarter as possible. Take a look at your eCommerce calendar, note the vital shopping holidays specifically, consider your shipping capabilities, and have this all on hand when communicating your holiday expectations.

If your website needs a makeover for mobile optimization or updates for specific features, keep these functions in Q1–Q3 to work out all the kinks before holiday shopping begins. Focus on customer experience and helping ensure the shopping experience is flawless and quick for each visitor.

Additionally, consider running limited-time offers special offers for return shoppers, and invest in social media campaigns to ensure your message reaches the customers where they are all the time. It’s estimated that 3.6 billion people use social media globally, so if you aren’t advertising there, you’re missing out big time!

Where to Start

Whether you’ve already hit the ground running or just starting to plan for Q4, the best place to start is by looking at your Ecommerce calendar and breaking our remaining budget to allocate as much funding as possible to your holiday shopping campaigns. The earlier you plan for seasonal changes, the easier it will be to adjust when necessary; it’s never too late to make even the smallest shifts to your plans.

Once you know how much budget you have to work with, contact the experts to see what you can do to market and promote your business through the season. You should also take some time to review your product offerings to ensure you’ll have enough merchandise to sell and verify receipt dates, so you’re advertising the right stuff at the right time. 

Finally, thoroughly comb through your website to ensure it will work as expected from a customer’s perspective. Take note of any misdirections, glitches, and slow-loading pages so you can get your site in shape before shoppers arrive.

For more information about how digital growth services can help you grow your business and adapt to each fiscal quarter, contact our team. For more informative articles and case studies, check out our blog!