The Q4 holiday season is almost always the most profitable time for online businesses. 

The last quarter of the year has the best conversion rates and also the average order value starts to increase because the users will spend more.

To ensure you don’t miss out on the potential holiday earnings, check out these five ways to prepare your marketing campaigns for the holiday season.

1. Create A Promotional Plan for Each Holiday:

Creating a promotional plan will help you keep everything on track and ensure everything is prepared for each holiday. 

To start, take inventory of what you’ve done in the past and examine what worked. Then, use those examples and explore the promotional tactics that helped your business grow.

Before setting the promo calendar, you need to ask yourself a few questions:

• Which types of promotional tactics will you use? discounts, free shipping, gifts with purchase, etc.)

• How will users redeem these promotions (sale prices directly implemented on the site, promo codes, etc.)

• Where will you highlight these promotions (banner on homepage, email blast, FB and Google campaigns, etc.)

2. Create An Advertising Strategy

You will need to prepare the paid campaigns to get as much traffic and sales as possible. 

Here is a snapshot of the most profitable campaigns:

-       Google Shopping Ads in Google: you can advertise your coupons and promotions in each shopping ad via Merchant Promotions

-        Google Search Ads: update the text ads and highlight the latest deals

-        Google Remarketing: retarget those who’ve visited your website or made a purchase from you with new creatives

-        Gmail Ads: these ads are shown at the top of inbox tab, and you can retarget your latest customers by displaying the latest deals and promotions

-        Facebook and Instagram ads: create custom audiences based on demographic data, interests, shopping preferences, and other behavioral identifiers.

-        Facebook and Instagram retargeting: re-engage with the users who visited your site in the past or your customers with a personalized, holiday-focused ad.

3. Ads and Creative:

Get your ad copy and creative ready before each holiday starts, and get the entire campaign ready a few days ahead. Getting ads approved during the holiday season will take longer, so you need to ensure everything is on track. 

4. Build Suspense and Buzz Around Your Upcoming Sale

Tease your customers with emails about what’s to come, post sneak peeks of upcoming sales on social media, and start piquing their curiosity. 

The sooner you begin doing this, the more momentum you will have when you finally announce the sale to your customers.

5. Highlight Promotions on your Website:

If you think of your ads as the hook, you can think of your landing pages as an opportunity to provide prospects with yet another reason they should buy from you right now.

There are several ways of doing that, but the most common techniques are countdown timers or banners with specific offers, such as free shipping or discounts.

To simplify everything, here is the checklist of what you need to do:

• Plan

• Know what the promotion is for each holiday

• Have an advertising budget

• Prepare the creative and ad messaging

• Prepare the website with the creatives and set the promotions

• Review, update, and launch campaigns