The holiday season is one phase of the sales cycle that ramps the most, backed by sound sales and marketing campaigns to capitalize on the shopping extravaganza of the consumers. This period of merrymaking and holiday enjoyment starts off with a lot of purchases and changes in the buying behaviour of the customers and extends through late December.

The sales and marketing team needs to chalk out a precise marketing strategy, to capitalize on this extended holiday period, to boost the sales pipeline. Online purchases are now the norm, with many shoppers looking at websites first and saving money through whatever relevant discounts they can find through web browser extensions such as Honey. With the ultra-smart phone in your hand, you can leverage on a seamless mobile shopping experience directly with the robust intuitive e-commerce site apps offered by many businesses.

With sales automation software like MS dynamics CRM and Dynamics 365, small to midsize businesses (SMBs) can get the real-time insight into customer data info as well as the sales trends and shopping habits during the holiday sales period of the year. On the basis of this, a clear impressive sales and marketing campaign can be planned to target holiday sales.

The first and the foremost thing for the SMBs to do is to make a sales and marketing checklist. Businesses should be sure to include online only offers and discounts. These can greatly improve customers satisfaction with the shopping experience, as the shoppers are rejoiced to buy more for family members, and friends from a particular online site, thus improving your sales.

Extending business hours for offline retail stores and festive décor are the other two things done by many small businesses to drive holiday sales that double the customer’s engagements. Another factor that can enhance holiday sales graph is to focus on a mobile shopping platform, to make the most of the online buying.

Accelerate Digital marketing through Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

This is another initiative that can be taken by marketers to promote the holiday offers online. In this way, online marketing efforts are multiplied with PPC campaign that boosts the overall ranking on the site. When, users click on the particular Ad they are directed to the specific page on the website. For this extra work needs to be done with focused keywords to roll on the PPC ads. The main advantage for running PPC ad campaigns is to catch up with the online attention of the users towards the holiday sales.

Expedite holiday sales by running a social media promotion

Social media marketing campaigns are absolutely essential. You can have a social media promotion throughout December and get connected to customers through the social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You can run the Twitter campaign and create branded hashtags focused on promotional activities for the holidays.

Work on creating a content calendar

As a primary part of digital marketing, you should focus on the various content creation that would highlight all the holiday seasons promotional activities, on the newest offers on various specific products. You can plan blog posts, mailings, social media campaigns, and emails. These lined-up blog posts, social campaigns, and emails should be scheduled on the priority list on your calendar at this time.

Focus on mobile and send holiday-themed emails

With the sophisticated smartphone, the usage is enhanced as per a new research, people are accustomed to checking social media platforms consisting Facebook and Twitter up to 17 times a day. To up your holiday sales, try sending holiday-themed promotional emails capturing new products for the winter season. By making use of compelling CTA (call to action) you can direct mobile customers to a final landing page on the website, this will enhance the overall engagement for the conversion of the lead.

Offer Free Gift with Purchase

Offering a free gift with a purchase is one of the best options to grow the engagement of your customers. Everyone loves receiving gifts and in this way you can participate in the holidays with your customers and grow your sense of trust and familiarity with them. This can be in the form of the gift card or a small item. Discounts on future purchases are also an option and they encourage more sales, but they are not often as highly regarded by the customer as other types of gifts.

Provide free shipping offers

Offering free shipping can boost the sales in holidays extravaganza, as customers would delight at the idea of a good purchase without shipping charges. This will offer a competitive edge over others and the holiday sales will hike altogether. Removing the shipping charges will get you an influx of excited customers willing to buy your products in an instant.

Post Holiday sales

The mid of the December month can be great to clear out the sales by targeting online shoppers, with the above sales strategies. Holiday sales come with its own sets of benefits as the stock of the new products are sold more quickly which helps in clearing the inventory. Following the holiday season you should have a strategy to retain as many of the new customers gained during the busy time of shopping as possible.

The word, ‘holiday’ triggers a sense of merrymaking at its best that brings a time span to rest, rejoice, revel at the top filled, with a plethora of fun activities that multiplies by the desired shopping. Holiday season comes and goes, but it can bring in new customers to your business that will keep purchasing from you long after the holiday season is over. You’ve got to get started with new ideas and innovative approaches to begin your holiday marketing planning in the form of sales and marketing checklist, for the holiday season, to reap the extra benefits of happy holiday extravaganza.