3 Quick Tips to Help You Get the Most Out of the Remainder of your Holiday Marketing Efforts
For B2C marketers, the holiday gift-giving season is the time of year when we drive the most revenue. So, to get the most out of the last 24 shopping days of the season, we thought a bit of insight and inspiration from your fellow marketers could be helpful. Here are a few of our favorite tips from ecommerce marketers interviewed at the MarketingSherpa Media Center at IRCE that you can apply immediately to your marketing efforts.
Whether you’re working at a startup like Mitch Goldstone, ScanMyPhotos.com, and Gaston Frydlewski, Hickies, Inc., or are part of a larger organization like Mark Friedman, Steve Madden, these tips can be applied to your customer-first marketing efforts this holiday season and throughout the upcoming year.
Tip #1: Turn those holiday shoppers into brand advocates by going above and beyond in your customer service
“When someone receives their order, their digitized photos, they [become] my marketing team,” said Mitch Goldstone, CEO, ScanMyPhotos.com.
Since ScanMyPhotos.com digitizes physical photographs, Goldstone and his team are often privy to a very personal aspect of their customer’s lives, their old family photos. Because of this, it is important to the team that they humanize the customer experience as much as possible.
Watch the full interview below to learn how thinking outside the box when it comes to customer service (sending flowers along with completed orders), has resulted in ScanMyPhotos.com customers becoming brand advocates and content contributors.
Tip #2: Utilize user-generated content to drive more traffic to your ecommerce site this season
Are you getting the most out of those blog and social media posts that your brand is tagged in? Is there really a better way to advertise your product than letting your customers do your bragging? Take a note from the playbook of Mark Friedman, President of Ecommerce, Steve Madden, and make sure you’re using this user-generated content to its fullest extent.
Friedman says Steve Madden customers value content, both user-generated and company-produced, and look to it when deciding what styles and types of Steve Madden products to buy. Publishing this user-generated content on the company’s website and online magazine encourages customers to buy directly from the Steve Madden ecommerce site rather than buying from wholesale websites like Amazon or Zappos.
Friedman also explains that while 80% of its business is wholesale, Steve Madden has discovered a unique value proposition for its direct ecommerce site.
Watch the full interview below to learn about this unique value prop and how Steve Madden, although a $1.4 billion publicly traded company, operates entrepreneurially when it comes to being customer-first.
Tip #3: Use social media to increase awareness about your product
The great thing about social media is that the platforms are highly visual and posts are real-time. This allows you to get your product in front of potential customers up until the very last minute of this holiday season. And if your product is of the unfamiliar variety, like that of Hickies, Inc., social media is a great way to educate your customers on what your product is and why they may need it.
“No one is looking in Google for shoelace replacements, so what we started doing was showcasing our product and educating the audience by putting it in the middle of their feed,” said Gaston Frydlewski, Founder and CEO, Hickies, Inc.
When your product is one that is virtually unheard of in the marketplace, how do you raise awareness for it? This was the challenge the Hickies, Inc. marketing team was facing.
No one knew an alternative to standard shoelaces existed, so the team decided to produce highly visual ads to show off the product, requiring no additional reading or customer research. They then decided to place these ads in places potential customers were already frequently visiting, Facebook and Instagram.
Watch the full interview below to learn what types of visual content performed best for Hickies, Inc. and how it discovered its different customer personas through social media.
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Categories: B2C Marketing Consumer Marketing, ecommerce, social media
