Social Media Marketing For The Holiday Season   by Maanasi RK

Making the Most of the Holiday Season

Although consumer budgets continue to remain tight this year, online retailers have little reason to worry. Consumers, who previously thronged brick and mortar stores during the holiday season, are shifting their focus to online shopping. What is attracting these shoppers to online stores? In addition to the convenience of saying goodbye to the crowded stores catering to last-minute-shoppers, the availability of discounts is a big crowd-puller. According to the 2011 Holiday Shopper Survey:

79% of shoppers said saving money was one of the reasons they preferred shopping online.
This, along with other reasons like saving time (77%), easily locating products (76%) etc have made online shopping a hot favorite this holiday season.
56% shoppers surveyed said that they planned to spend about the same on shopping this year (during the holidays) as they did in 2010.

The above statistics indicate that this is the perfect opportunity for online retailers to get their sales charts soaring. Marketers, who may not have had such a great year so far in terms of revenue, are looking forward to making up for this. Going by the Shop.org’s eHoliday survey, 68% digital marketers are expecting to see a +15% growth over last year. One of the crucial things that brands need to keep in mind is that, although people may not make immediate purchases, they are definitely doing their research online before deciding to buy; which is why we recommend marketers to be one step ahead.

Planning Ahead

With the holiday season just around-the-corner, there is one thing that both consumers as well as online marketers are doing i.e. planning ahead. The fact that 61% consumers (2011 Holiday Shopper Survey) are planning to first check-out a product on the web before spending their hard-earned-money means brands have much planning to do. Before overwhelming consumers with irrelevant or one-too-many promotional messages, here are some things that brands need to check in their to-do list:
Research Social Buzz

Brand Monitor – Age and Gender BreakupConsidering how lucrative the returns can be, the temptation to launch that Facebook campaign or upload the Christmas special promotional video on YouTube may be tough to pass up. However, diving into the vast and highly crowded world of online marketing without doing some background research may not be the best approach. Our advice? Make Use Of Social Media monitoring tools like Brand Monitorâ

1 Comment

Other Links to this Post

1. Social Media Marketing For 2012 | Marketing Definition — January 9, 2012 @ 4:11 am

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment