Holiday Retail Marketing Checklist to Optimize Your Campaigns

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2021 is the comeback year. People are becoming more comfortable with in-store shopping and in-person celebrations for the holidays, but are still taking advantage of online experiences. Retailers and brands that develop a performance marketing strategy to capitalize on hybrid in-person and online experiences to reach their customers will find success this season.

Based on the Adlucent B2C & B2B Retail Data Report, 2020 Cyber 5 YoY ROAS was up 21%. And similar growth is expected to be seen for the upcoming Cyber 5 dates.

Holiday retail sales are likely to increase between 7% to 9% in 2021, likely resulting in ecommerce sales between $210 billion and $218 billion through the season. While we’re not expecting this upcoming holiday season to look like 2019, predictions point to ecommerce bringing in 73% of the holiday retail growth.

Although ecommerce is stealing the show, people are also planning to turn to in-store shopping again. 85% of consumers plan to shop in-store and 78% plan to stick with familiar stores. Plus, people are taking advantage of convenience options to grab their gifts:

• Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) is gaining momentum, with a study from Afterpay finding that 42% of Gen Z and 69% of millennial shoppers are more likely to purchase items if a BNPL service is available
• Curbside is still a popular shopping option, expecting to grow more than 15% in 2021

Our marketing experts at Adlucent have put together a holiday digital marketing checklist with your customers’ shifting on- and offline shopping preferences in mind. Use this handy list to polish your campaigns for the upcoming holiday season and reach your customers across multiple channels. Let’s jump right in!

PREPARE YOUR MARKETING CHANNELS FOR THE HOLIDAY SEASON

Take a deeper look into each of your channels to ensure you aren’t overlooking anything outdated, like budgets or messaging.

GENERAL HOLIDAY MARKETING CHECKLIST

• Plan for the holiday season early to capture early shoppers. In 2020, the pre-cyber week saw 83% year-over-year revenue growth.
• Confirm budgets for each of your channels
• Stack hands-on holiday goals and KPIs
• Finalize your promotional calendar and cross-channel strategy
• Review any learnings or challenges you had last year and be prepared to tackle them this year. For example, did you have issues with fulfillment last year? How will you handle those issues this year?

SEARCH + PRODUCT LISTING ADS (PLA)

• Update ad copy with relevant text like “Holiday” or “Gifts”
• Ensure you have holiday keyword coverage and perform keyword optimizations
• Check if ad customizers are suitable for your strategy. Preparation includes countdown timers to create urgency and varying messages by device or audience
• Make sure your feed optimizations are up-to-date with new inventory
• Optimize your PLA attributes like Google Product Category, GTIN, Description, and Title
• Take advantage of extensions and clean up any existing extensions
• Check for broken landing pages or anything else outdated
• Take advantage of broad match and value-based smart bidding 
• Experiment with ad formats like Discovery Ads to reach early-state holiday shoppers

PAID SOCIAL

• Prepare your campaigns with holiday-specific ad creative
• See if there are any campaign types not currently in use that would make sense for your company
• Do a cleanup of your audiences
• Create lo-fi content that is real and relatable to your audience
• Consider utilizing lightweight motion video to be more impactful than static ads alone
• Take advantage of DPA frames to add holiday flair to your catalog ads
• iOS 14 has heavily impacted social advertising. Use creative testing to learn about what creative resonates with your audience the best ahead of the holidays.
• Design engaging and immersive shopping experiences for your customers
• Create a slideshow for collection ads on Pinterest to drive greater shopping intent 
• On TikTok, think of ways to reach holiday shoppers through creators, ads, and branded posts. And, keep up with relevant hashtags like “#HolidayTok” and “#TikTokMadeMeBuyIt”

AMAZON

• Include holiday messaging in your campaigns
• Run campaigns ahead of Cyber 5 to garner traffic and conversions
• Review your performance from last year to see what products did well
• Build out campaigns (Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Products, and Sponsored Display)  for any new products and any new keyword coverage
• Make sure any deal ASINs are visible in your campaigns for Amazon’s “Deal Badging” that lets customers know they’re getting a deal on your product
• Are some of your products seasonal? Be sure to boost bids on those campaigns!
• Leverage Sponsored Brand campaigns because they offer more product visibility and are performance drivers. We saw 66% of sponsored brand ads were New-to-Brand customers/orders during Prime Day 2021

DISPLAY + YOUTUBE

• Check audiences and placements
• Upload holiday-centric video creative
• Change your headlines to holiday-focused CTAs and call out promotions in your headlines during sale periods
• Review your promotion plan and see what can be included on YouTube
• Take advantage of the following TrueView ads:
  •  TrueView for Reach for awareness: optimize toward reach and impressions
  •  TrueView In-Stream for consideration: optimize toward views
  •  TrueView for Action for conversions: optimize toward conversion action set
• Have various sets of visually appealing creative that highlight your biggest holiday value props and capture the spirit of your brand
• Experiment with improving brand awareness through YouTube and general prospecting leading up to the holidays 
• Follow up with dynamic remarketing ads to focus on your lower-funnel efforts

MARK THESE DATES ON YOUR CALENDAR

• Thanksgiving – November 25, 2021
• Black Friday – November 26, 2021
• Small Business Saturday – November 27, 2021 
• Hanukkah Begins at Sundown – November 28, 2021
• Cyber Monday – November 29, 2021
• Christmas – December 25, 2021
• Kwanzaa – December 26, 2021
• New Year’s Eve – December 31, 2021

Hopefully, you’ve found some tips and tactics that you can implement into your holiday marketing plan. Don’t forget to take a look at how your holiday campaigns performed last year, so you can get key insights into trends and consumer behavior you can anticipate this year. And, if you are looking for more ways to take your paid social creative to the next level this holiday season, sign up for our upcoming webinar!

Victoria Flores

Victoria Flores is a Demand Generation Manager at Adlucent. She has a background in content marketing, SEO, and graphic design. Her passion for creative marketing allows her to develop unique and effective solutions to drive demand. You can find her out on the Texas trails or bouldering when she is not at her desk.