How to Prep for Holiday Shopping Season

We are just barely into fall, but I can’t help thinking about what lies ahead…

We are a few short weeks away from holiday shopping season. No matter what you consider to be the start of the holidays, shopping season is coming up fast!

Which means you need a holiday marketing strategy if you plan to take advantage of this spending frenzy.

Whether you’re an e-commerce business marketing to consumers buying holiday gifts or a service-based business hoping to make a last-minute money grab before the end of the year, planning now will save you a lot of stress in a few weeks.

 

When Should Businesses Start Preparing for Holiday Shopping Season?

I recommend you begin prepping for the holiday season in July and August. SEO can take 3-4 months to show meaningful results, and website updates take time.

It’s always shocking how fast the holidays come, so preparing a few months early gives you time to actually think through your holiday marketing strategy and give you time to implement it.

What can you do now to prepare for holiday shoppers?

 

1. Boost Your Local SEO

Local SEO is particularly important for shops and businesses with physical locations. Holiday shoppers move fast. Three-quarters of consumers pick a local business in under 30 minutes, and more than a quarter decide in under five.

Owning and optimizing your Google Business Profile is a key component of local SEO, but it doesn’t stop there. Consider investing in a business listing service that manages and optimizes your business listings across 40+ top listing platforms, like Bing, Alexa, Waze, etc. The ones you don’t think of outside of a Google Business Profile.

In addition to keeping your information accurate, make sure your listing reflects any holiday closures or extended holiday hours. 

You never want a customer to think you’re closed and choose another merchant when you’re open!

 

Does Local SEO Matter with AI?

Absolutely, YES!

AI overviews and Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Gemini are growing in popularity, but Google search still dominates.

According to DigitalApplied, Google holds an 89.3% market share, while AI search accounts for less than 1%. AI search is growing, but Google is still the main player.

Additionally, when these AI tools look for information to respond to an inquiry, LLMs and AI bots tap into their indexed information to provide these contextualized responses. So your Google Business Listing may not get as much click traffic as it used to, but the information is still applied in search responses.

And business listing accuracy is essential!

 

2. Update Your Website

Holiday shoppers will be shopping online for products and services. Now is the time to make sure your website is configured well for sales and ready to show up in search results.

Some quick tips to get your website ready for holiday traffic:

• Perform an SEO audit to check for any performance or usability issues.
• Make sure your site loads quickly and renders well on mobile devices.
• Check for and fix any broken links.
• Optimize your website content and SEO with relevant keywords for search.
• Review your online store for gaps in user experience. Make sure customers can quickly and easily navigate through products and the checkout process.
• Add an abandoned cart workflow to your online shop to reengage customers who didn’t complete their purchase.
• Implement a retargeting campaign on your website to keep website visitors engaged.
• Add a pop-up to your website with a discount code or holiday special.

 

3. Build a Holiday Marketing Strategy for Paid Ads

Marketing assets and campaigns take time to build and implement. Even after you launch a campaign, it can take a few weeks to optimize for top performance. Plan ahead for the holiday season!

Ways to boost holiday sales:

• Social media ad campaigns can target your existing fans and ideal customers not already following you on social media.
• Geofence competitor locations and places your customers visit. This lets you serve targeted ads for your products or services to your target audience.
• Pay-per-click ads can boost your position on search engine results pages.
• Streaming audio and video advertisements can target your audience with messages about your holiday sales.
• Use Performance Max to reach shoppers across Google’s advertising inventory.

 

Refreshing Current Campaigns

Even if you’ve been running ads throughout the year, your current campaigns need a holiday refresh. 

Things to update with holiday themes:

• Ad creative
• Messaging
• Offers
• Landing pages

Your ads need to give people a reason to stop scrolling, especially when every other brand is also talking about holiday deals. 

 

Get Your Google Ads Ready for Holiday Search Demand

Google Ads put you in front of people who are already searching and ready to buy, which is incredibly valuable.

You can show up in branded searches (people looking for your brand) or non-branded searches (people looking for a product or service). Both are valuable to target in Google Ads campaigns.

Here’s what it might look like during the holidays:

• Branded: Someone might see your Black Friday promotion on Instagram, then Google your brand later when they’re ready to buy. Branded campaigns help you capture that demand. 
• Non-Branded: Think about the non-branded searches someone might make when they’re actively shopping for what you sell. The goal with these campaigns is to get in front of shoppers before they’ve decided which brand to buy from. 

 

4. Incorporate an Organic Strategy

Your organic social content and paid campaigns should work together during the holidays (and always!) 

Here are some organic marketing strategies to consider:

• Build an email list of existing customers and offer them exclusive deals through email marketing.
• Use social media to build anticipation before sales or special offers begin.
• Update signage for your storefront or consider window clings to draw in customers.

 

Planning for Black Friday Before Black Friday

You might think it’s best to wait until the week of Thanksgiving to talk about your Black Friday offer and make it a big drop. I’ve been in marketing for a long time, and I can tell you that never works. You’ll be too late.

By the time everyone else is shouting about their sales, you’ll want your campaigns, creative, tracking, website, and offers already in place.

Here’s what you should be doing:

• Before Black Friday: Build awareness, test creative, grow audiences, and introduce gift-worthy products.
• Black Friday/Cyber Monday: Push your strongest offers and highest-converting products with paid and organic holiday marketing strategies.
• After Black Friday: Continue promoting holiday shopping, gift ideas, shipping deadlines, and last-minute purchases.

This also gives you the opportunity to adjust based on what you learn during Black Friday instead of treating the entire holiday season as one campaign.

 

How to Cut Through the Holiday Noise

Getting people to notice and pay attention to your brand is especially hard during the holidays. Businesses are doubling or tripling their ad spend, and consumers are bombarded by thousands of ads a day, competing for their attention and dollars.

Your competitors will have sales. They’ll use holiday graphics. They’ll say “limited time only.” They’ll run Black Friday ads. 

So what makes your offer worth paying attention to? 

Your differentiator is what you need to focus on as you create your holiday marketing strategy. 

Maybe it’s:

• A genuinely unique product
• A particularly strong Black Friday offer
• A product that solves a specific problem
• Exceptional customer service
• Free shipping
• A bundle shoppers can’t get any other time
• A compelling gift angle
• A brand story that resonates with your audience

The product or offer is important, but how you talk about it is how you’ll make holiday sales. Your goal is to provide the most relevant offer and target the people who will care about it.

 

Don’t Wait Until November to Prepare

Many of us are enjoying the warm summer months, so it can be difficult to shift into holiday season mode. However, planning now will reduce stress later and help your holiday marketing strategy run smoothly when customers get into the holiday spirit.

Black Friday might be the biggest moment of your holiday shopping season, but the work that makes those campaigns successful happens before shoppers start looking for deals (which is earlier than you think).

You don’t need to be everywhere or outspend the competition. You need a holiday marketing strategy that puts the right offers and messaging in front of the right people, then gives them an easy path to purchase.

Let us help you get ready for the season. Whether you need a boost to your website SEO or a digital marketing campaign, we can get you ready for the holiday shopping rush.