How to Get More Holiday Customers With Digital Advertising
Holiday advertising gets easier when you make the important decisions before the season gets busy.
What do you want to sell? Who needs to see it? When do they need to act? And what happens when someone clicks?
Those answers give your campaign a purpose beyond “we should probably run some holiday ads.”
In this Wheeler Wise Guys episode, Fredy Wright and Cameron May explain how digital advertising can help businesses reach holiday shoppers and bring interested customers back.
Ready to put those ideas to work? Here are five decisions to make before launching your holiday campaign.
1. Choose What You Actually Want to Sell
Your business may offer hundreds of products or several services. Your holiday campaign needs a clearer focus.
Start with the opportunities that matter most to your business:
Products you have enough inventory to promote.
Services you have capacity to deliver.
Events or dates with tickets and reservations available.
Packages that make buying easier or increase the value of an order.
For a restaurant, the priority might be catering orders rather than filling dining tables. For an attraction, it might be selling tickets for less crowded nights. A retailer might focus on products available locally that customers would otherwise order online.
Be specific about where you want more business. That helps determine the offer, audience, creative and advertising channels.
It also keeps you from spending money promoting something that would have sold out anyway while another part of your business needs attention.
2. Work Backward From the Customer’s Deadline
The holiday itself usually isn’t the most useful date on your advertising calendar.
Your customers may need to order furniture weeks before guests arrive, book a company party well before December or purchase tickets before a popular date sells out.
Build your campaign around those decisions.
Identify this date | Use it to plan |
When customers start considering their options | Advertising that introduces your business and offer |
When orders or reservations need to be placed | Messages that explain availability and deadlines |
When shipping or delivery is no longer possible | A switch to pickup or other available options |
When an offer expires or an event sells out | When to stop or replace the advertising |
Before launch, decide who will communicate inventory changes, sold-out dates and revised deadlines to your advertising team.
An ad can only be as current as the information behind it.
3. Decide Who Needs a Different Message
“Holiday shoppers” is a starting point, not a complete audience strategy.
Someone buying a gift has different questions from someone hosting dinner or planning an office celebration. Even when they’re buying from the same business, the reason they care may be different.
A restaurant, for example, could promote:
Catering to people organizing holiday gatherings.
Gift cards to people shopping for presents.
Reservations to people planning a night out.
Those offers shouldn’t automatically share one ad or one destination page.
This is where digital advertising planning becomes useful. Wheeler Digital can help match the offer to an appropriate audience and channel, using the targeting options available for each campaign.
You don’t need a separate campaign for every possible customer. Start with the audience groups and offers that matter most, then build a plan your budget can support.
4. Check What Happens After Someone Clicks
Before paying to send people to your website, try completing the next step yourself on your phone.
Can you quickly find the advertised offer? Is the price clear? Does the page explain availability, deadlines and how to buy or book?
Check the details that can create unnecessary hesitation:
Does the ad lead directly to the relevant offer?
Do forms, checkout and reservation links work?
Are pickup instructions and holiday hours easy to find?
Can someone call easily if they have a question?
Is someone responsible for responding to inquiries?
For businesses that don’t sell online, the next step still needs to be clear. That might be requesting a quote, calling, reserving a time or visiting the store.
Don’t make a customer figure out what you want them to do.
5. Define Success Before the Campaign Starts
More traffic can be useful. But what do you need that traffic to produce?
Choose the business outcome first: catering inquiries, completed purchases, ticket sales, reservations or another meaningful action.
Then work with your advertising team to determine what can be measured and make sure the necessary tracking is ready before launch.
Also decide how you’ll share results that happen outside the website. If inquiries are increasing but aren’t turning into orders, that is useful information. So are frequent customer questions, changes in availability and products that are selling faster than expected.
Those details help your team make better decisions about messaging, budget and the customer experience.
Don’t wait until the season ends to compare advertising reports with what’s happening in your business.
Bring Us the Goal. We’ll Help Build the Campaign.
You don’t have to arrive knowing which advertising products to buy.
Start with what you want to promote, who you want to reach, your important dates and your budget. Wheeler Digital can help you choose the channels, develop the message and plan how to measure the response.
Already working with us? Reach out to your Wheeler Digital account manager. New to Wheeler Digital? Connect with our team.
Let’s get your holiday campaign planned before your calendar, inbox and parking lot get a little more chaotic.
CLICK HERE TO TALK WITH WHEELER DIGITAL AND PLAN YOUR HOLIDAY CAMPAIGN OR CALL US AT 540-767-2256
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