How to Stand Out During the Holiday Shopping Rush

It’s the most magical time of the year when ecommerce stores are booming in holiday sales. It’s also that time of year online & brick-and-mortar retailers compete for a share of the skyrocketing sales revenue. Although online shopping continues to rule the season, it’s still essential you stand out during the holiday shopping rush. Here’s how to get started.

Get Innovative with Flash Sales

Leave your audience in suspense with ongoing flash sales that keep them glued to their email or social media channels. Ten-minute to hour-long sales are a thrilling strategy to keep customers guessing & ready to buy before the deal is gone. Make sure to outline all details from cost to shipping speed to deliver the best customer experience possible. 

Offer Fast Shipping Times

Supply chain issues & shipping times are dominating the headlines this year while everyone braces for uncertainty. You can increase your shipping time with a quick trip to the post office or UPS or rely on a third-party vendor to deal with everything for you. 

Partner with CustomCat’s white-label, print-on-demand, & dropshipping services. We fulfill & ship everything out on behalf of your business so you can focus on other things than what’s going on with your inventory. Plan to stress less during the holiday sale season & focus on giving your customers what they want instead.

Run a Contest

A contest helps keep audiences engaged & generates buzz for your online store. Giveaways, deep discounts, & priority access to upcoming product launches help entice customers to compete & drive more interest in your store. Ecommerce platforms like Shopify make it even easier to turn your contest viral with apps like Viral Sweep. Set up your preferences to award bonus entries for people who follow social channels, write reviews, watch a video & more.

Use Facebook Ads

There’s a reason so many ecommerce stores use Facebook ads: When done correctly, they get results. It’s true Facebook ads take some experimentation to get right & the earlier you can start, the better. Facebook also allows flexibility with a variety of ads & targeted audiences. Make sure you have the Facebook pixel installed on your site to enable retargeting to customers who find their way to your store. 

Not sure where to get started? Here are some articles to help kickstart your Facebook advertising & marketing efforts:

A Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Ad Campaigns

Team Up with Like-Minded Retailers

Why reinvent the wheel trying to amass new customers when like-minded retailers did all the work for you? If you sell flowers & plants online, team up with a retailer that sells gardening supplies on a promotion. Or, if you sell bundled kitchen gadgets, team up with someone who sells meal plans or kitchen decor. When you work with other retailers with a similar, established audience as yours & share the wealth, you both win. 

If you can’t come up with a retail partner to work with, influencer marketing may also be a good fit for you. Instead of working with the garden seller, look for social media stand-outs with large followings who are devoted to the same niche. From there, you can offer a partnership in an affiliate program or a flat-rate fee to promote your products to their audience.

Launch Consistent Holiday Discounts

While everyone else is ramping up to the week after Thanksgiving & then pulling the brakes on holiday sales, keep yours going all season long. Launch consistent discounts on products & services, especially the ones that could use some help landing in people’s shopping carts. Now is also the time to get in touch with loyal customers by email & social & update them on your holiday sales & discounts. They’ll look forward to the nonstop deals to save money when they shop your store. 

Make Them Laugh

Depending on your niche, humor can go a long way to engage customers & help them remember your ecommerce brand. Surveys show that 53% of consumers like advertisements if they’re humorous & another 44% liked them if they’re relatable. Before you break out the jokes, there is a caveat. The ads & marketing content needs to deliver valuable information, or consumers lose interest. Give your audience everything they want by showcasing your wit & relatability while packing in the value about your products & services.

Create Video Gift Guides

Video can mean all the difference between a successful holiday selling season & one that exceeds all of your wildest expectations. HubSpot reports that 73% more visitors who watch product videos will make a purchase! Entice visitors when they land on your page with detailed video gift guides for everyone on their holiday shopping list. Video product descriptions are also savvy to detail precisely what your product or service does to make it easier than ever to hit ‘Buy.’

Remember, your video can be repurposed, so your brand is seen & heard everywhere online. Repost your videos to YouTube, Instagram, TikTok & anywhere your target market hangs out & consumes content. 

Rescue Abandoned Carts

Abandoned carts make up an unfortunate amount of would-be sales & missed opportunities. According to Baymard Institute, 69.57% of online shopping carts are abandoned. Broken down, that means for every 100 customers, 70 will leave without purchasing anything. 

Instead of missing out on thousands in revenue, use apps like KeepCart that help remember customers’ carts across all of their devices. Whether they stopped by your store & added an item at work or home, they can switch from device to device & still return to their items in their abandoned cart. 

Test Your Results

Once you’ve found a successful way to stand out during the holiday shopping rush, there’s still a vital step to complete: Test your results. Pull up your Google Analytics & seller’s platform analytics to see what worked, what generated the most traffic, & what fell flat. When you take the time to analyze your campaigns, you can re-use them for next year to kick off the next holiday selling season.

What’s your favorite way to stand out during the holiday shopping rush? Let us know by leaving a comment below.