Actionable tips to sell more during festive season

6 Strategies to sell more ads during festive season

By Flipkart Commerce Cloud

Share On:

In the world of online shopping, the holiday season is a goldmine for profits. Retail giants like Walmart and Flipkart have capitalized on this time of year, raking in massive revenues and setting an example for other brands. They don’t just sell products; they create experiences that capture the festive spirit and attract millions of customers. As a result, sales skyrocket during this period, becoming a reliable annual phenomenon. Other brands should take note and seize the opportunity that the holiday season presents.

Even small players in ecommerce can see a significant increase in sales by implementing effective strategies. However, success during this crucial time requires careful planning, strategic inventory management, targeted marketing, and a deep understanding of customer behavior. With the right approach, any brand can make use of the festive season to boost their revenue. This blog aims to provide guidance and strategies for all types of brands – whether they are just starting out or already established – so they can create their own success story.

6 Tips for Ad Sales Teams to sell more Ads during Festive Season

Tip#1: Understand your audience and align your goals

Achieving maximum ad sales during the festive season relies heavily on truly understanding your target audience. It’s not just about recognizing their identity but delving deep into their preferences, behaviors, and purchasing patterns. This intricate understanding of your ideal customer empowers you to craft ads that go beyond being noticed; they evoke emotions and lead to remarkable conversion rates. To start, dissect your audience based on demographics and behaviors. Who exactly are they? Which age group do they fall under? What interests and hobbies do they have? Utilize analytics and customer feedback to gather this data, constructing a detailed profile of your potential customers.

Understanding your target demographic is critical for personalization because individualized content cuts through the clutter of advertising and develops a direct connection with customers. This connection is what motivates action and converts browsing into buying.

Use technologies like Google Analytics, consumer surveys, and social media analytics to collect data. Analyze previous purchasing behavior during the holiday season to identify trends and learn what resonates with your target demographic. Determine where your target demographic spends their time online – on social media, marketplaces or email – and carefully place advertising in these areas for maximum visibility and engagement. Don’t forget to check peak hours in your historical campaign data so that you can time your advertising campaigns for maximum ROI.

Tip #2: Plan ahead

The holiday season is a time of joy, celebration, and excitement, which means that ad sales teams need to be at the top of their game. It is crucial to plan ahead to navigate through the high-demand holiday period and ensure a successful holiday advertising campaign.

Start by creating a targeted digital marketing strategy that connects with the festive theme. Gain an understanding of the unique aspects of the holiday and how your audience engages with it. This knowledge will help you create advertisements that not only grab attention but also evoke emotions, making your brand a part of their celebrations. It is important to write engaging ad copy that exudes holiday cheer, ensuring that the ad campaigns reflect the season’s spirit. Additionally, set realistic holiday sales goals by analyzing market trends during the festive season.

A successful holiday marketing plan should utilize a range of channels where you can engage your target audience. These channels can be your brand’s e-commerce website, marketplaces, retail media networks, or your company’s social channels. Take advantage of these channels to amplify your holiday messaging, creating a unified and impactful advertising campaign. Review past campaigns and assess what worked well and what didn’t. If this is your first festival campaign, research industry trends and study successful holiday marketing campaigns from big brands in your niche.

Throughout the festive season, closely monitor the performance of your campaign and be prepared to make quick adjustments based on what resonates most with your audience. Testing different ad promotion strategies is crucial in discovering the most effective approach. Planning ahead for holiday season sales will give you ample time to prepare marketing materials, align your team, and enter the holiday season with a solid and well-thought-out advertising strategy with better ROI on future ad spending.

Tip #3: Utilize Marketing Tools

To succeed in the competitive world of ad sales, brands should employ marketing tools to reach a wider audience and generate leads. Retail media solutions like Flipkart Commerce Cloud, combined with marketing solutions like email marketing platform, social media marketing tools, and paid advertising platform, offer a comprehensive toolkit for ad sales teams. Flipkart Commerce Cloud offers an extensive suite of tools for competitive intelligence, Ads manager and Pricing manager. Take full advantage of the high-ROI potential during the festive season with FCC’s Ads Manager. We offer an extensive range of features from audience targeting to performance analytics, ensuring that your ads reach the right people at the right time and providing insights to optimize campaigns for better results.

Tip #4: Send Holiday Emails

During the festive season, email marketing becomes an invaluable tool for establishing connections with your audience. Well crafted email campaigns can increase product sales and boost revenue for Ecommerce businesses.

To improve the effectiveness of your email campaign, consider starting with teaser emails that give your subscribers a sneak peek of upcoming holiday deals and discounts. This approach creates anticipation and keeps your brand at the top of your customers’ minds. By generating excitement early on, you can ensure that your subscribers are eagerly waiting for your next email and engaging with your brand.

Additionally, as the sale date approaches, send out countdown emails to further ramp up excitement. Remind your audience of products they have shown interest in, and use festive themes to make these reminders feel like an integral part of the celebration. This strategy guarantees that your products remain a top priority for them as they plan their holiday shopping.

You can also send personalized emails, retargeting customers who have abandoned their carts. Remind them of the items they left behind and entice them with a holiday discount or special festive freebie to encourage them to complete their purchase.

Festive-themed emails should go beyond mere sales announcements; they should strive to establish a connection with customers and offer them value. Focus on creating a convenient and enjoyable shopping experience by sharing gift ideas, product catalogs, and exclusive discounts through your emails, all wrapped in festive themes to amplify the holiday spirit.

Tip #5: Unleash the Power of Creative Ad Copy

As we approach the festive season, revamping your ad copy becomes a necessity. It’s not just about selling products; it’s about crafting stories that resonate with the spirit of celebration and establishing connections beyond mere transactions. Dive into themes of family, happiness, and cherished memories. Use language that evokes emotions and paints a vivid picture of warmth and celebration.

Your ad copy should not only showcase a product; it should weave a narrative that makes your audience feel like they are part of something greater. Ensure your offers are clear and compelling, creating urgency with phrases like limited-time offer or while supplies last, encouraging immediate action. This sense of urgency, combined with holiday cheer, becomes a strong motivator for customers to make a purchase. Remember, during the holiday season, every brand is competing for attention. Your advertisement copy needs to shine through creativity. Be daring, be innovative, but above all else, be genuine. Show your audience that you understand what the holidays mean to them and that you are here to enhance their experience.

Tip #6: Add Festive Keywords to Your Bidding Strategy

During the holiday season, ad campaigns should capture the festive atmosphere and connect with the target audience using strategic keywords at the right time.

Keywords serve as the cornerstone of a successful advertising campaign, bridging the gap between what people are searching for and the content you offer. In this highly competitive time of year when consumer interest is at its peak, selecting appropriate keywords becomes even more vital. Incorporate festive keywords into your bidding strategy to tap into the holiday spirit. Take advantage of tools like Google Trends and other keyword research resources to identify high-traffic terms that are also relevant to the season. Seek out keywords that embody the festive theme, ensuring that your digital ads align with the holiday mood and meet consumer expectations.

Duplicate your top-performing campaigns and include the festival name as a keyword to quickly assess their impact. Carefully monitor the results and be prepared to make necessary modifications so that your holiday ads not only capture attention but also strike a chord with the festive audience. The aim is to increase visibility and effectiveness, positioning your brand as a top choice for consumers during holiday shopping season, ultimately driving sales and boosting profits.

Here’s a TL;DR of all the tips we've discussed in one place:

Maximizing Ad Sales in the Festive Season with FCC

The festive period offers an incredible opportunity for ad sales teams to truly shine and maximize their sales potential. From tailoring your communication style to match that joyous vibe to offering deals and payment options that reflect generosity and excitement, every single detail should be infused with the essence of celebration

Experience the power of Flipkart Commerce Cloud (FCC) as your trusted partner on this festive journey. Elevate your ad campaigns with FCC’s Ads Manager, a comprehensive suite of tools and insights that empower you to create captivating ads that resonate with your target audience. From in-depth analytics to performance tracking, FCC Ads Manager equips you with the information needed to make informed decisions and achieve impactful results.

Our comprehensive ads ecosystem offers an easy and effective way to generate revenue and increase brand engagement on your platform. With our sponsored listings feature, you can convert searches and browses into revenue, even before checkouts, by targeting customers based on their context.

With FCC’s Ads Manager you can:

Onboard Display Ads for instant revenue and add a quick revenue stream while increasing brand engagement on your platform
Monetise online activity with sponsored listings. Advance to customer context-based ads and convert searches & browses to revenue even before checkouts.
Get experts’ consult & implement high yielding ad revenue models.
Build your own ads’ ecosystem at relatively fractional effort and investment.

Enjoy a user-friendly platform that brings together all ad formats in one suite. Whether you prefer video ads, rich media, or static formats, we have it all covered. Plus, our self-serve platform empowers end-users to create their own campaigns, reducing advertising costs for you. With white-labeled dashboards, automate reporting while providing a seamless user experience for your clients.

Embrace the festive season with confidence!

FAQ

To increase sales in the festive season, an e-commerce business should optimize its website for mobile and traffic surges, simplify the customer journey with one-page checkout, offer irresistible value bundles and limited-time deals, and personalize the shopping experience using data to recommend products and retarget visitors, capabilities that advanced platforms like Flipkart Commerce Cloud are specifically designed to provide.

You attract more sales by creating a compelling, seamless customer experience, which involves simplifying site navigation, offering multiple flexible payment options like Cash on Delivery, providing competitive delivery timelines, and launching targeted, high-impact ad campaigns, which platforms like Flipkart Commerce Cloud can manage using AI/ML-driven retail media solutions that target customers with high shopping intent.

To survive the festive season, an online retailer must prioritize backend stability and operational efficiency, which means real-time inventory syncing, automating order confirmations, scaling customer support with live chat, and robust demand forecasting to prevent stockouts, essential functions provided by the full technology stack of Flipkart Commerce Cloud.

To create a festive atmosphere, an online store should enhance its visual presentation with holiday-themed graphics and banners on the homepage and landing pages, curate specialized gift guides and festive collection pages, and use cheerful, engaging social media content that promotes limited-edition offers and value bundles.

The month with the biggest sales for retail globally is typically December, which encompasses the Christmas and post-Christmas sale period, though for many e-commerce businesses in regions like India, the peak season of sales often concentrates in the months leading up to major festivals like Diwali, occurring around October or November.