Brands and retail­ers are prepar­ing for anoth­er hol­i­day retail sea­son. This year, mar­ket­ing suc­cess­ful­ly across a range of plat­forms, and mak­ing the most of emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies will be cru­cial for retail­ers look­ing to post healthy rev­enues. Recent reports from Google Think, and Ken­shoo, indi­cate that this year, ensur­ing a seam­less mobile offer­ing, lever­ag­ing new plat­forms and tech­nolo­gies, and pro­vid­ing per­son­alised con­sumer expe­ri­ences, will be essen­tial for brands look­ing to win hol­i­day suc­cess.

Last year, Ken­shoo released their Glob­al Online Retail Sea­son­al Shop­ping Report 2014, which high­light­ed the impor­tance of four key mar­ket­ing prin­ci­ples:

• cre­at­ing a seam­less mobile-opti­mized expe­ri­ence
• lever­ag­ing Prod­uct List­ing Ads (PLAs)
• dri­ving engage­ment via social
• and using past insights to inform strat­e­gy

The report, which iden­ti­fied key oppor­tu­ni­ties and insights for the 2014 hol­i­day retail peri­od, pre­ced­ed a bumper peri­od for retail­ers. And while the four points are still high­ly rel­e­vant for cur­rent mar­kets, Ken­shoo have fur­ther updat­ed their mar­ket­ing tips for the hol­i­day peri­od (full details to fol­low).

A recent arti­cle by Google has also high­light­ed key focus areas for dig­i­tal mar­keter. In “Four Gold­en Mar­ket­ing Tips for a Crack­ing Online Christ­mas” the report high­lights the impor­tance of mobile, and online video, espe­cial­ly in the con­text of major hol­i­day mar­ket­ing cal­en­dar days such as Black Fri­day.

Over­all, the con­sen­sus is that this year, mar­keters will need to lever­age mobile, emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy, and per­son­al­ized expe­ri­ences for hol­i­day retail suc­cess. But first — a reminder of the key stats and fig­ures to give an idea of what retail­ers can expect in the com­ing few months.

How important will the 2015 holiday period be?

Last years Q4 retail results paint­ed a pic­ture of aston­ish­ing growth for retail, fuelled par­tic­u­lar­ly by dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing chan­nels. Ear­li­er this year, momen­tol­ogy col­lect­ed 100+ hol­i­day shop­ping sta­tis­tics show­ing just how impor­tant dig­i­tal chan­nels have become.

For exam­ple, accord­ing to sta­tis­tics from com­Score, e‑commerce sales for the 2014 hol­i­day retail results increased 15 per­cent on desk­top, reach­ing more that $53 bil­lion — a size­able increase from the $46.5 bil­lion spent in the November/December peri­od in 2013.

A sim­i­lar report, IBM Corp.’s Dig­i­tal Ana­lyt­ics Bench­mark found a 13.9 per­cent increase in online sales over­all, and also iden­ti­fied that mobile devices played a larg­er role than ever before, account­ing for 45 per­cent of all online sales in 2014.

Ear­ly pro­jec­tions for 2015 indi­cate that this year’s hol­i­day retail peri­od will exhib­it even stronger growth. As report­ed on inc.com, Deloit­te’s lat­est retail hol­i­day sales project $965 bil­lion in sales for the peri­od between Novem­ber and Jan­u­ary, rep­re­sent­ing a 4 per­cent increase over the equiv­a­lent peri­od last year.

For mar­keters cur­rent­ly gear­ing up their cam­paigns, here are our top tips for the com­ing months.

Top Holiday Marketing Tips for 2015

1) Focus on the Customer First.

Ken­shoo’s top mar­ket­ing tip for the 2015 hol­i­day mar­ket­ing sea­son is a pru­dent one: make sure the cus­tomer comes first.

Per­son­al­iza­tion of con­sumer expe­ri­ences is one of the most effec­tive ways of ensur­ing a fan­tas­tic brand expe­ri­ence. Using data to inform strate­gies, to reach shop­pers at the right moments with com­pelling mes­sages. Tech­nol­o­gy has enabled new oppor­tu­ni­ties and mar­keters can, for exam­ple, “con­sid­er using paid search clicks to auto­mat­i­cal­ly cre­ate Face­book cam­paigns”. By using new tech­nolo­gies and plat­forms such as this, brands can invest in new oppor­tu­ni­ties to cre­ate fan­tas­tic user expe­ri­ences.

2) Push early to meet consumer demand and saturate your campaign messages.

Accord­ing to the Google study: “Christ­mas starts in Sep­tem­ber.” The state­ment, which is based on search data, shows the impact dig­i­tal con­sumer jour­neys have had on con­sumers, where­by con­sumers are think­ing about their hol­i­day shop­ping ear­li­er and ear­li­er each year. and search vol­umes also increas­ing each year. In fact, the data indi­cates that by Octo­ber, 40% of Britons will have com­menced their Christ­mas shop­ping.

3) Mobile optimization will be absolutely critical.

Last year, Christ­mas sales via smart­phones and tablets were up 55 per­cent, and 37 per­cent of online sales (or 8.9 per­cent of all total retail sales) were made direct­ly via a mobile device*. Per­haps one of the most telling stats that Google found, was that in 2014, con­sumers who shopped across mul­ti­ple chan­nels and devices spent four times more than those who did­n’t — a telling sta­tis­tic for mar­keters look­ing to max­imise rev­enues by invest­ing in mul­ti­chan­nel.

4) Get ready for the biggest Black Friday yet.

2014 Black Fri­day sales sur­passed $1.5 bil­lion in rev­enues in the US. In the UK, £810 mil­lion was spent online, mark­ing the biggest day for UK online sales ever. Retail­ers have every oppor­tu­ni­ty to ben­e­fit from this uplift, and a telling sta­tis­tic was last year retail­ers offer­ing dis­counts saw an aver­age sales uplift of 180 per­cent*.

Mobile account­ed for 55 per­cent of all queries*, and IBM dis­closed that almost half of all the online pur­chas­ing dur­ing Black Fri­day in the UK was on mobile – out­per­form­ing the US. This year, Brands will have to ensure sys­tems are in place to han­dle the huge amount of traf­fic, and that both web and mobile sites are opti­mized to per­form.

5) Emerging Channels and Formats are key to gaining a Competitive Advantage

Ken­shoo high­light a num­ber of emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies that offer mar­keters new oppor­tu­ni­ties to ampli­fy cam­paigns. To name a few: buy but­tons on plat­forms such as Pin­ter­est, Twit­ter and Google, Insta­gram Ads, and Yahoo Gem­i­ni (the brands new native mobile adver­tis­ing offer­ing).

Google have again high­light­ed that online video will a key bat­tle­ground to win con­sumer hearts and minds. Last year online views of Christ­mas themed adver­tise­ments were up over 3,000 per­cent from the pre­vi­ous year. Video is a great plat­form for emo­tion­al con­tent, which is fast becom­ing a key objec­tive for brands to pro­duce and stim­u­late engage­ment. The search brand sin­gles out YouTube as key plat­form, with watch time increas­ing 60 per­cent on the pre­vi­ous year.

6) Capitalize on Shopping Campaigns and Dynamic Product Ads

Specif­i­cal­ly for mar­keters engag­ing in cross chan­nel efforts, Ken­shoo high­light an oppor­tu­ni­ty prod­uct-spe­cif­ic adver­tis­ing efforts, such as Face­book’s Dynam­ic Prod­uct Ads.

Accord­ing to Ken­shoo “the lat­est enhance­ments enable more tar­get­ed up-sell and cross-sell oppor­tu­ni­ties show­ing com­ple­men­tary prod­ucts to past pur­chasers” and mar­keters can use the chan­nel to extend reach into the Face­book Audi­ence Net­work to engage users across the mobile app ecosys­tem.

Sim­i­lar­ly, with 52 per­cent of retail search­es on the Yahoo Bing Net­work unique to Bing, mea­sur­ing a cal­cu­lat­ed mar­ket share of 29 per­cent, cre­at­ing Bing Shop­ping Cam­paigns (which allows the import of Google cam­paign struc­tures) can add a lucra­tive addi­tion­al chan­nel.

Getting ready for the holidays

A key take­away for mar­keters cur­rent­ly plan­ning hol­i­day mar­ket­ing cam­paigns will be in ensur­ing dynam­ic and cross-chan­nel mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives, that lever­age adver­tis­ing and dis­play tech­nol­o­gy from emerg­ing plat­froms. This will cre­ate an expe­ri­ence that per­son­al­izes con­sumer jour­neys and ensures the max­i­mum impact of hol­i­day cam­paigns.

*Stats from Google Four Gold­en Mar­ket­ing Tips for a Crack­ing Online Christ­mas.

Are you gear­ing up your hol­i­day mar­ket­ing cam­paigns? What are your top tips?