Consumers usually spend a lot of money during festive occasions, and this presents brands with the much-needed chance to reach out to them and penetrate the market. However, growth in the competition requires businesses to think strategically so that they succeed. In this case, as a small business or as any brand out there, one must be prepared and creative to get noticed in this period.

20 critical strategies brands should consider for the festive season along with useful SEO tips

Let’s explore 20 critical strategies brands should consider for the festive season along with useful SEO tips for generating organic traffic and boosting sales.

1. Start Planning Early

The festive season promotional strategies should be planned early in a way that the company gets adequately ready for the festive season.

Consumers begin searching for coupons for weeks and even months before the holidays. Ideally, it should be planned for at least 3-4 months to successfully lock your strategy, analyze trends & stock your inventory.

Key actions:

The best time to build your marketing calendar, therefore, should be during these festive months.As for the informational needs, the first activity is to identify the future product trends that may be popular during the season.

2. Conduct an SEO Website and Business Analysis

Website SEO is crucial in reversing organic traffic since it involves tailoring your websites so that they rank well in the search engine results. An SEO audit serves the purpose of revealing areas of missed opportunities in the existing plan, enhancing user experience to target what is essential.

Key actions:

Other paid tools that you can use are Google Analytics and SEMrush to find out which pages generate low traffic.Bare minimum requirements should include fixing all broken links and making sure that the site’s load time is as low as possible.Hire a professional search engine optimization agency for detailed information.

3. Target Seasonal Keywords

Seasonal keywords are used by users who are looking for festive season offers, gifts, and other goods. Considering the keywords, you can increase the site ranking and attract the consumer’s attention.

Key actions:

Here you can use such tools as Ahrefs or Google Keyword Planner to search for seasonal keywords.Naturally use keywords within product descriptions, blogs, and even on the category pages.

4 . Optimize for Mobile

Optimization for mobile is enough to force you into having a website optimized for mobile as over 50% of shoppers use their handheld devices to shop online. A bad mobile experience can repel consumers/buyers.

Festive Lead-Up

Given the fact that festive customers commence the search before the actual season begins, this means there is engagement and then there is amplification. Amazon’s industry benchmarks reveal that 42% of the festive season’s consumers utilize this phase to engage in the research of products. Those brands that are capable of occupying interest and distributing value addition information can thus increase visibility and sales recall by many fold the moment the sales are finally opened.

5. Strategies during the festive lead-up

Take advantage of advertising and post popular content that will likely interest the buyers during that time. Utilize informative content that creates awareness among the consumer through blog articles, buying guides, and feature articles among others.

Festive lead-up
During this stage one should aim for is visibility through placing on gateway pages the sponsored display ads during the festive time. The goal is to ensure that the brand’s products are out there before the sale can be made so that potential buyers can make their own considerations.

 During Festive Sale

Marketing should begin at early stages with a focus on capturing the research phase of a consumer. This is the time when consumption is highest; 58% of all the unique visitors add the products to their basket. Recommended making the best use of advertisement and content targeting to match buyers’ expected interests and preferences. It must use forms with educative content such as those containing blogs, purchasing guides/feature articles that assist the clients in their decisions to purchase.

Tips for the festive sale
Make sure the products that you list give a good user experience and the pictures should be clear & detailed descriptions of the product along with a simple and easy checkout process. Another type of flash and deal is a mix of mix-and-match decision possibilities and time pressure based on time-limited and exclusive offers.

6. Post Festive Sale

There is always the effect occasion, and 12% of festive shoppers are likely to visit the store for other subsequent shopping. It has been more about taking the consumers beyond an event that was the maturity of the lifestyle of the product.

Post-festive sale promotion
In the periods that follow the festive sale, marketers can opt to use mobile communication by informing the customers about other similar products, and other festive offers shortly. They can also put in place a mechanism to capture feedback from the customers to enhance the strategies in the future and exploit gaps.

The goal during the post-festive sale
In this phase, the festive sale is over and it is at this time brand would want to re-engage the traffic and potential traffic with product retargeting through showing display ads.

FOUR Pillars of Growth

To grow successfully through the stages, there are four universal growth pillars that brands have to focus on:

Customer Acquisition
With high traffic during this event, good outreach could easily help in gaining and capturing more clientele.

Drive Brand Loyalty
Efforts should be made toward maintaining customers owing to positive experiences and more CRM loyalty promotions.

Continue Advertising Post-Festive Season
The promotion even after the event which celebrates a certain brand or an organization’s corporate identity to cash in on the high likelihood of consumers to remember the advertised brands. This way, consumers will keep your brand in mind and this may make them return to the same brand again for another purchase.

Engage with your customers and potential customers
Continue listening to the conversation of the community that your brand is around through social media, emails, and customer service.

7. Increase META Tags Corrections

Meta descriptions and title tags are important SEO factors that can greatly affect the levels of CTRs. Revise them for the festive mode, as far as the keywords used will correspond to the specific search the users make during the festive season. For example:

Title
Black Friday is coming soon! Big discount event | 50% Off | Dont miss our best offers of 2024

Meta Description
‘Shop the best Black Friday offers on gadgets, stylish clothing, accessories, and home furnishings. Hurry, offers end soon!’

Well-written meta descriptions encourage visitors to click on your link and increase organic traffic.

8. Utilize Google My Business

Google My Business should be utilized fully when developing your local SEO plan, so think about the source. You should change your holiday working hours show the customers that you have prepared special offers for the holiday season, and post constant updates on the events you are planning or promotions you are running.

The first way is regular updates of the GMB profile – the more active the profile is, the more likely it is to appear in local queries including those with the “near me” search tag.

How to use social media for SEO with a specialist in mind?

The festive season is always a force to reckon with in as much as social networking services are concerned. Most people post about their favorite brands, and thus it will be advisable for brands to follow them and interact with their followers by posting about festive offers, holiday contests, and promotions. Develop content that you can share with your friends or family, in one way or the other, this would also enhance the SEO ranking.

Ensure you use specific and relevant hashtags and keywords on your posts for better search both on the search engine and in the various social media platforms.

9. Influencer marketing and SEO marketing: Modern types of advertising cooperation

Working with influencers can help you spread the information further, but working with them can help improve your SEO. When influencers post contents that lead back to your website, this entails having quality backlinks. Such backlinks also provide information to search engines concerning your site hence helping you to improve your ranking.

10. Employ the Service of The Top Search Engine Optimization Agency

 If you are not familiar with SEO or you are too busy to control your festive campaigns, it is best to get the services of the best SEO agency out there. Professional SEO services companies, such as Runtime Solutions Pvt Ltd, will help to develop specific and concrete concepts that will correspond to the essence of the brand, its target population, and tendencies in the sphere. This will let them guide you on the use of complex SEO strategies that include the following, technical audit, backlinking, and analysis of competitors in a bid to enhance the festive season performance.

11 More information can be found using structured data for rich snippet

This type of content is information in coded form and is also called structured or schema data to improve search engine indexing of materials published on the Internet. If you are implementing it, your search results will be easier to gain rich snippets, which we defined earlier as enhanced search results usually included in images, ratings, or pricing. For festive-specific products, it can help move your product to the top of the search results and thus get more clicks on your products.

12. Optimize Your Product Pages

In the festive season, many customers look for certain products. Make sure your product pages are fully optimized with good-quality images, well-written and relevant titles, descriptions, and customer reviews. Insert keywords related to holidays into the product descriptions so that you can attract users with holiday-related search requests while checking that your prices and available stock are current.

13. Implement a Content Calendar

For efficiency and to ensure you do not deviate from a consistent pattern, develop a content calendar that shows you your promotional campaigns, blogging activities, and social marketing plan. The easily followed business content plan makes it possible to ensure that relevant material is published on the different platforms at the correct time with great exposure. When planning for content marketing make sure that you start developing your content way before the month begins.

14. A PPC Campaign with SEO Benefits

PPC is a very strategic marketing strategy that helps drive traffic to a website especially if it is in conjunction with the SEO services. They are accustomed to concentrating festive-specific keywords in their PPC campaigns and guaranteeing the optimality of their landing pages. PPC can then enhance the visibility of your site and the traffic it receives will help lessen the bounce rates which are crucial to SEO ranking.

15. Focus on User Experience (UX)

To expand on it, there are several reasons why design is crucial to maintain people’s attention or at least their interaction, and one of them is the user interface. It should also be relatively easy to browse and easy to shop on the website, which means fast loading times. When it comes to web design, optimizing the site for PC and mobile users and don’t give up easily, and making conversions will be helpful in SEO.

16. Email Marketing with SEO integration

Try to incorporate SEO into your Email marketing techniques by directing your customers back to the pages with optimized content or pages with your products or services. Ensure to serve impulses for renters, specials and gift choices, and holiday promotions to attract and involve clients.

17. To analyze the festive campaign, one must make use of SEO tools.

An SEO campaign is important to monitor because its effectiveness dictates its success. Google Analytics, SEMrush, Ahrefs, etc., are important SEO tools that present valuable KPIs like keyword ranking, visits or traffic organically, and conversion rate. The most important advice that can be given regarding the holiday season is the usage of data insights for enhancing the plan and outcomes.

18. Monitor Your Competitors

It is very important to monitor movement in the market by observing what competitors are doing during the festive season. Check which keywords they are using, which topics they concentrate on their websites, and what promotions they offer. Knowing their ways will allow you to guess how you could beat them in terms of SEO placements.

19. Run Contests and Giveaways

People love contests and are willing to participate in various events to be able to get a free product or be a lucky winner. Create enthusiasm around your brand during the festivity period by offering some incentives to win more people hence increasing your followers.

Key actions:

Advertise this contest to your various social media accounts as well as to your email list.

If people want to add more entries, let them forward your content.

20. Stimulate the need to act with countdown timers

Putting time frames on things such as website pop-ups or emails can help get the customer to make a move. There is absolute truth in the notion that when people are hurried into a decision they are more likely to purchase the product.

Key actions:

Include a countdown for limited-time product promotion or holiday shipping.

Display them in your promotional banners, emails, and so on.

Conclusion

The festive season is fast approaching, and this is always one of the best times for brands to keep their SEO goals in check. Seasonal keywords, holiday content, local SEO, and cooperation with the most popular SEO agencies, such as Brand SEO, can all help to considerably boost the company’s website ranking. The strategies highlighted in this guide will aid brands in achieving their goals of increased reach, web traffic, etc.

FAQs

1. When is the right time for brands to start planning for the festive season?

Brands must effectively prepare at least 3-4 months before the festive season. This creates space to work on strategies such as messaging, stock procurement, and creating publicity.

2. Festive season is the reason to talk about SEO?

SEO enables brands to rank on the search results and gain organic traffic and sales during this festive season where consumers search.

3. What are seasonal keywords?

Seasonal keywords, refers to the keywords related to a special period or event like ‘Christmas gifts’ or ‘Black Friday’.

4. What changes can be made to the mobile optimization of a website during the festive season?

Ensure that your website design is responsive, and is fast to load to support the Mobile technology used in accessing your Website. It can be done with the help of such tools as Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.

5. How do Countdown Timers boost conversions?

There is an element of scarcity that comes with Countdown timers; customers feel the need to act before it’s too late and an offer or deal disappears.

6. What can I do with social media during the festive period?

Social media can be also used to advertise offers, hold festive-based contests, and entice followers with seasonal posts containing hashtags.

7. What must be included, when conducting a festive email marketing campaign?

During festive seasons, email marketers should take advantage of this opportunity to offer customers product recommendations, limited coupon codes, and festive content relevant to the holidays.

Also Read: Key Takeaways from India D2C Summit 2024: How SEO, PPC, and Shopping Ads Will Drive the Future of D2C Brands