If you haven’t already starting thinking about your Christmas marketing plan, you need to get a move on! Your customers are already starting to form ideas about their Christmas presents and starting to shop around for bargain deals.

The Christmas Shopper’s Mindset

This year with the increased value in the Australian Dollar, even more shoppers will be turning to the internet to shop for Christmas gifts.  Budget concious, and on the hunt for “bargains” you are going to need to be savvy to win over customers.

Taking Advantage of the Christmas Shopper’s Mindset

Many customers first visit to your e-commerce site will also just be for “window-shopping”… they will be trying to get ideas for gifts and seeing what you have… try to entice these customers to purchase on this first visit with standout calls to action including daily or weekly specials, free shipping deals or other promotions.

Start thinking about what strategies you might be able to take advantage of to turn these first time visitors to your site, into first time customers.

Email marketing is one of the strongest drivers of targeted traffic to your site that you can use.  Start dusting off your subscriber lists and formulating ideas for a series of email newsletters that you can begin sending out in the next few weeks in the lead up to Christmas.

Also make sure you are taking advantage of promoting your business through social networking. Many businesses believe word of mouth is the most effective method of referral and social networking takes word of mouth to the next level. If you haven’t done so already, set up a Facebook page for your business as a minimum.  You may also want to look at Twitter.  In one of your first mail-outs for the Christmas shopping season, make sure you encourage your subscribers to like your Facebook page and follow you on Twitter.  You can get huge exposure from these social networks and you can use them to build up your subscriber list.

In addition, consider offering early Christmas deals that will pad up your subscriber list even more.  For example, offer a private sale with an extra discount for those who pre-register and leave you their email addresses.  The more subscribers you can get on your list, the more potential sales you can get by Christmas.

October is truly the best time to start firing off your Christmas marketing plans.  As the adage goes, the early bird gets the worm.  If you promote your business in time for Christmas in October, you have a huge opportunity to increase your bottom line by the end of the year.