The festive season is fast approaching but Christmas 2022 promises to be a bit different in terms of spending. In fact, new data from Kantar shows that half of UK consumers plan to spend less on Christmas this year as the cost-of-living crisis bites.

Big brands have looked to counter this by announcing incentives and early deals. In September, John Lewis removed the minimum spend on click-and-collect orders and started giving customers until January 28 to return items.

Retail giant Tesco started its toy sale in October and is continuing its promotions in the run-up to Christmas.

But what can small businesses do? There are still opportunities. The Future UK shopping trends report 2022 shows that since the pandemic more of us are shopping online and this trend is set to continue. Not only that, more and more people are window shopping online and doing their research before they buy.

This presents a ready-made online audience. So, how do you tap into it?

Digital support champion Superfast Business Wales has three easy ways to help you market your business online and win more customers during the Christmas holiday:

Give your website a festive makeover

Updating your website can have a huge impact on performance
Updating your website can have a huge impact on performance

Your website is your online shop window. With the rise in online window shopping - now is the time to take stock, review your website and be objective. How attractive is it to potential customers? Does the content need updating to fit with the season? Are there clear call to actions? Put yourself in your customers’ shoes - can they easily find what they’re looking for?

It’s important to remember that if you are marketing particular offers or products, you are driving traffic from that campaign to a dedicated landing page. Customers shouldn’t have to go searching for further info on what caught their eye in the first place. If your website is too difficult to navigate this will put potential customers off your site and your bounce rate will increase as a result.

Keeping your website updated does take time and effort but the results will be worth it. Content is king and search engines like Google pay much more attention to websites which are regularly refreshed with new content. Updating your site with up-to-date content along with basic SEO techniques such as meta titles and keywords that your target audience may be inputting into search engines will boost your ranking. If you don’t keep your website looking fresh, you can bet that your competitors won’t be making the same mistake!

Above all make sure that your website is fully optimised for mobile. According to Klarna, seven out of 10 consumers shop via their mobile than before the pandemic.

Find out more on Superfast Business Wales’ free Digital Marketing webinar

Get social with Facebook Ads

Social Media like Facebook can be a useful tool
Social Media like Facebook can be a useful tool

Despite a plethora of competing social media platforms snapping at its heels, Facebook is still the most widely used and has an ad reach of 2.1 billion users in 2022 to date. This makes it the biggest social media site on the planet and a great place to market your business to potential customers.

Facebook Ads can help you target users by location, demographics, age, gender, interests, behaviour, and even interest in similar businesses to yours. Facebook allows you to control how much you spend, when your ads are posted, and also where your ads are posted in terms of placements.

Facebook is integrated with Instagram, so you have a wider net to cast your ads. It will also give you access to metrics so that you can measure how well your ads are performing in real time. This means you can allocate your spending to the ads which bring in the best results, turning off any which underperform. You can also look at creative ad changes such as images versus video and different copy. This is called A/B testing and Facebook Ads facilitates this.

Find out more on Superfast Business Wales’ free Understanding Ads and PPC webinar

Be clever with email marketing

Personalising emails can make customers more likely to open the message
Personalising emails can make customers more likely to open the message

Email marketing is showing no signs of slowing down with 37% of brands increasing their email budget according to HubSpot. Email marketing is still one of the cheapest and most effective online marketing tools out there. This is why 64% of small businesses are using it to reach customers. However, with so many emails flooding inboxes, how do you make yours stand out?

Make the reader believe you’re speaking directly to them - personalising your emails wherever possible is imperative. This is one of the most effective strategies you can use in email marketing. Think, if you saw an email pop into your inbox with your name on it, you would be more inclined to open it, just as you would mail through your letterbox. Write a strong subject line which compels the reader to open your email and find out more.

Stay clear of any buzzwords that may trigger your emails to get filtered by spam, such as ‘free’ or using a discounted symbol. Keep your sales pitch to a minimum and ensure your message is interesting and appealing with a clear call to action. Be brief, you want to tempt the reader into clicking through for further information – no one wants to scroll through an email equivalent of ‘War and Peace!’

Use analytics to measure your open and click-through rates and adjust your email campaigns accordingly. Experiment – if something isn’t working, try changing the subject line or the content until you get the results you want. You can also do this beforehand with two different versions of your email in the form of A/B testing. Work out when your customers are most likely to be responsive and schedule your email campaigns for these times. There are plenty of automated email marketing platforms available, such as MailChimp and HubSpot, which enable you to do this.

Find out more on Superfast Business Wales’ free Effective Email Marketing Webinar

These are just three ways you can capture the attention of the Christmas market and start growing your customer base and sales ready for the New Year.

To access more digital help for your business, register onto the free Superfast Business Wales service.