We’re getting our holiday giving started a bit early this year. Our first gift to you? This 12-day blog series designed to help you get through your seasonal marketing without a hitch. If you’re just joining us, you can start at the beginning here.
The busy holiday season impacts nearly every area of our lives, including mobile usage. We’re bustling from event to event and traveling away from the PC comforts of our home and offices, but emails still need to be checked, television still needs to get watched, and shopping still needs to get done. Just last year, 73 percent of consumers were using their mobile devices as part of their holiday shopping routine.
It’s not just mobile shopping that’s on the rise as the snowflakes fall, 89 percent of people use their phones in social settings (of which there’s no shortage during the holidays). Even if you don’t consider your product or service to be a hot commodity on gift lists this year, you can still take advantage of the increased mobile attention with a few strategies designed specifically for this on-the-go audience.
Naturally, all your holiday marketing tactics, from emails to landing pages, should be optimized for mobile. But that’s table stakes for the Modern Marketer. Really dive in by leveraging social ads or PPC campaigns targeting mobile devices to catch customers as they use their phone to avoid awkward party moments or shop via tablet between meetings.
Take it to the next level with an application created just for the season. You could design a productivity app that makes life easier for your customers during this hectic time of year, a seasonal mobile wallpaper creator that carries your brand on each creation, or even a holiday game that brings a little play to the downtime between blustery commutes to the post office.
Though some of these endeavors may require more of an investment on the front end, they tend to have some legs. Once your application is developed, you could give it to your entire audience as an egift. Or, take a note from some of the major holiday application players, and make it available the world over. NORAD has made a name for themselves well beyond their industry with their jolly santa tracker. And, every year Office Max’s Elf Yourself garners attention from every type of customer. Both of these leading applications are revived year after year, spreading a continued cheer return on the initial investment.
