How to Use Video to Drive Sales During the Holiday Season

Deloitte predicts that shoppers will spend an average of $1387 per household on holiday shopping in 2020. That’s 7% less than last year.

It’s time to pay attention to the way spending patterns are shifting.

Need a way to see to it that whatever sum consumers and prospects spend during this holiday season ends up beefing up your business or company?

Start thinking video.

Video has proven its power to drive sales the whole year round.
But during the holiday season? That’s when video really proves its weight in gold.

 

The end of the year has always been marked by big crowds, big sales, and big profits. Even a global public health crisis can’t cancel the holidays – although it is changing the way people celebrate.

Organizations that have or create holiday video content that addresses these changes appropriately can leverage major gains.

This is true both for B2C businesses and B2B organizations. Consumer retailers can use video to attract price-conscious shoppers. Business retailers and service providers can leverage personalization to guarantee a slice of their customers’ end-of-year spending budgets.

In both cases, the holiday-themed video content you create can make or break your holiday campaign.

 

The B2C companies’ guide to holiday video content

Happy Smiling Elegant Woman Or Beauty Blogger With Brush On Reco

For retailers who sell directly to consumers, the holiday season traditionally starts with Black Friday. A successful Black Friday sets the tone for the entire holiday shopping season.

Of course, shoppers are understandably anxious about big crowds, which means Cyber Monday is likely to oust Black Friday in terms of raw sales power this year. In fact, experts predict that ecommerce holiday shopping may start even earlier than Black Friday due to public health anxieties about crowded shopping malls.

 

To maximize sales during this period, you need to concentrate on your best-performing videos. Knowing which videos perform best – and which platforms they perform best on – is crucial to optimizing your holiday video content strategy.

 

Under these conditions, B2C companies that capture video engagement data on a user-by-user basis have a clear advantage. There is no need for guesswork. You can focus all of your marketing spend on your best-performing videos.

pointing at computer

 

Repurpose the year’s best hits

A high-powered Instagram blitz can breathe new life into your best-performing videos of the past year. Combine tried-and-true content with new messaging to give your messages a holiday twist.

 

This is a popular tactic for e-commerce retailers, who often set the stage well before Black Friday. A simple inventory recording can whet buyers’ appetites in preparation for the main campaign.

 

By the time December rolls in, your brand could already establish itself as a holiday leader. From there, your primary job is making sure customers get their orders fulfilled in time for their celebrations. You’ve already won half the battle at this point.

As sales increasingly shift online, B2C companies need to put more emphasis on qualifying their customers using the best video hosting platform for the purpose. The more qualified your consumer base is, the better-targeted your holiday video campaign can be.

video coronavirus

Shift your special offers to meet customer needs

Don’t forget that many shoppers are looking for different things this holiday season. Holiday travel is unsurprisingly down by more than 30% this year, and people are trying to liven up their homes instead of going out.

If your ecommerce store sells home furnishings, decorations, or similar home-oriented products, highlighting them in your holiday video content is a safe bet. Anything that brings a little bit of life to the home is likely to perform will this year.

 

Holiday video content for B2B companies

B2B video marketing benefits from in-depth analytics as well. Capturing individual user engagement data can generate upselling opportunities that are easy to miss otherwise.

Special offers are a tried-and-true B2B holiday sales tactic. Organizations with visibility into how individual users interact with their video content can create better-targeted special offers.

Most marketers will tell you that holiday-themed videos are a must-have for the holidays. But you don’t want your content to be sterile and distant. Personalized video messaging is starting to earn its place in the B2B holiday marketing toolkit.

 

Instead of a boilerplate holiday video, consider creating a simple, authentic holiday greeting with a free browser extension like RecTrace. This kind of one-to-one messaging can play a critical role in driving new holiday sales and creating opportunities to upsell to existing customers.

 

There are tons of ways to leverage video in your existing holiday marketing campaigns. Simply adding the word “video” to an email subject line increases open rates by 7-13%. Choose the right thumbnail and you can practically guarantee engagement.

 

Get creative with holiday messaging

Most of your customers will be flooded with holiday-themed messaging during this time of year. Everyone is trying to cut into the “use it or lose it” budget that many purchasing departments have on-hand. Now, more than ever, the ability to stand out is a powerful value generator.

 

One of the best places for creative imagery is in your video thumbnail. As the first thing the viewer sees, this is a moment where you either guarantee a click or get tossed in the trash pile.

 

You can add a video thumbnail into any email using Cincopa.
 

There are many ways you can get your viewer’s attention here. If you’re making one-on-one videos for specific customers, you can go a long way with personalization. Try piquing the curiosity of your biggest customer’s executive buyer by holding up a sign that says, “Hi Kate, we have a special holiday offer for you”.

Even if you aren’t creating videos for individuals, your thumbnail image should be considered valuable real estate. Videos with thumbnail images showing an expressive face consistently outperform videos with thumbnails depicting anything else.

Our brains are hardwired to recognize faces. Doing so elicits an deeply instinctive curiosity. Capitalize on that fact and make your holiday videos more personable, more expressive, and ultimately, more human.

 

finger computer

Use advanced video marketing analytics to your advantage

These strategies rely on capturing user engagement data on a granular level. The more you know about the people interacting with your video content, the better you can identify and address their needs. B2C and B2B companies alike need to align their marketing strategies with cutting-edge analytics tools.

Choosing the best video hosting provider for user analytics can be a game-changing decision for your holiday marketing campaign. Don’t settle for free hosting that prevents you from leveraging the value of your video content and truly reaching out to your customers.

Originally published on November 14th, 2020, updated on January 29th, 2021
The Blog

How to Use Video to Drive Sales During the Holiday Season

by Austin Jesse Mitchell time to read: 4 min
0