With the official beginning of the holiday shopping season just a few weeks away, it is vital to have a meaningful presence both organically and via paid strategies online. Whether your target audience is disproportionately on social media, using search engines or checking emails, you need to be focused on how best to reach these individuals.

For most online retailers seeking to maximize performance this holiday season, social media is a prime platform. With low-cost ads and plenty of potential shoppers to reach, niche ads can make a huge impression and drive traffic to your product and service pages.

It’s important not to wait until Black Friday to begin making your pitch: we’ll discuss what you can start doing right now to drive sales and traffic in anticipation of this holiday season.

Retarget Aggressively

The concept of retargeting (or remarketing) is a well-known dynamic of social media advertising. However, given that more people are stuck at home this year than in past years and considering that more holiday shopping will be conducted from home this year than ever, there is absolutely justification to ramp up retargeting in any social media shopping campaign right now.

People are buying earlier and earlier each year – and with nowhere to go due to restrictions, they may take care of online shopping even sooner. Don’t let yourself be out-maneuvered by competitors who are pinging websites and product pages to those who are in the market: recapture those one-time visitors and users with aggressive retargeting.

Incorporate Variety in Your Ads

Reach is the name of the game in holiday retail advertising. Social media in particular offers a unique ability to incorporate sales and brand awareness with concepts such as entertainment and messaging. Ultimately, one of the easiest ways to reach more people through social media and generate increased organic reach is to utilize a variety of ad styles and formats.

Not everything has to be a sales pitch. Some ads may feature reviews of a particular product you’re offering. Others might be simple entertainment or content related to your broader niche. Whatever the content or product, find ways to vary your social media marketing during the holiday season. You’ll be able to attract otherwise skeptical shoppers both directly and indirectly.

Adjust Ad Budgets Accordingly

In the final quarter of the year, more people are advertising via search engines and social media like. This can have a big impact on your visibility. What might have cost $100 in previous months may now cost $200, as more competition means higher ad rates. It’s vital that you remain aware of this concept.

Many social media ad panels offer dynamic bidding of some sort, allowing you to either manually adjust spending or let the algorithms do so based on one or more criteria. By pinging websites such as Facebook and Instagram with sufficient ad sets and sufficient budgets, you won’t miss potentially valuable sales and business in these pivotal holiday shopping weeks.

With the holiday practically here, it’s not too late to embrace aggressive tactics for this shopping season. By embracing the concept of retargeting, utilizing as much variety in ad sets as possible and being prepared with larger ad budgets, your business can make a solid impression and grab a meaningful share of your target audience’s sales this holiday season.