How to Maintain Holiday Sales Momentum Into Q1 [Ft. Andy Crestodina]

A strong post-holiday marketing plan can help nurture and grow your Q1 sales, SEO, and traffic. Here’s how.

By Gentian Shero

For many eCommerce stores, post-holiday sales drop-offs are a major concern approaching Q1. After weeks of extended Black Friday campaigns sending shoppers to your site, the sudden downturn in conversion rate and site traffic can feel deflating. Especially when lower sales are combined with inevitable product returns in Q1.

With a strong digital strategy in place, however, you can still attract new site traffic, maintain high SEO, and even increase recurring revenue into Q1.

How?

Well, we could write a whole book on the topic.

But, to give you the most value-packed advice in a concise way, we reached out to our friend Andy Crestodina, co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Orbit Media, who is a renowned thought leader in content marketing, analytics, and all things SEO. (Find his full bio at the bottom of this post.)

Read our Q&A below for actionable advice on how to create a Q1 content strategy that keeps your holiday traffic and sales momentum going into the new year.

1. What are some key ways eCommerce brands can stay top-of-mind after holiday shopping has finished and into Q1?

After the holidays, you might change your ad spend. You might adjust your keyword targeting. You might remove the urgency from your calls to action. But you don’t stop marketing.

All channels should remain active. Potential buyers can still be reached through search, social and email. Your content marketing is still relevant. Your email list may actually be a bit bigger. 

Take a breath, but then get active again.

And for some brands, the post-holiday period offers new opportunities.

If you sold anything to anyone during the holidays that has accessories or replacement parts, market those products to your new customers in the new year. Sold a guitar? Guitar strings should be replaced every three months. Send an email to those customers with a special on replacement strings!

2. What SEO trends do you think will continue into 2023?

Unfortunately, we can all expect lower clickthrough rates from search in 2023.

There will be more features in search results pages next year, as there are every year. This is the biggest trend in SEO. No question.

It’s very obvious if you look at the trend over time. Here’s what a search results page for “modern wedding dresses” looked like in 2016 compared to 2022.

There is so much more visual noise, it’s obvious why CTRs are falling. For a lot of searches, there’s no need to click on anything at all. This is known as the rise of zero-click searches

3. What actionable advice would you give eCommerce sellers who want to maintain a strong SEO for Q1 sales?

For a lot of potential keyphrases, the only pages that rank are review sites and big blogs. Literally, no brands rank whatsoever.

Sometimes, these are the most valuable keyphrases. Take a look at the search results page for “best vacuum cleaners” and you’ll see that it’s all blogs and media sites. No manufacturers are ranking anywhere on page one. 

There are a few reasons for this, but the practical takeaway is this: it’s a digital PR-only keyphrase. Your only hope of being visible for this phrase is to be included on those roundups. So start building relationships with the bloggers and journalists who write for those websites. 

You have until next November to get your product into the mix.

Another option is to write your own roundup of products (with your brand somewhere on the list of course) and pitch it to a big blog that covers related topics. Make sure your pitch and post don’t sound too self promotional, but also don’t be surprised if they accept it. Big sites need a lot of content.

When your site lacks sufficient Domain Authority to rank for a very popular, valuable keyphrase, consider writing for a bigger, more authoritative site. There is no reason that your content is limited to your own domain. 

4. How important is content marketing in terms of nurturing and building traffic when sales are expected to drop post-holiday?

The demand for products will fall after the shopping season, but it doesn’t usually fall to zero. All year long, people are searching, pages are ranking, visitors are clicking and adding products to their carts.

The size of the prize may be smaller, but someone is always winning. 

And whoever is winning during the off season is likely to win during the holiday season. So regardless of the demand, it’s always time to compete. 

The best digital marketers never stop doing any of these things, regardless of the month.

  • Learning from the data in their Analytics
  • Growing their email list
  • Publishing relevant articles
  • Building their domain authority
  • Improving their product detail pages
  • Search optimizing their websites

It might not be Black Friday, but the marketers who act like it’s always Black Friday are the ones who win big in the holiday season. 

5. Some marketers say blogs are dead – what are your thoughts on the most effective forms of content marketing as we focus on Q1 sales?

Are blogs dead? If you ask Google that question, you’ll find an answer …on a blog post. 

It’s a silly suggestion, really. As you read this sentence, there are millions of people reading articles all over the web. They are finding answers, forming opinions, considering options and getting more educated before making a buying decision. 

Brands that have active content programs have the opportunity to engage with a potential customer earlier in their buying process. Brands with no blogs are forfeiting this fight. They are completely absent from the experience of top-of-funnel customers. 

6. Is any form of content marketing truly “dead”?

MySpace is dead. So is Google+. That’s about it, I think. 

7. In your opinion, what’s the best way to measure ROI on content marketing efforts?

For ecommerce? Sales. 

For SEO? Traffic. 

For email marketing? Subscriber growth and engagement

Every channel has its own metrics. But the bottom line metrics are the most important. Ironically, there is an inverse relationship between the visibility of a metric and its importance. 

The easiest to find metrics (social media followers) really has no correlation with business outcomes. The hardest to find metrics (net promoter score, sales closing rate, margin) have the stronger correlation with business outcomes.

Here are 37 different sales and marketing metrics listed in order of importance and the inverse order of visibility. 

Conclusion

Thanks, Andy, for sharing this invaluable advice!

There’s a lot here for eCommerce sellers to consider, and at Shero we’re glad to walk you through everything you need for an effective digital strategy, SEO plan, and conversion rate optimization plan.

Contact us today for a free consultation — it’s not too late to get started on growing your Q1 sales, brand awareness, and search engine relevance.


About Andy Crestodina

Andy Crestodina is the co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Orbit Media, an award-winning 50-person digital agency in Chicago. Over the past 20 years, Andy has provided digital marketing advice to 1000+ businesses.

Andy has written 500+ articles on content strategy, search engine optimization, influencer marketing, visitor psychology and Analytics. These articles reach more than three million readers each year. He’s also the author of Content Chemistry: The Illustrated Handbook for Content Marketing.

Andy gives up to 100 webinars and presentations per year and is a frequent repeat speaker at many of the top national marketing conferences.

Chief Strategy Officer at

Gentian, CSO and co-founder of Shero Commerce, guides the company and client digital strategies. He's an expert in technical SEO, Inbound Marketing, and eCommerce strategy.