The “biggest shopping day of the year” came and went, and instead of the skyrocketing sales, some brands felt it was less Black Friday and more Blue Monday. So how do you ensure that you build momentum for the coming holiday season? Here are the top 3 ways to maximize holiday sales using location marketing.

Capitalize on impulse shopping

According to the market research firm NPD Group, e-commerce has made consumers more informed when shopping offline, but they are still tempted by impulse items – especially leading up to Christmas. Consumers don’t simply scramble to take advantage of discounts and new products. Instead, they actively search for the best place to make an impulse purchase.

Think with Google, Google’s cultural research lab, estimates that just under 90% of all consumer mobile search is related to goods and products. Consumers rely on location data to provide a suitable result near them.

However, it doesn’t matter if you have carefully positioned your products for impulse shopping if people don’t enter your store to see them. You need to capitalize on ‘impulse searching’ which Google describes as a ‘micro-moment’, where a consumer suddenly decides to buy, eat or drink something, and then searches for the nearest location where they can get what they seek.

If your location data isn’t accurately and consistently structured across platforms such as Google, Facebook or Yelp, or listed on Google Maps properly, you actually reduce your stores’ chances of being found, and are potentially missing out on sales.

Shopping is more competitive, so you have to be too

We all know the volume of offline shoppers increases during Christmas time. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean more sales for your business if you don’t give consumers a reason to go to your stores.

Twenty years ago, you would have gotten away with pasting “SALE” or “CHRISTMAS MADNESS! DISCOUNTS” on your storefront, but today’s stores have multiple storefronts, both offline and online. Online there are various storefronts including social media, maps services and review sites, and every single one of them needs to give customers a reason to go to your store.

The simplest way to reach your customers with your offers, is to ensure your offers are visible across all your digital accounts for each location, and through special features such as Google Posts. This will mean when customers search for your goods or products, they find your offers early, or at least before they get to your actual storefront.

Again, properly structured location data across all these platforms will mean your discounts and reviews will be more visible to consumers across all platforms. But to do this, you will need to put time and effort into crafting the right message for each location, which again means your location data needs to be properly structured across platforms.

Local people want local offers, so cater to them

Personalization is the new black. Customers want goods with their name branded on the product, as both Coca Cola and Nutella demonstrated. Customers also want this amount of personalization for their surroundings in the form of localization.

Brands and stores should mention their local areas explicitly online and offline. Offline, this could simply be advertising but online, this means creating local-specific content, and optimizing it. By using customizable design templates for your store locations (such as the ones in a store locator tool), you can build pages which use local language, humor and provides knowledge about the local area. This goes towards priming local consumers for purchase, as they feel more engaged and connected to your brand.