Five things marketers can do to make the most of the year-end shopping frenzy

1. Help your customers find you easily

Year-end holidays such as Christmas and the New Year send consumers searching for gifts, activities, travel destinations, restaurants and more. They are online and looking for your business.

Online marketing is no longer a good-to-have, but a business imperative. Through mounting targeted search campaigns, you can help consumers find you faster and drive them to online sales touchpoints.

Include information such as location, opening hours, and phone numbers so that your online ads can drive traffic to your store.

2. Think like your customers

Seasonal keywords appear in search results during certain times of the year and have lower relevance during the rest of the year.

If you are a gym business looking to leverage the proverbial New Year resolution to get healthier, keywords such as 'gym membership' may be too specific. Instead, experiment with a good keyword tool and you will find that keywords such as 'fitness', 'diet', and 'lose weight' return higher local search volumes.

3.  Target only relevant customers

Whether you are a business that ships to different locations globally or caters only to certain areas, you can benefit from more precise geographical targeting.

Your online marketing campaign should allow you to select locations where you want your ad shown. In addition, if your business caters to a specific set of customers of a particular age range or gender, make sure your ads appear in the right place so that the customer you target is more likely to be interested in your products or services.

For example, if you are selling year-end family holidays, demographic exclusions should keep your ads from appearing to younger single customers.

4. Stay in view of your customers

When searching for gifts, products or services online, your customers may not make the purchase immediately.

The key is not to lose them, but to ensure that your products and services are top of mind when they are ready to make a purchase. Remarketing can be a strategic component of every campaign by allowing your ads to be shown to people who have previously visited your site.

Let's say you sell champagne. Using remarketing, you can show ads about champagne hamper deals just before Christmas to people who have visited your site in the past. This is a win-win situation not only for your business, but also for your customers.

5. Anticipate customer shopping periods

Retailers should anticipate when their customers will be searching for gifts or looking for stores, and adjust their online advertising budget and messages accordingly.

Search volumes for Christmas gifts start climbing typically in October and peak in December. Retailers should think about when to implement their advertising campaign to capture the most sales opportunities—as early as November, as shipping takes time.

Also, retailers can adjust ad content and feature in-store promotions to drive store traffic.