Leveraging Performance Marketing During Festive Season

Kedar Kulkarni Oct 15, 2022

Diwali and festivities in India are just around the corner. For some, that means a well-deserved rest but for others, it can be an opportune time to make up for the valuable revenue and cash in on the spending spree during festivals.

For performance marketers, these are busy times. Festivals in India or anywhere in the world are days when multiple brands are eyeing that user/customer who is going to be on the lookout for some festive shopping. This is the time when the skills are put to the test to ensure the brand gets the maximum share of the growing searches and intent is in focus for all performance marketers.

This year, the festive season is not the same the world celebrates after two years of a hiatus, everyone is jumping early to the party, making it a redeeming gala. Advertisers and brands are no different. To ensure they make the best of this opportunity, digital marketers and brands are making robust and strategic marketing efforts that will yield maximum engagement and conversions.

If you are handling performance marketing for your business which is also likely to see an uptick in business this holiday season, here are some basic things that you will see most of the brands do.

Diwali banners on the website
An element of ‘Diwali’ to the logo.
Offers and Discounts – on products

Here are the things that you can do further to ensure the enhanced performance of your campaigns.

Payment Offers: Make sure your website has different banks, payment options and offers
Payment Gateways Issues: Failure rates need to be lower. A good website has less than five per cent failure rates
Website Speed: Users are juggling work deadlines and home preparations. Make sure they don’t spend time waiting for your website to load
Steps to Transaction: Don’t ask users three times to confirm their purchase. Reducing a step is likely to have a 14 per cent impact on your conversion rate.

Here are more ideas that you can try to ensure you have the right build-up and conversations.

Diwali-themed Infographic – Share a story on how your brand or product or service is used more during Diwali.
A contest for Diwali – Make use of social media platforms to engage your target and potential audience with an exciting contest.
Add the touch of festivity - Deliver your offerings with firecrackers, flowers and gifts for some customers on Diwali.

Pro-tip - Take a video and promote it while you are at it.

Here are some of the interesting channels that you should definitely explore to promote your brand this season.

Top Funnel promotions using DV360 – This can help you break the clutter and allows you to invest more in publishers that you find relevant instead of over-indexing on a few ones (don’t do Homepage Takeovers. Instead buy programmatically)
Google Pay and other coupon platforms – This is a great way to discover new users and get people excited about your offers
Use your 1st Party Data – In an era of Social Media, it’s okay to send a mail wishing all your customers and potential customers 'A Very Happy Diwali' from your brand. You can be extra innovative in this and perhaps convey an offer as well which may intrigue your audiences.

Diwali is also a great time to do some consumer research. Since the volume of transactions goes up, you may want to incentivise the users to respond to your questionnaire to understand or validate some insight into their preferences and behaviour.

I understand you would want to rush to implement these invaluable tips but here are a few things that are not related to performance marketing but should be considered while delivering a positive brand experience.

Extend Customer Service for a longer time: During Diwali, a lot of shopping is planned and if users don’t get their products or service on time or as per expectation the impact can be a lot more due to the importance of the event. Ensure you are servicing them well to minimise disappointments.
Don’t lose sight of your stakeholders: Take care of your team members who may be required to work overtime during this festive season. It’s a festival for everyone and work can put employees under a lot of stress. A gift or a warm party can do wonders for your team and teammates