Online Marketing Gears Up for a Loonie Holiday Rush
Nov 21, 2007 Webmaster Tips
In the United States, Thanksgiving decorations will quickly be swapped out for Holiday-themed signage and the masses will experience a rush of advertising chaos. Just over a month of holiday shopping days left for you to convert those search visitors into paying customers. In Canada, it’s a very different story because the departure of Halloween marks the official start of holiday advertising. Not to worry, if you’re an American retailer and want to target Canadian shoppers this season, it’s not too late!
Unlike many holiday’s of the past, this year will be uniquely different in the online marketing space. With the Canadian dollar stronger than the American greenback for the first time in decades, Canadians are more likely to research shopping deals online than ever before. I’ve been harping on this subject for months now: American advertisers, take note of Canadians, the loonie is burning holes in their pockets!
Here are some Holiday tips for attracting Canadian shoppers, from an online marketing manager (and also cross-border shopper):
- Do some research into the Canadian market checking competitor pricing on similar products. Canadians won’t buy unless the cost savings are significant.
- Make sure your shopping cart supports Canadian provinces, postal codes (not only zip codes), and shipping addresses.
- Offer fair International shipping prices, the last thing Canadians want is to spend more on shipping than the products themselves.
- Do your paperwork for shipments destined to Canada. Online retailers can do a lot to expedite the flow of goods through customs by working closely with your shipping vendor.
- Make sure your policies for returns and refunds are friendly to Canadian customers, many Canadians will be purchasing for the first time and don’t want to get burned.
- Ask your shipper what the latest order dates are for in-stock items to arrive before Christmas.
- Make sure your advertising campaigns include Canadian cities and provinces that are most likely to generate interest.
- Never sold to Canada before? Don’t bother targeting cities in Quebec, or Ottawa. These are both highly sensitive bilingual French-English (in that order) cities. American product packaging is usually English-only, or sometimes bilingual English-Spanish.
- Offer prices in Canadian dollars. By offering a custom exchange rate retailers can control what they are willing to sell products for in Canadian dollars. Billing Canadians in Canadian dollars will counteract the relatively worse exchange rate credit card companies charge, thereby effectively lowering the net cost.
- Ask distributors whether they have Canadian locations that can drop-ship products to Canadian customers. Nothing says loving to a Canadian shopper than foregoing the customs charges and cross-border shipping delay.
Online retailers are starting to understand that targeting potential Canadian customers results in much higher conversion rates, especially in search engine marketing campaigns. Looking for and attracting cross-border shoppers this holiday season could mean the difference between ROI break-even and profit surplus.
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