With the holiday season comes holiday shopping. As shoppers load up on stocking stuffers and presents galore, they’ll be relying on their mobile devices more and more. From researching products and deals to making purchases and recommendations, the mobile phone is the new holiday shopping sidekick.
Here are six top tips to help you earn your customers’ res[ect, and business, this holiday season.

Geofencing: guide shoppers’ sleighs
Use geofencing to deliver deals, products and promotions to consumers at the right moment. By targeting customers with location-aware devices, such as smartphones and tablets, marketers can send highly targeted in-app ads or real-time emails that will help guide the customer buying journey.

According to Google’s Our Mobile Planet study, 83 per cent of US smartphone owners use their devices in store. With geofencing technology, you can target which customers are in your bricks and mortar store and send holiday-themed specials to entice them to buy. Marketing messages fueled by geofencing will help guide your customers’ sleighs toward the purchasing chimney.

Context marketing: don’t forget your customers’ wishlists
Give your customers the gift of context. Smartphones allow marketers to access a wealth of information about their customers, such as past searches, browsing behaviour, social media interactions and location. All of this data can be used to figure out what’s on consumers’ wishlists so you can deliver the products, content and ads that they want. Did a customer recently buy a cake mixer? Promote baking accessories and cook books in your next email. Do you have someone’s location data? Include store details at the bottom of an email that correlate to their actual location. But just remember to check the data to make sure it’s relevant to shoppers.

Augmented Reality: take your customers on a trip to the North Pole
Dress up your shoppers as elves and take them to the North Pole with Augmented Reality. Augmented Reality overlays physical objects with text, images and video. This technology requires a smartphone or tablet with a camera that can capture the physical objects and then overlay them on the screen with contextual data. So far, Augmented Reality is still seen as a gimmick but that could drastically change once products that rely on Augmented Reality, like Google Glass, become mainstream.

Rich media: create jolly images
Just because it’s on a mobile device, that doesn’t mean it can’t be festive. Deck out your mobile ads, emails and sites this holiday season to grab shoppers’ attention. As mobile networks become faster, and wi-fi connections more widespread, we’re seeing mobile advertisers use rich media content such as videos and geo-targeting to step up their visual game. Videos, in particular, are very popular, and will no doubt be a key component of many mobile campaigns this holiday season. Don’t be overshadowed by your competitors,’ create a visual experience that will stand out!

Optimization: slide down the chimney with a smooth landing
Optimized mobile landing pages are on the top of every customer’s wishlist. Mobile sites can suffer from unusually high amounts of traffic on big shopping days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. According to KISSmetrics, a one-second delay in page response can result in a 7 per cent reduction in conversions. When consumers don’t have to wait for slow downloads, they are more likely to make a purchase on their device. A case study from the Mobile Commerce Guide found that one brand increased sales by 1 per cent for every 100 milliseconds they shaved off mobile webpage download times. Keep this in mind as you look to please your holiday shoppers this season.

One-click purchases: wrap up your holiday sales
Put a bow on your mobile marketing strategies by making the final and most important step easy. Add one-click purchases to turbocharge sales. According to a Google study, nearly one third of shoppers use their mobile phone to make purchases, and of those, more than half make mobile purchases at least once a month. Are you catering your holiday marketing efforts to these shoppers? Companies like Amazon have already incorporated one-click purchase features a long time ago, and I expect it to become even more popular this holiday season as retailers look to cash in on mobile sales.

Andrew King is senior strategy consultant at Lyris