This year, according to a recent survey conducted by Burst Media, 50.7% of consumers expect to do half or more of their Christmas holiday shopping online. This is up from 37.6% in 2006. Overall, according to the results of their survey, holiday spending will be down. Which means that marketers will have to really work hard to increase brand awareness online this Christmas.

In addition to the drop in overall spending and the increase in online purchases, there is the indisputable fact that many people will use the internet to research and window shop to decide their gift purchases this Christmas. Smaller items can simply be picked up at the store, but larger, higher ticket items will more often than not be researched prior to purchase, and the internet is a great way to entice web users to your brick and mortar location by first educating them and helping them to pick the right gift.

Paid Search Marketing

You can invest in paid search marketing in order to quickly get a slice of search traffic. This is a good easy way to rank for very specific search terms that will bring in very targeted traffic.

Organic Search Engine Results

If you have the presence of mind to start planning earlier on in the year, you can get a good slice of organic search traffic as well.

Have a Contest

Definitely a good idea to have a contest and advertise the contest offline, such as in your store or your print flyers. Then you can also advertise this online, and this is so much easier to sell, and once they buy into the contest, they may just buy into what you are selling.

Okay, those are the basics of what you can do, but marketers should be spending a lot of energy this year on their online holiday shopping campaigns, because apparently that is where the money is at.