The Holidays are literally right around the corner. You’ve had your marketing plan in place well before Halloween, right? It’s scary to think that people are doing their shopping earlier every year.

According to Think with Google’s ‘5 Holiday Shopping Trends to Watch in 2015’ infographic, 48% of holiday shopper did their shopping on or before Cyber Monday last year. Over a quarter of them said that they had done some shopping before Halloween.  Believe it or not, 40% of shopping occurred online last season.

What does this tell you?

It is pretty safe to say that you need to be ready early.  Evidently, many brands lost sales last year because they waited to launch their holiday campaigns on the more traditional shopping days, such as Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday.

It also shows that digital matters, so even if you are a brick and mortar store, having a real internet presence is important. Businesses need to be approachable online more than ever. That means monitoring and utilizing the social channels where your customers hang out to the fullest capabilities. The flow between your social channels, your website’s landing pages and your marketing plan need to be seamless.

Check out this infographic by The Shelf that shows how online research and shopping is expected to dominate this year’s holiday shopping trends and how unbiased bloggers giving holiday gift giving advice are expected to be a big influence.

While many businesses want to say there is no way measure the ROI, it’s beginning to look like the price of ignoring Social Media Marketing is too high. The top social network that influences holiday buying is Pinterest.