The holidays represent the busiest shopping season of the year. People spend a lot of money in both November and December as they purchase gifts for their loved ones. You might find that your sales revenue doubles during those two months and that you start seeing shoppers spending more in the late fall. With the right strategy, you can increase your sales even more and give shoppers some incentives to buy from your shop. Check out some of the top tips that will help you prep your holiday marketing strategy.
Hold Contests
Make the most of your social media with exclusive contests that shoppers can enter. You can even include a link that directs them back to your site when they enter, which may encourage them to spend a little time shopping.
Contests often include gift cards to your store, but you may want to offer different tiers. This allows you to give a grand prize to one individual and smaller prizes to other people who enter.
Give Free Gifts
The average amount that holiday shoppers spend is more than $840 billion. While shoppers want to find the perfect gifts for their loved ones, they’re not above buying a few things for themselves.
Get shoppers to spend money with you when you give them free gifts. Look for simple gifts that you hand out such as reusable tote bags that you offer to the first 100 shoppers. You can also give gifts when they spend a certain amount.
Stay Open Later
Many stores now close early. Even grocery stores close at 10 pm, which makes it hard for some customers to finish their holiday shopping. Whether they work long hours or have other commitments that prevent them from shopping during standard hours, they cannot always come in during your set hours.
Consider staying open later around the holidays. Even keeping your doors open for a few extra hours every night can help.
Offer Guaranteed Shipping
There is nothing worse than buying gifts for loved ones and finding that they don’t arrive until after the holidays. Guaranteed shipping is a good way to appeal to customers who wait until later in the year to finish their shopping.
Make sure that you include information to help shoppers take advantage of this offer. You should list the last day on which the guarantee applies. This will keep shoppers from buying at the last minute and still wanting their orders by the holidays.
Use Ads
A good marketing strategy for the holidays should include the use of ads. Always use proper SEO to incorporate keywords that shoppers look for to direct them to your page and specific products.
Look for influencers who like your products and use them. You can pay them to advertise for you and showcase some of your products on their social media accounts. You can also use an automated texting service to communicate directly with your customers. Use the texts as a way to tell them about any sales or specials you have through the holidays.
Encourage Fast Shopping
The holidays often make people feel like they need to make quick decisions. If your child wants a popular toy and you wait until the last minute to buy one, you will likely find that you need to pay much more for it because it’s no longer available.
No one wants to buy an item and find that it is sold out. You can try a few different methods to encourage shoppers to buy quickly and make snap decisions. Try listing the total number of items you have in stock. You can also use a system that tells shoppers when others added those products to their carts. It’s helpful to run limited edition sales, too.
Customers know that they’ll only see those low prices when they buy before the end of the sale. You can run flash sales every day through December to entice your shoppers.
Bottom Line
Don’t wait until November or December to come up with your holiday marketing strategy. The sooner you start, the bigger results you will see. A few of the tips that will help you prep your business for the holidays include using ads to grab the attention of shoppers and running flash sales that only last for a short period.