Preparing for a blockbuster holiday season!
The holiday season is now only a couple of months away! So nows the time to prepare any festive season promotions for your business.
If have a webstore you should already be looking at your sales data for last year. From there, you can determine where you should be focusing your marketing efforts to maximize sales in the lead up to the peak retail season.
How long does delivery of your product or service take? It's likely you'll need to close off sales earlier, maybe even weeks earlier, depending on your offering and delivery areas. Consider adding a guarantee or special promotion for those who order early from you.
Creating a sense of urgency with deadlines can really help drive sales; however, a late delivery cut-off will appeal to those last-minute shoppers.
You should also consider themed pages or categories within your shop, and drive pay-per-click traffic such as Google Adwords there. One tip is that people enjoy gift ideas as well; so perhaps create categories such as For Him, For Her, and so on to help narrow down gift options for customers.
Look at promotional activities, such as free gift-wrapping. These cost only a few dollars at the most, and can help seal the deal when it comes to purchasing from your shop.
Now is the time to be sending a newsletter to all existing customers. Remind them that the holidays are looming, and that they can reduce their December stress by placing an order with you now for gifts. This has two benefits: money in the bank earlier for you (which you can use to spend on marketing now), and less last-minute hassles for your customers. You could even throw in free shipping if they pre-order before a certain date, say mid November.
Look at your competitors -- what are they doing well or badly? Learn from their clever choices, as well as their mistakes, and improve the experience for your customers.
Offer gift certificates or exclusive shopping options. Gift certificates are handy stocking fillers.
Put together product bundles. Do some of your products often sell well together? Create a special bundle and call it a Christmas or Hanukkah deal. Whatever helps sell more products and reduces your customers anxiety when shopping is a win for both of you!
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