It is no understatement to say that holidays is a biggest shopping season of the year. Just in 2019, holiday retail sales are projected to amount to $730 billion US Dollars. With the buyers’ willingness to shop, businesses can easily capitalize on holidays and buyers’ willingness to shop for holiday sales and gifts.
Unfortunately, this also means increased competition and high pressure for businesses. Customers’ expectations are higher. It is easy for CEO’s and their marketing departments to also get intimidated with the idea of holiday promotions. With that being said, here are 7 techniques to improve holiday sales.
- HYPE UP THE SALES
“This is shopping season. Buyers are more on alert for the good deals and holiday exclusive arrivals,” Gabrielle Crumley, social media strategist, explains, “more buyers are choosing to make purchase decisions online. So use your social media platforms and email lists to create touch points to get in front of customers.”
Crumley also adds, “keep your customers and followers on the loop. Let them know of a possible sale that might be coming, and when the sales will begin. Send them email reminders. Send them Facebook event notifications. Tell them when the sales will end. Just increasing the number of touch points have helped my clients double their monthly revenue during holidays”.
2. USE THE POWER OF PSYCHOLOGY
“As a company, we know what our prices are. But our customers around holidays have no idea. All they know is they want a smoking deal, at least feel like they are getting one,” Susan McVea, sales strategist, explains, “so before thinking of how to promote and so on, you need to really understand your customer segment’s psychology. You need to know what kind of conversations are your customers having around the dinner table, and what they consider as a good deal from a buyer’s perspective”.
McVea also gives an example, “one of my clients did this really well with a lower priced product recently. We specifically used a pricing psychology tactic with the currency and the percentages. For this lower priced product, we decided to use a percentage because it roughly worked out to be around 80%. We knew her customers would be more swayed by the %. This simple tweak created a 40% increase in the company’s sales”.
3. PUT OUT AN IRRESISTIBLE OPPORTUNITY
Trish Leto , the creator of 5 Minute Lives™, shares that brick and mortar stores have been able to increase their sales by up to 300% during holidays using a holiday exclusive offer, “we are always competing for buyers’ attention. And during holidays, the competition gets even more intense. But when you pair up a limited time offer with a live stream about the promotion, you are unstoppable”.
“Many social media platforms have livestream features that allow businesses to do so. All it takes is 5 minutes. Let everyone know who you are, what you are selling, why people need it, what you will talk about, why people need to take action immediately and what link do they need to click on.,” Leto adds, “if you don’t have a big audience on social media, partner up with an influencer or a non-profit. This will help to drive more audience to your live stream promotions”.
4. TAKE WHAT IS ALREADY WORKING AND REINVENT IT
“Holidays are high pressure time of the year for business owners. So that’s why it is more imperative for you to keep it simple. After all, why reinvent the wheel on something that is already working?”, Makayla Ervin, Brand Activation Strategist, shares, “know what your ideal client wants and see how you can tweak it specifically for holidays”.
Ervin also shares an example, “I had a CEO of a boutique that was very stressed about holiday marketing because the store was in a very small town. And the customers of that store love the boutique’s personal touch. So for holiday promotions, we really amped up on the personal touch and customer experience aspect. The CEO partnered up with other vendors in town to provide even better customer experience. The customers loved it!”.
5. LEVERAGE THE CONTEXT OF THE HOLIDAY
“This might require some extra creativity,” Gregory Giagnocavo, a serial entrepreneur, suggests, “but really make sure that your promotions really relate to the context of holidays. Reference the cultural icons. Create a story around it. This will help customers to build an emotional connection towards your products and services faster”.
Giagnocavo also adds, “let’s say you are a customer looking at three advertisements around appliances. One is just a typical advertisement including features. The second one is a red bow on the appliance. The third one is a little anecdote about how Mrs. Claus and elves love how the appliance gives more room to store food for everyone. The third advertisement would elicit a response out of prospective customers much faster”.
6. GO AGAINST THE CURRENT FROM YOUR COMPETITORS
Gabrielle Crumley shares a little hack that helped to reduce the advertising conversion cost by 20% during holidays while boosting sales, “there are more advertisements during holidays. So while making sure you have a lot of touch points with the customers, when you are bidding for advertising slots, use uncommon advertising objectives”.
“Depending on which social media platforms you do paid ads with, almost all of your competitors will be going for “purchase” objectives. So do the preparation work in terms of building the audience, setting up the advertising budget in advance and building your competitive strategy,” Crumley explains further, “experiment with different objectives to have less competition in your bids”.
7. BUNDLE UP
Susan McVea shares a tactic that helped to increase an overall transaction value by up to 80% during holidays, “take a page out of biggest companies’ sales playbook. Many of them have bundle deals and add-on’s since if a customer buys from you, they are more likely to buy again”.
“There are a couple of ways to go about doing this, give more of a same thing or complementary offer. I was consulting for a company with a very specialized product and we just decided to bundle it up into a package of multiple items. This alone helped to increase the overall average transaction value by up to 80%,” McVea explains, “it is a win win situation. For businesses, it increases the average customer value and can lead to much higher profits while decreasing marketing costs. For customers, it works for them too due to getting a better deal overall while experiencing more perceived value”.