How Can I Grow My Holiday Sales?
Holiday marketing done correctly will come back to you in the form of leads, sales, and profit. Consumers will spend billions of dollars this season, making it the premier time for you to launch your new campaigns. Make sure your initiatives and campaign tactics align with your strategic objectives, branding guidelines, and good taste. We came up with a handy list of ideas for you to engage your customers and showcase your new products and promotions this holiday season.
How can I grow my holiday sales? That’s the question that marketing managers ask, to take advantage of consumer spending at the end of the calendar year. B2B companies ask themselves the same question, but from a perspective of trying to fill in the seemingly unstoppable annual year-end dip in sales leads and revenue.
How to Grow Holiday Sales – The B2C Answer
Holidays create enormous sales and promotion possibilities for B2C companies.
The holiday season is already here and it is the perfect time to amp up your marketing efforts! This time of year is the most lucrative opportunity for consumer-facing businesses. It is predicted that consumers will spend 616.9 billion this season. As hectic as this time of year can be, there is little room for error when it comes to holiday marketing. You have a limited amount of time to break through all the noise and clutter, and outshine your competition. We came up with a handy list for you to engage your customers and showcase your new products and promotions this holiday season.
10 Holiday Tips To Grow Holiday Sales for Consumer-Facing Companies
1. Send Cards to Customers – Help your business stand out amongst a slew of promotional emails. Thank your customers for their support. It goes a long way. Don’t forget to be creative.
2. Host an Exclusive Holiday Event – If it is in your budget this year, an exclusive holiday event for your most loyal customers is the perfect way to show them your appreciation. If you own a store, open your doors for extra holiday hours and offer a special promotion. Give away a free gift with purchase or offer a store-wide discount. Events will draw crowds and increase sales.
3. Create a Holiday Themed Pinterest Board – Add each of your recent campaigns and promotions to a holiday board. This is an easy, visual way for customers to see all of your holiday specials and offers all in one convenient location.
4. Be a Resource, Not a Sales Pitch – Don’t add to the holiday stress by sending your subscribers an overwhelming amount of aggressive content and promotion. Instead, provide your customers with resources they can actually use this holiday season. Create share-worthy content that they would be interested in or offer a special coupon for subscribers only.
5. Run a Facebook Contest – Contests are essential for creating buzz around your brand. Create a sweepstakes, contest or promotion as a tactic to increase fans and brand awareness. Require that contestants like a post or comment on a post to be entered. You can also require contestants to share the contest on their Facebook page as a voting mechanism.
6. Start Post-Holiday Planning – A new trend among consumers is waiting until after the holiday rush to score the best deals at discounted prices. Think past the traditional time frame of a holiday campaign in order to leverage your offer into the next year.
7. Test Holiday Email Campaigns – It is important to test your email campaigns to ensure that it is being well received. Send out a test blast of emails to a small group of individuals before sending to the entire subscriber list. If your unsubscribe rate grows and your click rate is low than it is clear you need to make some adjustments.
8. Stay On-Brand – Being creative and coming up with unconventional ways to promote your brand is a great idea but don’t stray too far from your fundamental brand. Your customers need to be able to recognize you during this insanely busy time of year. Be sure to not lose your brand’s identity in overwhelming holiday designs and ideas.
9. Don’t Forget Your Audience – If you are an international company, it is important to remember that it is a different season in other parts of the world. Although consumers in other cultures will probably not be offended by your winter-themed campaign, it lessens the message because they cannot relate to the weather outside being frightful. It is also important to be conscious of religiously affiliated campaigns. Unless you can create campaigns to address all holidays this season, stick with the term “holiday.”
10. Team Up – Launching your own holiday campaign is certainly a great idea, but consider talking to the people in your industry about patterning up to launch a product or service in a joint holiday campaign that would be mutually beneficial. Utilize the advantage of two marketing teams, two customer bases and two networks to launch your campaign off the ground.
Regardless of the tactics you decide to use with your holiday campaign, make sure to align your B2C holiday campaigns with your strategic goals, and stay within your branding guidelines and good taste. The bottom line however, is to find as many creative ways as possibly to enhance your brand. Done correctly, good planning and good campaigns will come back to you in the form of sales, profit and new leads for the new year.
Filling in the Year-End Sales Dip – The B2B Perspective
The end of year sales dip plagues many B2B medium size and enterprise businesses. Clever campaigns with attractive offers can break through end of year confusion to fill in the revenue gap.
B2B companies face a different problem. As offices vacate for personal time off, sick days, and holidays, office productivity falls off, including ordering.
Worse still, year-end budget development and the dreaded “account reviews” result in delays in ordering until “after the first of the year”.
There are three reliable approaches to overcoming the B2B end of year ordering dip. You can use these individually or together to avoid the collapse in year end revenue.
1. Time Limited Discount Offers
Make a time-limited offer (“Your purchase order must be received by close of business on Monday, 22 December to get this deal”) for a significant discount, waived installation fee, or extended coverage (2 extra users free). This
2. Offer an End of Year Special
In addition to straight discounts, you can offer special deals on closeout products, two for one specials, and expedited delivery “buy today and have it before the end of the year”. In addition, you can offer additional low-cost incentives like “accessories” for end of year purchases, like additional spare parts, software licenses, or
3. Offer Extended Maintenance or a Product Upgrade for End of Year Purchase
Every product has warranty or maintenance coverage, so consider offering an expanded warranty or service coverage for end of year purchases.
You can also offer a free or steeply-discounted product upgrade from the “low edition” to the mid-size version, or from your mid-size product or service to your next larger version.
For example, if you’re selling online concierge service, you can offer and extra 90 days of coverage at no extra cost. If you’re an equipment dealer, you can offer two free oil changes or an additional 90 days of warranty coverage. If you are a software vendor, you can offer an additional software license at half off.
Summary – B2B Year End Promotions
There’s no need to wring your hands in agony over the seemingly unstoppable year-end slump. You can beat it down with the two key elements – a great offer and lots of promotion for that great offer. It takes a lot more messaging to break through end of year holiday excitement.