My wife gets a ton of catalogs delivered to our house. They litter the kitchen countertops, our coffee table, the back of our toilet, the side tables next to our couch…they’re everywhere. She was reading Ballard Design yesterday and the first few pages featured Christmas trees, garland and lights. As I sat next to her on the couch I thought, “Wow. It seems early to start promoting Christmas. It’s barely October.” My second thought was. “Hmmm…If multi-million dollar, hugely successful companies like Ballard and Wal-Mart are already using the holidays to boost their sales then maybe I should too.”
Some companies make the bulk of their money during the holidays. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Christmas and New Years are the best-selling holidays of the year. Some businesses make 40 percent of their annual profits in the last three months of the year. The marketing power of these holidays is unbelievable. If you want to boost your sales for the last three months of this year, you should use the marketing power these holidays provide.
How To Use The Holidays To Make More Money
This article isn’t just about Christmas and the upcoming holidays, I’m using them as examples of current events because of their timeliness. Current events are great launching points for selling your products/services. A panda born at the zoo can be the subject line or headline for a keyword-rich article about pet insurance or pet merchandise. A review of the presidential debates can be the opening paragraph for a promotion about healthcare and your line of health-related products. A brief history of Columbus Day (it’s today!) is a natural lead in to all kinds of history related products like maps, books, boats, even home furnishings. The days before New Years are an opportunity to launch into a pitch about how to make more money. The point is to use these natural tie-ins to draw in customers and make sales for your products/services.
They work especially well in promotional headlines and email subject lines. Upcoming events and holidays are excellent ways to connect with your customer about what is going on in their lives. Grab their attention with something like, “Free Shipping Now until Halloween” or “The Perfect Gift for Christmas” Relevancy really drives response.
If you don’t sell products or services that are traditionally given as gifts during a holiday you might be thinking this information is not for you. That is not true. It’s really all about positioning. Create promotions that demonstrate why your product would make a great holiday gift. If you sell kitchen products, include free recipes for Christmas cookies or traditional Thanksgiving foods. If you sell supplements or other health related products play up the popular New Year’s resolution to get healthier this year. You’ve just got to show your customers that your product is a good purchase for an upcoming current event.
If you can’t figure out a way to position your products as good holiday gifts then use them to increase your brand awareness and increase exposure. These two things won’t translate into an immediate sales boost, but you should see your bottom line increase over time. The main point of this is to get your company noticed. You can create a give-away or gimmick to create a favorable image for your company. A few years ago a local radio station held a contest for its listeners. They gave away a romantic one night stay at a luxury hotel and a $250 gift card for Morton’s Steak house for Valentine’s Day. To win the prize listeners had to find an intern that the stations DJ’s had locked in the trunk of a car somewhere in the city. Occasionally they would let the intern out so he could describe the area he was at and give clues to his whereabouts. While this gimmick didn’t result in any immediate sales for the radio station it did create a big buzz about them. Everyone in the city was talking about the stunt and subsequently the radio station. I don’t know the actual marketing results from the gimmick but I’ll bet you the number of listeners increased over the next few months. Come up with your own unique twists to get customers excited and aware of what your company has to offer. Give-aways and prize packages are popular methods.
Obviously the easiest way to boost sales using the holidays or other current events is to use them as an excuse to hold a sale. Big companies like Wal-Mart, General Motors, and Coca-Cola do it as well as smaller businesses like us here at Wealth Authority. It’s a gimmick, but one that’s proven to work. I’m particularly fond of using the holidays to bundle my products. I like combining two or three products and selling them at a discounted rate. I’m so keen on these types of sales because they increase the number of orders and the average sale amount. It increases the number of sales by generating orders from prospects who were only shopping around. It increases the size of your average sale by motivating buyers to spend additional money to get the good deal of your bundle.
Holding a sale though doesn’t automatically mean you need to discount your products and/or services. You’d be best to offer a range of promotions. What works for one customer won’t be enough to get all customers to buy. Offer a range of promotions that speak to different customers. For one customer, free shipping will be enough to entice them to buy. For another it might be the allure of the percentage discount. Try a different promotional discount every couple of days and track which pulls in a better response rate. Test and re-test these statistics in future holiday promotions.
And don’t forget to use social media this holiday season to boost sales. Social media has proven to be a huge driver of holiday purchases in years past. A December 2011 study on social media by marketing agency Mr Youth found that 66 percent of social media users who made a Black Friday and/or Cyber Monday purchase did so as a direct result of a social media interaction with brands and family. They also noted that recommendations from social media users are twice as likely to lead to a holiday gift purchase. Make sure you announce deals, promotions, giveaway’s, prize packages, and contests on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media sharing sites. And don’t wait too long, by the end of October, 47 percent of consumers will have already started their holiday shopping!
Holiday and other current event offers are short-lived marketing campaigns. So remember to use advertising methods that produce fast results. Place ads announcing Special Holiday Sales at the top of your website. Send brief emails to your customer list. Everybody wants to get a good deal this time of year. Except that most people don’t expect to find one. Surprise them with a special holiday offer. It will push hesitant prospects to buy and boost sales.
Good luck!
Ethan Warrick
