6 Year-End and Holiday Marketing Tips to Drive Sales
The holiday shopping season is here once again. And you know what that means, fellow business owners? It’s time to kick things into high gear so you can make your business boom this holiday season. How? By taking advantage of a few savvy marketing tips.
Holiday and year-end marketing tips
To make the most out of the holiday sales season, try these six holiday and year-end marketing ideas:
1. Start selling early
Here’s a scary, yet true holiday fact: 56% of consumers said they intended to begin their holiday shopping in October this year. Yes . . . October. And more people want to jump on board the early shopping bandwagon each year. Do you know what that means? It means if you want to have a successful holiday selling season, you need to be selling early and planning your holiday and year-end marketing strategies.
Figure out a game plan, which includes:
- Marketing strategies
- Sales
- Discounts
- Promotions
Now, this doesn’t mean you need to offer your biggest deals in October. Instead, you can offer a few small deals in October and slowly ease into your bigger promotions during peak shopping season.
2. Look at metrics and campaigns from past years
Which marketing strategies worked last year? What were your sales numbers in previous years? Are there any promotions that didn't work in the past? These are all questions you need to ask if you want to have a solid holiday and end-of-year sales season.
To get an idea of what has and hasn’t worked for your business in the past, take a look at the previous years’ metrics, year-over-year sales data, and trends. Use your findings to help develop a holiday and year-end marketing plan.
While looking at past data, also consider what could have caused an uptick or decline in sales (e.g., the pandemic).
3. Make it easy to shop
Let’s face it: customers want easy ways to shop. They want to get in, get what they need, and get the heck out. Stop yourself and consider this one (but oh-so-important) question: Is it easy to shop at your business?
To answer the question, take a look at your website, store, or both. A store that is easy to shop from is organized, has a nice layout, and makes must-have items easy to find. An online storefront should be easy to navigate and quick to use for customers.
If there is anything you can do to make the shopping process easier and quicker for your customers, make that change right away.
More articles from AllBusiness.com:
- 4 Effective Ways Small Business Owners Are Fighting Inflation
- Prepare Your Business for the New Year With This Year-End Checklist
- The Year-End Bookkeeping Checklist: 3 Tasks to Get Started On Today
- Maximize Your Year-End Performance Review
- 5 Tips to Stay Ahead of Inflation
4. Embrace email marketing
Ah, an oldie but goodie. Sure, email marketing is an older tactic, but it’s a great way to market your business’s offerings. Not to mention, 83% of shoppers rely on emails for information during the holiday shopping season.
Send out marketing emails for:
- Promotions and offers
- Sales
- Coupons
- Giveaways
- Contests
- Holiday hours
Instead of shying away from email marketing, embrace it to increase sales this season. To make things easier, consider using email marketing software to automate certain processes and help you design emails that customers actually want to click on.
5. Keep inflation in mind
Chances are inflation will impact holiday shopping in some way or another this year. Inflation can impact the supply chain, prices of items and inventory, and so on. As a result, inflation can impact the products you market and your sales, too.
But inflation doesn’t have to put a damper on your holiday sales. To combat it, you can:
- Stock up on supplies ahead of time
- Cut costs wherever possible
- Raise prices (but not to the point where it scares off customers)
- Use multiple vendors
When marketing to your customers, you can even use it to your advantage and make a promotion out of it (think Aldi’s recent 2019 prices campaign).
Keep in mind that inflation can (and probably will) impact sales to some degree. Customers are bound to be more cost-conscious. So, be sure to offer a lot of options to encourage people to shop, like:
- Buy now, pay later
- Free shipping
- Loyalty program perks
- Coupons and discounts
6. Offer incentives that customers care about
What sounds better: one dollar off a coffee or a free large coffee? Of course, you’d take the free coffee. So when planning your marketing strategies, think about incentives that customers will actually care about.
To get customers through your doors, you need to get creative with incentives. Here are a few ideas:
- Free item with purchase
- Buy one, get one (BOGO)
- Free trials of a product
- Free merchandise or swag
- Feature and plan upgrades
- Store credits
Consider what your customers would want as an incentive and go from there. The better the incentive, the more you will stand out and bring in new customers. Happy marketing!