Are your Christmas promotions in place?
Christmas is just around the corner. If you haven’t been amping up your marketing efforts yet, now is the time! So how do you encourage your customers to spend their hard earned cash with you? What are the things you can do to add value to their lives without discounting too heavily or impacting your bottom line? Here are a few tried and tested ideas that may work for you too…
1. The Free Gift
Spend $100 and we’ll throw in a [insert gift name here]. This strategy is widely used by beauty retailers. Often beauty products come in miniatures that are used as testers. Not only does the customer walk away with a free gift and loving your store – they may also love what you’ve gifted them so much that it results in a future purchase. Winning! Perfect not only for Christmas, but every time you’re doing a product launch.
2. Bundles and Upsells
You’ve got a customer online right now ready to purchase one of your big ticket items. You know they’re going to shop around on price. It’s just too easy online these days! How can you convince them to check out on your store? Offer them a bundle. The possibilities are endless, but some ideas are:
- Jewellery – necklace in the cart? Offer matching earrings with an automatic discount if they buy both.
- Gift wrapping – offer as an add on at the cart. You’ll be amazed at how many people will take you up on this offer!
- Self Care – a bath bomb or candle might be looking like the perfect present. Close the sale with a 2 for 1 offer. Encourage the customer to treat themselves whilst their gift shopping.
- Clothing – business shirt in the cart? Suggest a tie pairing or a set of cufflinks.
The options are endless and limited only by your imagination and understanding of your customers.
3. The Free Upgrade
We see the Free Upgrade all the time with household items – Get a King size for the price of a Queen – it’s almost stock standard at mattress stores these days! If you have products that are available in different finishes or sizes, this may be the perfect marketing strategy to ensure a bumper festive season for your business.
4. The Loss Leader
This is essentially a super special deal. It’s all about the pricing. Put a solid seller out there at a really great price. You may not be making an awful lot of profit on the item, but that’s not the point. The point is to get customers in for the sale item and then encourage them to purchase more items while they’re in store. Food retailers do this regularly. The loss leader may be a leg of lamb, but then all around that leg of lamb are all the things needed to make it great – think mint sauce, mustards, red wine. If your customers buy one or all of these additional items you’re ahead!
Make your promotion work harder!
You’ve implemented a couple of great marketing strategies. How can you get more out of the deal? Make your promotions contingent. Boost your list by asking your customer to sign up for eMarketing before they’re eligible for the deal. You’ll then hopefully have them as a customer for life as you continue engaging with them into the future.
