You must have heard the sales stories of businesses earning a fortune on black Friday. But you always wondered, how to increase sales for your business? Well keep reading, this article is going to be very useful for you. Anyway, did you know that last year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales attracted 2.2 million Australian households? Yup! That’s only in Australia, imagine around the world. According to analysis reports regarding the spending, Australians are ready to spend $11billion this Christmas for gifts.
If you’re a retailer, you better don’t miss this life-changing opportunity to earn a fortune. Friday, November 26th, marks the start of a major opportunity to increase your sales with competitor-killer marketing initiatives that will run from Black Friday through Boxing Day.
This one-month period can literally send your business sales from red to black, which is why even businesses that haven’t done much all year keep aces in the pocket for this event only. The competition is fierce, from reducing prices to combining things aplenty. Therefore, this year stakes are considerably greater, with nationwide lockdowns affecting everyone from small businesses to huge corporations.
So you have this opportunity but how to increase sales and stand out tall in the tsunami of discount tags?
Dig deep into the numbers
Every year holiday sales and marketing advertisements start with numbers in order to get the answer of how to increase sales. When you review data from the previous year, you’ll have a better understanding of what tactics actually worked for you back there and what didn’t! — This tangible data is essential for you to figure out what factors actually drove the most traffic, which products were mostly sold and which channels delivered the highest ROI.
Before you even start your ad campaigns, make sure to conduct thorough research on-trend and audit the previous campaigns. The following can help you in auditing:
- Look at your website trends in Google Analytics and Search Console
- Check heat maps and scroll maps- (powerful tool to help you understand user behaviour across your site)
- Analyse the previous season and address any issues
Prepare ‘coming Soon’ pages early
By the name of the heading, you have already got an idea about what we’re going to talk about here! — Successful seasoned campaigns just don’t happen out of anywhere. It requires your brain nerves to put that extra effort to devise a plan which will make sure that everything goes smoothly over the one-month period.
Holiday shopping is a loop of promoting ads back-to-back, and you only get to reap off your efforts if your ads are interesting. You need to stay in the game all the time only if you want sales throughout the month.
The earlier you start for it, the better it’s going to be for you. In simple words, starting now means you get a leg up over other brands.
Consider the following, as you begin your preparations:
- Product inventory, including current stock levels and potential new goods (such as gift wrapping or gift boxes).
- Online and offline promotional campaign materials.
- Sales and special offers you’ll be running during this time.
- The marketing and advertising budget you’ll be working with, as well as how you’ll allocate it.
- Customer service preparation and training
- Fulfilment and refunds of orders
- Consumer psychology, as a result of this year’s lockdowns, your audience’s wants and needs may have evolved.
Choose the right marketing channels
Choosing the right channels at right time is what makes a difference if you want to increase your sales. You’ll have to invest more from where you get more response in terms of sales. While ensuring that you give the right message to the right audience. Just in case if you have to retarget them next year.
The following are some of the most common platforms and approaches to consider:
- Paid social media advertising using Facebook Ads.
- Organic social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and Tik Tok.
- Search engine optimization (SEO) to increase your ranking in organic search results.
- Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on Google, Bing, YouTube, or the Google Display Network.
- Media affairs and influencer marketing.
- Email marketing efforts to prospects and members of your loyalty programme
- Offline marketing via flyers, billboards, direct mail, radio, and television advertisements
- Which channels brought in the most visitors?
- Where did you see the best return on investment?
- Were there any distinctions in the creative or the messages that each platform connected with?
These will aid in determining your budget in order to maximise seasonal sales.
Run offers for first-time buyers
Converting new customers is a big challenge itself, whereas converting an existing customer is an easy riddle as compared to converting new ones — There’s no better time than the holiday season to convert new customers into an existing customer’s list.
Usually, online shoppers go out of their way to explore all the deals provided by brands and shop from them. It’s that time of the year where they explore new brands and because of their sale offerings, they shop from them. Similarly, customers are open to exploring gift options for their friends and family during Christmas.
Hook in new customers with deals, freebies, discounts, free shipping or even a special gift with the purchase. That entirely depends on you how to hook them in with your tactics.
Quick-shipping banners
When a customer places an order, he wants to receive his package as soon as possible. Unlike another period of the year, the holiday rush is different as everyone wants to receive their package prior to Christmas Eve.
Creating a sense of FOMO (Fear-of-Missing-Out) may help. Placing banners that Buy before [DATE] to receive items by [DATE] will create FOMO which may enhance your sales. These small reminders will offer visitors the extra push they need to convert, as well as provide existing customers with a motivation to return. US-based Company Larq executed the same strategy for holiday sales.
Check inventory and optimize it
Regardless of the traffic coming to your website, you can’t make any sales if you are out of stock. The reality is, you can’t sell what you don’t have. The challenge for every business is that they don’t become the victim of their own success and run low on stock (as Dj Khaled song says, suffering from success- haha).
In an ideal world, you should be able to track your inventory and plan ahead to ensure that you have enough stock ready to last the next two months. If you still couldn’t manage inventory and run low on it, you can place a stock message on your website to redirect traffic to other products.
Create cart abandonment campaigns
Whether it’s Black Friday or Cyber Monday, visitors will be browsing through a number of products during their visit to your website. And they may add some items to their cart. As the volume of visits is high during the holiday sales period, businesses may see a huge rise in cart abandonment.
The Baymard Institute estimates that 69.57 per cent of all online shopping carts are abandoned. That means that out of every 100 visitors to your company’s website, 70 will browse, put products to their cart, and then leave without purchasing. On mobile devices, this ratio jumps to a whopping 86 per cent.
If you can win sales from even 10% or 20% of those clients as a digital marketer, that’s a HUGE victory for your bottom line. Before you start executing cart abandonment campaigns, it’s a good idea to educate yourself on the most frequent reasons why customers abandon their shopping cart.
Retarget your existing customers
Where Cyber Monday and Black Friday are opportunities to acquire new customers, you should not forget cashing existing customers.
To maximise cut-through and maintain consumer loyalty this Christmas season, retarget your existing audience with personalized product recommendations based on their purchase history.
Introduce top product suggestions
With so many bargains to choose from, holiday shoppers can easily become overwhelmed when looking through the deals available. With top product suggestions, make it simple for people to sift through the chaos and find the top items on your online store.
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