Published on January 26, 2012 Building your online store marketing around events
Australia Day is one of Australia’s biggest events, Canada Day one of the biggest for Canadians, and Independence day in the US one of the biggest for Americans, and given that Australia Day fell on a Thursday, many people around the country have taken a day of annual leave for tomorrow, Friday, to create a four day weekend.
For any shop selling party products, liquor, picnic supplies (like eskies) groceries and other food supplies for the big day/weekend, the lead-up to Australia Day has been a huge opportunity to find willing buyers for their products attract them and win them as repeat customers.
How? Think about the products that are best suited to online sales – anything that’s more compact to deliver and stock your site appropriately.
Sites with both an online and offline presence are well positioned in this regard – selling smaller easier to post items online and the bigger, heavier items that will be costly to deliver (like BBQs in-store). That’s not to say that bigger items don’t sell well online, but by targeting your smaller items for online, you can help boost online sales (as people hate paying extra for shipping!)
Some ideas for selling your items around events like Australia Day include:
- Good Old Fashioned Sales. An E-Tailing Group survey at the end of 2011 found that almost half of consumers don’t like to buy anything unless it’s on special. That’s frustrating for your margins, but if you select products carefully you can manage this issue.
- Find smaller, compact versions of your items to sell online, or new product variations that are smaller and more compact
- Run Free Shipping Promotions
- Run Last Minute Express Shipping Promotions
- Use Free Gifts or Gift Wrapping Promotions
- Advertise with Banners (on your site and others)! Use Newsletters to your existing customer base, Discount Codes, Gift Vouchers and VIP (Group) discounts. All of these are possible in Ozcart Ecommerce websites.
There are many events during the year, Valentines Day, Christmas, and the Melbourne Cup are amongst some of the biggest, but in your niche there may be others. Find them, mark them on your calendar and plan.
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