Published on December 05, 2010 Seasonal marketing for your store
Now that we’re in December, the holiday season is definitely in full swing. It’s been a slower than usual season this year, and events like last week’s National Bank payment settlement meltdown did not help.
So as a retailer, how can you take advantage of the holiday season? Should you just run a 20% sale and do nothing else? Or is there a savvy way to do things….. Find out here.
Sales are one form of seasonal advertising, but they are price-based and encourage your shoppers in the long term to merely seek cheaper prices. Unless you have the lowest costs out of all your competitors in the market, then chances are that a “beat any price” approach is unsustainable for you – especially if you are a small business.
The first thing to think about is how you are structuring your products in seasonal times. Can you restructure your categories to add special categories that reflect the season? You could have a Christmas gifts category for example and divide your gifts by ages, by prices or by gender. How you do that depends on your products. But put yourself in the shoes of your customers and think about what would help them the most? You can link products across multiple categories in Ozcart, so don’t think that you can’t put products in multiple categories for a temporary time.
If it’s a seasonal event like Thanksgiving or another feast, you could have an advertising banner on the front of your site that points straight to the category.
In general, creating “landing pages” for your advertising is very helpful at any time of the year, but this strategy works especially well for seasonal events. Advertise on the keywords that people might be searching for – for example “Thanksgiving gifts <your product name>” is a good place to start. When people click through send them straight to your specials category in your store, or the specially set up category for the event (with an advertising banner on it).
If your store has a component like “buy 3 get one free” tool (like the latest version of Ozcart does), then take advantage of that. You’ll be discounting the overall unit price, but driving up your customer’s overall spend. Think about how often this is done to you when you’re shopping in Coles or Woolworths. People can’t resist a bargain, and the thought of saving money is hard for many consumers to pass up – even if they ultimately spend more.
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