10 tips for Christmas Promotions- Dressing Up for the Occasion
With Christmas looming, most businesses should already have plans in place to capitalise on the spending over the festive season.
However, if not, there is still time to roll out some last-minute Christmas promotions. With around 40% of Australian retailers’ annual income accrued over the coming month, it would be fair to suggest that you could add to your profits by taking a % of this spending.
Christmas comes earliest for Queenslanders, with the figures showing 32.84% have already begun Christmas shopping
Make the Most of Last Minute Shoppers
If you are thinking that it’s already too late to launch a Christmas Marketing campaign, then you are wrong. If you can ensure the delivery by Christmas Day, you will manage to get a lot of orders from last minute shoppers.
1. Gift cards
A close ally of discounting is gift cards or certificates. They are another way of sparking interest among customers. Consider limiting the gift cards to a particular range of your stock or service.
Decide on this by working out where your best-sellers are and carrying excess stock or a new service you wish to promote for the Christmas period.
2. 12 Days of Christmas
Why not tie a Christmas theme into your promotions? For example, launch a ‘12 days of Christmas’ drive. Offer a different discounted product or service on each of the 12 days in the lead up to Christmas.
This will allow you to expose a broad range of your stock or services to customers and push loyal customers towards new products and services. Just make sure you carefully plan ahead for this.
3. Cash in at the cash register
When providing a receipt to your customers, why not use the opportunity for an innovative promotional offer? This could have a used by date to create urgency and be limited to items or services you wish to promote.
4. Consumer-created offers
Customers love choice, so consider letting them loose on a variety of products or services by allowing them to create their own gift cards
Target your best customers with an offer that gives them $20 off any product/service in your range, entirely of their own choice.
5. Target your best customers
You don’t need to wait until your customers are in-store to reward them. Send reliable customers a flier or, especially if you’re an online retailer, an email to offer them a personal discount in the lead-up to Christmas.
Making customers feel special is an ideal way of getting them to open their wallets and purses during the festive season
“It all depends on the previous 47 weeks of the year”. If your only contact with your best customers is a Christmas card once a year, people will say ‘so what’? You really should be engaging with your customers every 90 days.” I suggest.
7. Hold a special event
Another way to make customers feel valued is to hold an invite-only event. You can create a Christmas feel to the event while driving sales with well-targeted discounts.
Many businesses find by holding an Invitation only event, and offering some finger food and drinks they can generate great sales. Invite your VIP clients plus one – so that new customers are introduced to your business. Some business find they can make a week’s turnover in a single night for very little outlay.
8. Social Media Campaign
Post your ideas and plans, or special arrangements for Christmas. Ask questions, find out what they want and start a conversation with your target audience.
Remember that it’s not just the spending, social sharing also increase prior to special occasions. If you can reward your target audience for sharing something about your business, it will be the icing on the cake.
Try other platforms like Facebook Ads or some of those daily deals websites.
9. Email Marketing
Ideally, you should be sending emails to your subscribers, or past customers well in advance. And as the day draws nearer, you can send customized emails with offers and subject lines like “Christmas gift last minute delivery” or “Christmas sale ending in 1 week”.
The idea is to instill a little bit of urgency and invoke them into buying before the season ends.
10. Hampers
Another traditional favourite, customer hampers can be tailored to suit individual customers. They also provide an opportunity to market your business and any offers you want to push to the fore
You can go as small or large as you like and it doesn’t need to be expensive. Even a box of chocolates and a bottle of wine can go a long way in getting your business recognition.
Oh well it’s Christmas so here are a couple of extra Christmas ideas…………
11. Team up with another business
Christmas is the ideal time for packaged offers. Identify another business to team up with in order to provide a joint service or experience that is offered to customers at a discount. You should also consider contributing to the work of a charity. Both of these activities will boost the image of your brand while extending the reach of your offer.
12. Follow up
It’s important to follow up with the customers who have purchased from you this Christmas. Christmas sales are not about a one-off purchase, it’s all about building strong relationship with your customers.
