Most retailers spend a large budget and effort on running year-end sale season, as they know they will earn really big money for every single penny spent out. In fact, many store owners make up to 40% of their yearly revenue in the last quarter alone. Impressive, isn’t it?
Let’s be honest, were you in a rush last year’s holiday season? When other stores were running brilliant campaigns, were you just about to craft some ideas? If you want to make 2015 your best year yet as an online retailer, then you need to be prepared and plan ahead.
Do you know that the search keyword “Christmas gift idea” has been rising so fast since September?
In this post you’ll find out what you should be doing right now to make this holiday season flourish by preparing your plan in advanced. Let’s get started now!
#Step 1: Draft your campaign strategy
The first part of creating your plan is defining how you can promote your brand through these major occasions: Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and don’t forget some trendy shopping days such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Once you can decide which holiday is the best for your store to run campaign, start making a plan for it.
# Step 2: Create a promotional calendar
Then you’ve already know which holiday you want to focus on. Now sketch things down. Making a detailed promotional calendar will keep you stay organized during busy days. You’ll need to add such things in the calendar:
- Dates and time you will announce your campaign on your sites with graphics and banners.
- Dates and time you send out promotional email(s).
- Dates and time you start and stop advertising for the campaigns. You can draft periods that you’ll run Facebook/Twitter/CPC Ads.
(Image: Google)
#Step 3: Create a holiday-themed offers
To run a campaign, you’ll need an attractive offer that support your campaign’s concept. That may be a discount, giveaway gift or any contest with valuable prize. In case you are struggling with generating creative campaign ideas, we created a Holiday idea book: 86 epic promotional idea for holiday campaigns.
Most retailers provide Gift card – as we all know this is the first gift idea that anybody would come up with. You’re thinking that gift cards are old-fashioned and not preferred anymore? Try new ideas with customizable Gift cards here.
People love stunning wrapped gifts for holidays – which can be an added value to your products and many store owners are aware of this.
Holiday idea book: 86 Epic promotional idea for holiday campaigns
#Step 4: Build valuable contents around your products.
Content now is priceless and it can be the reason customer choose your brand, not because of your products. And you can spread your brand by encouraging customers to share your blog posts, articles, social posts or emails by providing them the valuable contents that are useful for them.
For example, you are selling home decorating stuff. You can combine some of items you have to create a well-designed “Holiday shopping list”. Customers will definitely love it and share it with their friends! (And don’t forget to add your logo and suggest them where to buy!)
#Step 5: Prepare your social media strategy
Once you prepare all your posts, articles, ebooks or slideshare, carefully plan the right channels and the right time to promote them. In order to do that, you have to fully understand your customers behavior.
#Step 6: Prepare your designs and graphics
Your website menu, banners, email designs need to match your campaign’s theme and deliver your message perfectly. Great graphics can help your potential customers visually and quickly understand your promotion. Getting design work for your campaigns done early can take a major task of your shoulders when it comes time to execute.
Creating a special holiday category and making it pop out on your mega menu is also a great way to capture customers’ attraction and boost sales for holiday items. Don’t forget to decorate your menu ton-sur-ton with the holiday’s concept.
(Image: Google)
#Step 7: Equip your stores with powerful tools
You are running an online store – which means your stores require lots of tools (extensions or plugins) to run your campaigns seamlessly. It may be tools to run promotional offers or some navigation, checkout tools to enhance your visitors’ experience. These are some recommended tools for holiday campaigns:
Gift Card: Perfect gift that you can offer for your customers, even when you don’t know what they like. Fully customized with 150+ templates for big holidays!
Promotional Gift: Make your campaign sell with flexible promotion rules & show it lively on site by using 100+ FREE promotion icons attached.
Mega Menu: Navigate customers to focused products/campaigns as you expect by responsive menu. It helps customers find what they are looking for quickly & increase time on site, better user experience.
Reward Points: Give your customers a reason for coming back on this sale season by giving them reward points for their activities on site right from now.
Gift Wrap: Impress your customers with added service for wrapping gifts on big holiday sale season.
Web POS: Never has checkout been this easy (even in offline mode)! New design, new upgrade, must-have extension for retailers.
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When you’ve prepared all the basic steps to start a holiday campaign, stay tuned! We’ll guide you what to do next in the coming post!
