How to Skyrocket Your Holiday Sales with Engaging Promotions and Content Strategies

Elevate your holiday sales with our ultimate guide to standing out in the bustling holiday marketplace! Join me as we explore how to design irresistible holiday promotions that resonate with your audience, no matter your business type. Discover actionable strategies that will help make this holiday season not only memorable but also your most successful yet!


Mentioned Resources

-> Learn more about Website Optimization
EP 047: How Faster Websites Drive More Sales


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Chapters

• 0:45 Maximizing Holiday Sales for Businesses
• 10:25 Optimizing Website and Social Media
• 14:49 Holiday Sales Strategy and Customer Loyalty

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:45

The end of the year is an exciting time for businesses. The holiday season is full of opportunities to connect with your audience, spread some festive cheer and, of course, boost your end of year sales. But with so much competition and a flooring of marketing campaigns bombarding customers, including yourself, how can you make sure that your business stands out? Today, we're going to dive into how businesses whether you're an e-commerce business or a service provider or a coach can make the holidays to maximize your year of end sales and make it fun for you and your customers. So, from strategic promotions to customer engagement, we're going to cover some key moves you can make this holiday season and make it the best one yet.

Speaker 1: 1:30

Welcome to the e-commerce made easy podcast. I'm your host, keri Saunders. When we started this business, all I had was a couch, a laptop and a nine month old. My main goal to help others. Now, with over 20 years in the e-commerce building industry and even more than that and web development, I have seen a lot. I love breaking down the hard tech into easily understandable bits to help others be successful in their online business. Whether you're a seasoned e-commerce veteran or just starting out, you've come to the right place. So sit back, relax and let's dive into the world of e-commerce together. Welcome back to the e-commerce made easy podcast.

Speaker 1: 2:06

Today we're exploring how to make the holiday season work for your business and not the other way around. So the holiday rush is a double edged sword, as I'm sure many of you are aware of. It is packed with potential, but also filled with a lot of competition. I've even seen holiday things starting to get released as early as early October already. So how do you stand out and turn the season into a profitable opportunity? So, first off, we want to create holiday themed promotions and bundles. Now, this doesn't matter whether you're selling physical products or services or really what you're selling you really can think about how can you really make this a good opportunity to sell the Christmas time. A lot of people are even wanting consumable gifts or learning type gifts. So if you're a course creator, you could still do themes around some courses that you have created and want to promote in the new year. You can do a pre-sell on those. So really think outside the box. Even if you don't sell physical goods that you have created and want to promote in the new year, you can do a pre-sale on those. So really think outside the box. Even if you don't sell physical goods that you feel like are typical gift-giving items. Now how do we do this? We want to make limited-time offers, so a person typically will procrastinate on purchasing until there's a deadline or until they absolutely need that product. So when you create a limited-time offer that creates urgency on purchasing until there's a deadline or until they absolutely need that product, so when you create a limited time offer that creates urgency and it will create more buying power behind it, so you can do a holiday themed flash sales or countdowns to promotions and make sure that you emphasize that the offer won't last forever and give them a solid time and date as when it's going to go away. That really helps people make a decision and either buy the product or service or not.

Speaker 1: 3:56

You can also do gifting bundles. So really think about what could complement your products or services and sell them as a bundle for a discounted price. For example, if you run an e-commerce store, you can bundle related items that make perfect holiday gifts. Or if you're a coach, consider offering a new year new. You bundle of sessions or courses. Or maybe you do one-on-one coaching. You could do some bundles around that. How can we make them healthier and a better you know business person if you're selling to business or consumers and make their new year even better. And you can also do personalized gift suggestions so you can do like the top 10 gifts for entrepreneurs that you sell to B2B. You can also do best holiday gifts for busy moms. Things like that are what to buy that hard to buy for person, or, you know, dads are always hard to buy for.

Speaker 1: 4:51

Here's some great ideas. You know, think outside the box. What do people really struggle as it comes to the gifting season and create bundles around those things that they really want to solve problems for. For number two, you can tap into holiday-themed content marketing. So this is where you can get really fun and really creative here and it can really boost your customer engagement. So you can create gift guides. So, as we talked about in the first section, there you know, you can create these bundles that are perfect for gifting solutions. But when you're doing that, make sure you're creating a long form content around it too. So you can do a blog post or a video about the gifting idea that you're talking about and you can talk about how it solves the problem rather than just being a sell forward on it you can just talk about. You know what it does for them, how it solves their pain points of trying to gift for this holiday season. You can share these guides on social media and your email list and to get people to your website to get more ideas for gifting.

Speaker 1: 5:52

You can also do some helpful holiday tips and tutorials, so like how to decorate your home for the holidays on a budget. Maybe that's a tangent or related to your niche. You can also do how to set the New Year's resolutions that stick. If you're a coach, you know what. What are people thinking about on their mind right now. You know how to deal with that difficult family conversation um at the dinner table. You know if you're a coach, that might be a great one to do, especially if you help people with relationships. So really think about outside the box there and really just you know how can my product or service help people during the holidays. Try not to get stuck there. And if you need to ask chat, gbt or some of your business besties, what are some great ideas you can think of that would help my business bring in more sales during the holidays that I can use to help other people in their, their needs and their solutions.

Speaker 1: 6:46

And then you can also do festive email and newsletters. So we want to keep everything light and fun. During the holidays it can be a very depressing time for some people, especially those that have recently lost very close loved ones. So for being conscious of that, but bringing joy still to their inbox, that's really going to help you connect that customer. So be sensitive around things like that, because we all kind of need to do that anymore. But then you know, use that opportunity to bring joy, bring happiness to them. You know, look at it as a you giving them a gift of fun and joy and happiness. So make your newsletters exciting and something they want to open each time it comes around during the holiday season to help uplift them.

Speaker 1: 7:32

And then option number three is you can do offer exclusive loyalty rewards during the holiday seasons only. So this is something that we like to do in our business is we like to give special discounts for long-term and loyal customers during the holidays. We'll let our customers purchase. Many years, almost every year, we do this. We'll let them purchase blocks of hours for a discounted price lower than what we normally would offer, or we will let them know that we need to raise our prices in the new year. So we're going to be giving you this lower discount now. You can bulk up and buy a bunch of hours now and use them in the next year. So, even if you're a service provider, like us, you can really use these special discounts to help boost your end of the year sales, reward those customers who stick with you and are a fan of yours.

Speaker 1: 8:22

You can also do if you sell products. You can offer a free gift whenever they purchase maybe $50 or $100 worth of products on your store. So that can help drive more sales and really boost your revenue. Because you know, if somebody if the threshold's at 50 and they're at $45, yeah, they're probably going to add a little bit more to their shopping cart if they really want that free gift that you've got that you're going to give to them. And this also works, for course, creators and service providers too. You know you could be pre-selling your course in the holiday season and give them a free bonus if they purchase by a certain date during this holiday promotion.

Speaker 1: 8:57

We also like to give our customers and this is a hint for you, if you're listening and you're not already on a newsletter early access to promotions so you can do this in your newsletter and let them know a heads up that, hey, this sale is coming up and I know Lego does this a lot I'm a big Lego fan in our house and many times during the holidays they'll give the VIP customers like us an extra day or two early to shop the Black Friday sales or they'll release new products to us only for a day or two before they release it to the public. So those are some really great, enticing ways to really bring a customer into your world and feel like they feel special because they stick with you and because they're a loyal customer of you. So think, how can you do that to your VIP customers your people maybe on your newsletter list or maybe a text email marketing that you have? How can you really bring them back in and reward them for being loyal customers to you? And then, if you do a loyalty rewards type of program on your website store, you can also give them extra loyalty rewards during the holidays. I know we have done that before when we were selling a lot of software on our store. We would do double reward points during the holidays only, and they would get a double points for every purchase. And going back to the Lego idea too, lego does this a lot too, during the holiday season as well, and they reward their VIP customers with double Lego reward points.

Speaker 1: 10:25

And then, while we're thinking of these promotions, we also need to make sure that our website's performing well. So item number four in today's episode is optimizing your website for holiday traffic, because we can't forget to make sure that our websites are functioning properly, or all these promotions are just simply not going to work or not be as effective as they could be. So, for one, I want to make sure you're speeding up your website, make sure it's operating quickly for you and we'll link in the show notes to some podcast episodes we've already done on speeding up your website, but you can use Google's page Speed Insights to just give yourself a double check. Do it early in October or, sorry, november, if you're listening in real time, because this is actually almost November as I'm recording this and make sure that your website is up to speed and is working properly and, if not, get ahold of somebody like us or a trusted web developer to help you out with that. And then you also wanna create some clear holiday navigation. Make a simple link that says holiday show or gift guide something very obvious. Like we say on the podcast, we wanna be clear, not clever. So make sure we're being very clear with our holiday promotions and how they can find it really easily.

Speaker 1: 11:36

And then I want you to double check your checkout. Whether you're a service provider, e-commerce provider or what. Double check your checkout. Make sure it is as simple as possible and you're asking for only the information you need to process that order and to serve them well. Don't add a bunch of extra stuff onto it. You know a confused mind says no. We want to make sure there's minimal barrier to getting all the way through checkout. So make sure you're simplifying your checkout, making sure it's still working really well and this would be a good time to pause and test it on all modern devices too, because devices change all the time and if you haven't checked out your checkout, that's kind of hard to say together in a while. Make sure that you're double checking everything's working smoothly on the latest iPhone, on the latest Android device, on the latest versions of Firefox, chrome, safari, things like that. Double check that something hasn't broken since the last time you tested it. Okay.

Speaker 1: 12:33

And then our last point is to amp up your social media engagement. This can be a fun time to really connect with your customers, not only in email marketing, like we talked about a little bit earlier in this episode, but also in social media marketing. We want to create a buzz around the promotions you're going to be having during the holidays, create some excitement, create some anticipation. You can run holiday themed giveaways too. That can be something really fun. Depending on what your product or service is, you can really come up with some really cool special things you can do here. Maybe, if you're a health provider maybe it's, you know a Get reset before you eat all that stuff at Thanksgiving, or a gut reset right before you eat all that stuff at Christmas or whatever holiday they might celebrate. Maybe you want to do like a water cleanse or something like that. Have a fun challenge, something people can really jump on and get into.

Speaker 1: 13:32

Another thing that's really cool to do during the holidays is share behind the scenes content. This is something that we're working on adding in a bit more here at BCC, but sharing behind the scenes of what you're doing really brings in those customers and really makes them more engaged, so show them creating your special holiday gifting idea. Maybe it's not quite released yet, so maybe leave it a little bit of mystery so they keep wanting to come back more, but really share behind the scenes. You know what are you working on lately, even if it's not around the gifting thing that you're going to be bringing. It's just a great way to really connect with your customers. And then you can always engage with popular festive hashtags, such as hashtag Black Friday deals, new Year's sales, hanukkah sales, christmas, you know whatever seems appropriate for your business, or simply holiday 2024. But you can make some festive tags in there. You can, you know, link them around your theme of what you're doing for your promotions and really make it a lot of fun.

Speaker 1: 14:35

And making sure that you're consistent in social media during this time can really boost your visibility, bring in more traffic to your website, make sure it's optimized, like we talk about in podcasts a lot, and it can really excite them and really make them turn into even more loyal customers.

Speaker 1: 14:49

They're not already your loyal customer, okay, so that's all we have for this week's episode of the e-commerce made easy podcast. So that's all we have for this week's episode of the e-commerce made easy podcast. I hope that was super helpful and getting you some ideas on how to really get prepared for the holidays and use it to your advantage in both creating long, longer term more loyal customers as well as boosting your end of the year revenue. And if you're loving our e-commerce made easy podcast, I would love for you to rate us on Apple podcasts or your favorite podcast player and if you have any suggestions for us, you're welcome to email us at podcast at bcsengineeringcom. And again, if you're not signed up to our newsletter, you're going to want to make sure that you're on it for any special deals come up, coming up. You can sign up for that at e-commerceeasypodcastcom forward slash newsletter. Again, that's ecommercemadeeasypodcastcom forward slash newsletter and we'll see you next week.