How to attract more customers and sales this holiday season

 

christmas sale

Retailers think up ideas in order to seize business  opportunities that Christmas brings.  After all, it is the gift-giving, ffeasting and spending season.  Customers have these extra pay – in bonuses and 13th month pay to splurge.

Thus, for retailers, big or small, there is one overwhelming question that comes to mind when the holiday season comes.  Simply, how to get more sales and attract more customers.

The most common way is to hold a sale.  Price down your items.  Make buy-one-take-one one and similar deals.  The best items to do this is, of course, your old inventories.

The balance.com advises retailers not to hold an ordinary sale but rather something memorable and hard to resist.  Here are suggestiosn:

  • Offer one big bargain a day. Offering big discounts (30% or more) on someone well-known item each day to bring Christmas shoppers in can work for you if you have well-known brand merchandise or particular items that people are looking for.
  • Make it a discount, not a thing. In a flyer recently, a retailer offered a free pair of socks to anyone spending over Php500 in their store over their three-day pre-Christmas sale. But socks may not be attractive enough pull people to your store.  Perhaps a cup of soothing espresso when they pay at the counter would be better appreciated.  There are bookstores that do that.
  • Make sure your discount is worthwhile. Small discounts of five to 15 per cent may not be good enough.  Twenty percent off would be more like it.   On individual items, the higher the discount the better. Shoppers will compare.

What about holding an event? A retail store held a midnight madness event with fire-wielders, jugglers and musicians performing and, of course, Santa will be visiting.

Families who come downtown get all kinds of free entertainment – and lots of opportunities to get their Christmas shopping done as all the downtown businesses are open until midnight and have special sales going on. If your town doesn’t have something like this going on this season that your small business can participate in, what would it take to get such an event going next year?

There’s nothing to prevent you from holding an event of your own either. The trick is to create an event that will tie into your products or services in some way.

For instance, a kitchen store could hold a cooking class and benefit from increased sales of the products used in the class. A yoga studio could hold a free class to encourage January signup – and offer gift certificates to encourage participants to spread the word.

Put your thinking cap on and ask yourself, “Why would I go to that (event)?”

Use email campaigns.

Social media is hot. But email is effective. Hopefully, you’ve already got an email newsletter going out. It’s an ideal spot to promote the products or services you’re featuring over the Christmas season and spread the word about any sales or events you’re having.

But don’t be afraid to send out separate emails as part of a marketing campaign either. The one bargain a day idea might work well for you as a daily email, for example.

Use proximity marketing to lure shoppers into your store.

Many shoppers are glued to their phones to the point that they might walk right by your store without seeing it.

But by using proximity marketing that broadcasts your targeted message to phones within a certain distance, you can entice those shoppers in – and offer them personalized offers to encourage them to buy more.

Photo credits: www.thisismoney.co.uk