Earn More Money Online This Holiday Season
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The holiday season can be amazing for your online store but it’s also often stressful for entrepreneurs. Sales tend to skyrocket in the holiday months, with spending expected to rise 5% this year. For sellers, it can be a grind to manage the influx of new orders, but if you have the right strategy, it’s well worth it.
Here’s our top tips to help you make the most of your holiday hustle this season (plus we’ve got a special offer at the bottom to save you money).
Set a deadline for holiday gift orders
Unsurprisingly, many of the orders you’ll receive during the holiday season are to be used as holiday gifts. Not only will you be dealing with a higher volume of orders in November and December, but it will be especially important to your customers that those orders arrive on time. To ensure that you’re able to fulfill all gift orders, I recommend setting a holiday order deadline.
Aside from helping you to manage orders and keep your customers happy, an order deadline can further incentivize visitors to your online store to make a purchase. If they are on the fence, they might decide to play it safe and get their order in ahead of the deadline, rather than think about it for a few days.
If you have your own website, go into your website builder and add a banner or pop up that states the order deadline clearly. It can be something along the lines of, “Hurry! Orders guaranteed to arrive before December 24th must be placed before December 5th at midnight.” You can also consider adding this deadline to your product and checkout pages, just to make sure your customers see it.
2. Create a special holiday offer
A holiday offer is another great way to motivate people to purchase your goods and share their email addresses with you, so you can continue to contact them during and after the holidays. For example, you can add a sign-up form for your email list that sends a triggered email series with a coupon for a small percentage off the cost of their first order. You can choose if you want to also share this offer (or a different offer) with your current email subscribers.
If you’d rather not sell your items at a discount, don’t worry. There are other creative ways to set up a holiday offer, such as offering free gift wrapping, simple customization options, or a digital gift like a template that can be used to create a holiday decoration. Think about your business and what offer makes the most sense for you.
3. Update your listing and review sites
While it might seem obvious to you to update your website and online store for the holidays, one thing that many entrepreneurs forget about is their online listing and review sites, like Google My Business and Yelp. These pages are often how customers will find you when searching for gifts, and they can be a pivotal tool in your holiday strategy.
Aside from making sure everything is up-to-date on these pages, for the holiday season, you’ll want to add things like:
Special holiday hours
Holiday offers
Festive images that showcase top gift items
4. Know who to target your offer towards (and when to do so)
If you’re running social media ads, make sure to be strategic about who you’re targeting and when you’re targeting them.
For Facebook and Instagram ads, make sure to target only the people most likely to make a purchase. Think about who your product is attractive to, and what would motivate those people to buy. If you’re selling scarves, for example, filter out people in areas that tend to have a warm climate year-round. If you sell dog collars, make sure to target only those with an interest in dogs. You get the idea. This targeting helps make sure that you’re making the most of every advertising dollar.
Just as important as who you target, is when. When it comes to timing, rather than running the same holiday ad all season long, consider segmenting your holiday campaign by “sub-seasons,” such as:
Pre-Holiday- Up to November 22
Black Friday/Cyber Monday - November 23-26
Peak Holiday- November 27- December 20
Final Push- December 21-25
Post-Holiday- December 26- January 1 (more on this below)
5. Have an after-holiday plan ready
If you want to make the most of the holiday season for your business, you shouldn’t stop on December 26th! The days following Christmas and into the new year are another great opportunity for you to leverage that holiday momentum to convert holiday customers into repeat customers.
Consider creating a special after-holiday offer encouraging your email subscribers to treat themselves to something after a busy holiday season. If you don’t want to do another discount offer, you can think about sending some content that your customers might find valuable, such as a blog post or video that highlights your brand and delivers useful information. Not sure what content works for your audience? Check out our article on building a content marketing strategy.
6. Keep it up
You should think of the holiday season as an opportunity to ramp up your online marketing efforts and build momentum that will carry you through the year. After the holiday hustle, take some time to look at all of the online marketing tactics you tried and assess what worked, what didn’t, and what needs to be tweaked. Continue experimenting with these tactics throughout the year, honing your online marketing prowess, and building a strong customer base that will keep you thriving for years to come.