3 Ways to Increase your Sales This Holiday Season
Hype-free strategies you can implement TODAY to see results almost instantly
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It’s a brilliant time to be an entrepreneur. Whether you’re an online retailer, a brick and mortar business, consultant or coach, it’s never been easier to connect with your customers, raise awareness for your business and to generate more sales and profits especially in a short period of time when everyone seemingly goes on a buying frenzy.
But it does take a bit of planning ahead to make sure you’re going to hit your targets this year.
We’re fortunate enough to be across 50+ client accounts implementing sales and marketing systems so we get to see what works and what doesn’t during the holiday season. More importantly we help implement these strategies so we can validate what is pure hype – that can easily distract the newbie entrepreneur – and what it really takes to optimise your business to smash out those sales targets this year.
Here are our top 3 strategies to grow your sales this holiday season. Ready?
1. Funnelling Traffic
With competition at an all-time high for views and engagement, it’s more important than ever to be specific about who it is you’re looking for to invite to your website to buy. “Spray and pray” has never been a good strategy in the best of times and going into the holiday season this will wipe out your marketing budget.
1. Paid Search. Plan Ahead. Get ad campaigns set up well ahead of key dates and ensure that you’ve been testing well before the important dates. It pays to know your niche so well that you can niche down to specific search terms that you can own – that are specific to your product.
It’s going to get very competitive around socials. So stay on top of key dates on social sites and how to plan around them, e.g. with these handy tips from Facebook.
2. Ride the search trail. Gather interest using hashtags such as #BlackFriday, #CyberMonday, #SmallBusinessSaturday, etc and make sure you are scheduling your best offers ensuring air time even when you’re crazy busy fulfilling buyer demand.
3. Emails can still win. And nurturing your list makes all the difference. This is where understanding your audience and meeting them where they are at in their buying journey is absolutely critical.
Consider segmenting your list and sending different content to new customers versus repeat customers. Use content to create the culture for your brand, introduce product features that fill their needs, then use offers to move them closer to you.
2. Remove Friction From The Purchase
You’ve done a lot of hard work getting a visitor to your website. Make sure what they want is easy to find and even easier to buy!
Consider…
1. enabling buying on all devices, i.e. mobile, tablet and desktop.
Is it easy to use? Are there any confusing parts? Why not watch someone else use the site and listen to their feedback?
Time to make sure that your webpage has a responsive design which means it optimises itself to the user’s screen size. According to Shopify, 64% of all sales during Black Friday came from mobile (2017) and it’s growing 10% year on year. There’s no excuse any longer with easier-than-ever to use templates and designs that are mobile responsive straight out of the box!
2. using the header to create a buying mindset, such as free shipping and guarantees.
Have you mentioned delivery before Christmas? What about hassle-free returns? Any gift options? Gift wrapping perhaps?
It’s important for prime web real estate like your header to clearly articulate what you sell but more importantly why buy from you and why now.
3. testing for a sudden surge in traffic.
Is your website designed to deal with sudden surge in traffic? Have you got shared hosting that may be susceptible to glitches when there is a surge?
If you have experienced problems in the past you might consider upgrading hardware, using CDN like Cloudflare and enabling caching and compression of your website assets.
And don’t forget to run a check for broken links!
Websites these days change a lot and you may be surprised how many broken links you have. Don’t fall prey to broken links to order forms. Imagine the number of sales you could be losing!
4. intuitive product listings.
Have you ever gone to a website and found it difficult to find what it is they sell?
Are your products sorted into categories that make sense? Have you included a bestsellers menu item – for those who need help making a decision? What about menu option for ‘gifts’ seeing as it IS the holiday season, including ‘under $25’, ‘under $50’ or ‘gifts for the person who has everything’ etc.
5. optimising product pages.
Your product pages are a major opportunity point to get people to that final step…the purchase. But how many are optimised?
Instead of just checking off a list of items that must be on a product page, we also need to look at page holistically from a buyer’s perspective. Are we answering these buying questions?
- What does the product look like?
- How does it work? Will I know what to do with it when I get it?
- How big or small is it? Or how much time will it take? How do I fit it into my life?
- Can it be delivered and for how much? How long do I have to wait for it?
- Am I able to return it? What if I can’t use it? Or find out that it’s not really for me only after I’ve tried it?
- How can I trust you / your business / your brand? How can I trust myself to get the same results you’re saying I will?
6. bolstering trust factor.
Make sure you add social proof throughout the buying process, e.g. accreditations, customer reviews, testimonials and any press coverage.
Your contact details should also be obvious. Add a phone number if there’s not one already. It may seem like it’s going to create a lot of work answering calls, but the feedback will be INVALUABLE. You are also able to reassure customers if they have any concerns along the way and help to overcome any objections.
These days it’s relatively simple to set up an online chat. You might want to consider adding web support to your current inquiry process especially if you’re anticipating a busy time for your business over the next few weeks and months.
3. Create a Memorable Experience
If everything has gone well before this, you’ll be seeing a lot of orders, including many from new customers and ideally long time customers who are your loyal raving fans.
The easiest way to get repeat buyers is to wow them first time round. This means exceeding expectations and ensuring all touch points convey what your brand is about.
For example, packaging is often the first physical touchpoint for your product. Does the packaging match the luxe positioning that’s been consistent throughout their prior experience? What’s the unboxing process look like? Are you including surprise gifts and discounts that they can share?
Even if you are not shipping a physical item, your onboarding process needs to continue the elevated emotional experience your buyers have just had with you. Specifically it needs to help them overcome any buyers remorse.
Your buyers need closure.
It’s something your buyers need to do – it’s an act that happens after they make the purchase. And they need to know that it is, in fact, closure, i.e. completing the purchase.
It’s not something you can do for them. But you CAN facilitate it.
Consider…
1. Asking your new customer for a review or rating the purchase
Showing more reviews and social proof is a good way of encouraging a similar response.
2. Provide space for buyers to flaunt their purchase
Ecommerce does this really well and service providers can create a similar experience. For example including the new customer in their community where they are invited to introduce themselves and share with other members their goals and intentions for the service, say an online mastermind.
3. Wrap purchases to resemble gifts so that opening takes on new meaning
In the spirit of the holiday season, you might even consider decorating your thank you page with holiday icons, especially if there’s no physical product to deliver. 🎄
4. Follow up via email to validate their purchase
Automated email follow up periodically up to two months after the festive season with a friendly thank you message can work wonders. It’s relatively easy to set up and you might even send them a discount code for future purchases.
Follow up to help them engage and utilise your product.
If you have an online program it’s easy for clients to disengage and drop off over the duration of the program at the best of times, and even more so during this silly season. Building a well thought through email sequence will help with engagement and ultimately customer retention.
If after reading this you’re thinking, “S*** there’s SO much to do. How will I ever be ready for holiday sales?!?!”, don’t panic.
It’s what we do all the time for our clients – we help them implement. We help get things done. If you’d like to find out how we might be able to help you get optimised to get more sales this holiday season simply click here to message us on Facebook.
Or click here to book a time to speak to one of our Virtual Support Consultants.
