The year 2020 has been quite rough on businesses with the COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent lockdown may firms found it hard to stay afloat and cover up their daily costs. However, the good news is the troubled year is ending soon. The year-end doubled with Christmas celebration and holidays is a gold period of businesses. This is the right time to attract as many customers as possible and make up for the lost sales. Various firms launch many offers to promote their businesses at this time. The market is filled with high-spirited customers who are willing to spend enough providing a perfect opportunity for the businesses to capture it.
Businesses, online as well as offline offer huge discounts and attractive offers to divert the attention of the customers to their products and services. According to market surveys, many entrepreneurs feel that it is the right time to introduce a new product in the market. Here are some sales promotion strategies you should follow to reap the benefits of year-end shopper bloom –
Festive Themed Promotions
One of the easiest ways to increase sales in the year-end is to bank upon festive themed sales promotion offers. Adding the festive, seasonal sentiments to the marketing mix helps to connect easily with the customers who are themselves engulfed in the celebratory spirit. Grabbing their attention and making an association becomes easier. Firms can run a holiday-themed giveaway, offer branded mini games such Christmas puzzles, bingo and other board games. Online businesses can also create a virtual advent calendar like highlight products daily, daily discounts etc, they can also install holiday-themed geo-filters to attract customers to their social media handles.
Product Combination Offer
Another way to attract customers is through providing them quantitative benefits. Go for Buy One Get One Free schemes or offer discounts on buying more than two products. Such product combination also works for unrelated items, for instance on buying a cosmetic product give a ready to eat food package free. Such offerings have dual benefit; one being the obvious customer attraction and other is that will comparatively cost less. Business can lure more customers into buying products by coming two or more products and offers a discount on the same. Use phrases such as ‘Exciting Offer’, ‘Offer you Can’t Resist’, ‘BOGO’, among others to attract customers.
Gave Away Free Gifts or Redemption Coupons
One of the key attractions of Christmas is giving and receiving surprise gifts, businesses should use them as a part of their year-end promotional campaign. No one resists a free gift, especially during festive season. However, firms should carefully determine the value and quantity of products they can afford to give free of costs. Ideally business should set a lower limit for such free of cost offerings. For instance give away a free gift worth Rs 500 on a purchase more than Rs 5000. Another strategy is to provide redemption coupon on purchase.
Contests and Lucky Draws
Customer participation is a great way of sales promotions. Organise contests to encourage participation of potential customers. Various cafes and youth centric businesses may organise Christmas themed treasure hunts. Quizzes, jingle making, logo making among others can also be undertake to catch customers’ attention. Various competitions, like best Christmas tree, best decoration, and best outfit can be organised on the social media pages on the businesses. Firms can also organise lucky draws to attract more and more customers.
End of Year Sales/Discounts
The most tried and tested way of getting customer attention is by organising sales – year end sale, stock clearance sale, winter sale, Christmas sale among others. By providing huge discounts, businesses can make up for the lost turnover over the year. It helps the firms to clear their old stock at the same time provide some earning. Use phrases like ‘Now or Never Sale’, ‘Time is Running Out,’ ‘Buy When You Still can’, ‘Once in A Year Offer,’ ‘Get Over 2020 Blues’, to attract customers.
Sales promotion is an important part of the marketing mix and has proven to be beneficial for the firm in increasing their turnover and earnings. Given the year-end shopping spirit doubled with appropriate promotional tactics are bound to generate good revenue for the firm.